Words That Look Back - Sublimate

When a word changes how you meet the moment

There was a time when I thought I knew what the word sublimate meant.

It meant pushing something away.
Pushing it down.
Getting rid of it.

Resisting.

Unwanted emotions.
Unacceptable urges.
Anything that didn’t fit the picture I had of who I thought I was… or should be.

Sublimate meant: don’t feel it.
Or at least… don’t let it show.

I lived with that meaning for years.

It seemed right.
It seemed responsible.
It seemed… controlled.

I never questioned it.

But the energy didn’t disappear.
It waited.
And returned.

After I had been working with E.J. Gold and the IDHHB community for several years, I heard E.J. speak about sublimation as a spiritual practice.

He said those unwanted emotions and urges could be recognized as energy…
energy that could be used for being present, even if only for a moment.

He suggested pausing…
and offering that energy as a wave to carry us to presence.

I remember the moment clearly.

It felt like something lighting up all at once.

A quiet thought appeared:

Maybe I don’t really understand what this word means.

So I looked it up.

To sublimate:

to redirect energy
to refine
to make something finer… purer… more useful

Not to eliminate.

To use.

There is another use of the word sublimate in alchemy.

A substance is heated
until it rises as vapor
and settles again in a purer form.

An elevation.
A refinement.

Something “lower”… becoming something else.

That changed everything.

Over the years, I’ve worked to use all kinds of arising energy in ways that support being present.

When I began to apply this new understanding of the word sublimate to the moments I used to resist… something shifted.

An emotion would arise.
Something uncomfortable.
Something I would have pushed away.

I would pause.

Just long enough to remember:

This energy can be used.

I would sense the energy moving…

not down
not away

but upward.

Like a prayer.

Something subtle began to change in my relationship to those moments.

The energy no longer felt like an obstacle.

It felt… available.

That shift began over thirty years ago.

And the word sublimate has stayed with me ever since.

It has moved beyond a definition.

It is a practice.

I hadn’t considered that a change in my understanding of the meaning of a single word could affect my spiritual life in such a direct way.

Now, after years of working with sublimate, I see something differently:

all of life can be used to wake up.

Even a simple word.

Maybe there’s a word like this in your life.

One that causes you to pause for just a moment
and wonder about your relationship to it.

One you can use to help you pause.
One that can help you wake up.