Why We Split the World Into Sacred vs. Secular (And What We Lose)

How binary thinking cuts us off from integrated wisdom

I’ve always been drawn to the grey areas — the spaces in between.

Not because I’m indecisive, but because life rarely fits into clean binaries. The older I get, the more I understand that truth is rarely singular. That complexity isn’t a flaw in our perception — it’s a feature of reality. Multiple things can be true at once. Opposites can live side by side.

One of the deepest grey areas I keep returning to is the space we often place between the “spiritual” and the “mundane.”

It’s common — even comforting — to think of the sacred as something elevated, removed from the grit of daily life. We associate it with rituals, altars, meditation, and scripture. We give it a kind of glow. Meanwhile, the ordinary — the chores, the noise, the arguments, the deadlines — gets pushed into another category entirely. The profane.

But the more I slow down, the more I sense: this line we draw between the sacred and the profane? It doesn’t exist.

What if every moment — even the messy, uncomfortable, overlooke…