Keeping the Sacred Alive in the Age of Artificial Imagination.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to stay authentic in a world that is evolving so fast. We now have machines and Artificial Intelligence taking over the creative world. Key word here: Artificial. I keep seeing people use AI to make music, to write, to heal themselves and others, to give psychic, astrology, or tarot readings, acting as a real band or true mystic, when really, they just typed a few words as a prompt into a machine that uses Artificial Intelligence to generate something. And honestly, it’s been beginning to activate something in me. It’s brought up confusion, anger, sadness, and frustration. It’s made me question not only what I’m witnessing, but also the ways I’ve engaged with this tool myself.

At first, I told myself it shouldn’t matter. It isn’t my business what others do with technology. The world is always changing, and technology is always evolving. Hello, I’m a Gen X’er. I learned to write with a pencil, to type on a typewriter, and to talk to my friends from the landline with the 50-foot cord stretched to my room. Everything changes. And one thing about change that I know, is with every change, we step into our landscape of grief and emotions arise. Nothing transforms without the loss of something. And in this case, it feels like we’re losing sacredness,  sacredness for craft, for process, for the slow becoming that shapes real creation.

I’m seeing things that used to take years for artists, musicians, and writers to develop, being replaced by instant output that may look or sound impressive but is missing the human soul of it all. It hurts to witness, because that humanness, the raw, unfiltered, messy parts, the mistakes and breakthroughs and the beauty that comes from going through the process, the time and devotion, is what makes art alive. What I’m seeing now isn’t just Artificial Intelligence. It’s Artificial Imagination. And there is something deeply sorrowful in watching that unfold. It feels like a slow erasure of the very initiations that make us human in the first place.

I don’t believe AI itself is evil. It’s a tool, a powerful one, and in some ways an extraordinary one. I’ve used it to organize my thoughts, to edit words, to explore images for my stories. That’s not the problem. I think the problem begins when the tool becomes a mask. When someone has an idea, types in a prompt, lets the machine take over, and then calls themselves the artist, the healer, the psychic, the seer, the musician, the writer, or the band. And I hate to say this, but I don’t believe that is authentic creation, to me it feels like mimicry.  It feels inauthentic, and honestly, like a lie and a deception. A quick way to bypass the natural human process of creating.  

Which then opens the doorway to bigger questions: what does that say about your ethics, your integrity, your honesty when it comes to using this tool? And just like any tool, those are things worth thinking about.

There’s something that breaks my heart when I see people letting the machine do all the work, AI therapy, AI music, AI books, AI psychics. It’s not that I think it’s bad, so much as I think it is a disservice to ourselves. It’s that we’re handing away one of the most sacred parts of being human: our imagination.

Our imagination is how we touch the unseen. It’s the bridge between worlds, where spirit and matter meet. It’s how we dream, how we create, how we explore the liminal spaces and walk between timelines. AI can remix, imitate, and mirror, but it cannot imagine. It can’t feel that spark that happens when a human soul reaches into the dark and brings something back. That spark is sacred. It’s what makes art, healing, music, story, and magic possible.

If we give that away, we risk losing what makes us magical and alive, our human capacity to create, to wonder, to commune with the mystery. We need our imagination to stay awake. We need it to stay connected. We need it to remember that creativity isn’t just production or the outcome. It surely isn’t perfection. It’s prayer. It’s devotion. It’s how we learn to listen to what’s sacred, and true.

Since moving and slowing down my pace of life, I’ve been thinking about this even more. I know it’s a privilege, but it’s also been a teacher. As I’ve been sitting down with an old upright piano and playing every day, it’s been showing me what the world is losing, our connection to the raw, and the messy, the imperfection. Especially within the shiny, new age spiritual spaces that preach “high vibes only” and toxic positivity. This constant push toward perfection, toward light and love, feels like a whitewash over the truth of being human. The sacred isn’t always clean. It isn’t tidy or convenient. It’s found in the dirt under our nails, in the quiet mornings, in the grief we are traversing, in the awkward spaces where we don’t have answers.

The slower I go, the more I see how afraid the collective has become of what can’t be curated or controlled. We hide our humanness because the world tells us it’s too heavy, too much, too imperfect. But maybe slowing down isn’t just a lifestyle change. Maybe it’s the actual rebellion, a quiet return to what’s true and what those in power-over us really don’t want us to remember. 

I still use AI, and I’m not pretending otherwise. But I treat it like fire. It can warm and light the way, or it can burn down everything if you’re careless. So I hold it carefully. I let it help me see, or shape, or organize, but then I put my hands back on the work. I let my hands and my human body create. I paint. I sing. I write. I play piano. I refine. I do the work that asks something of me, that takes time and effort and uses the years of my personal skill building, and lessons learned the hard way, the wisdom I’ve gleaned from one initiation after another, because that’s where the soul lives.

For me, integrity looks like this: I stay aware of what I’m using and why. I keep practicing my craft so the machine never becomes my voice. And I tell the truth about my process. AI can be a tool to help, but it will never be the author, the musician, the artist, or the healer.  Before I share anything, I always ask myself: does this still carry my soul, or has it become someone else’s echo? Has it become a cliche or a trend? Is this me, does this come from my authentic voice and soul? Is this truth or is it a mask? And what is my intention? 

We can’t go backward. The world is changing faster than any of us can really keep up with, and pretending AI doesn’t exist won’t stop it. What we can do is learn how to stay in right relationship with it,  just like we try to stay in right relationship with the Earth, with spirit, and with one another. That means remembering what makes any relationship sacred: respect, boundaries, reciprocity, and awareness. It means using the tool consciously, not letting it use us. AI isn’t evil. It’s a reflection of us. The question is whether we can stay awake inside it.

Every digital thing has a cost. The data centers that run these systems use enormous amounts of electricity and water. So even as I work with AI, I try to remember the rivers that cool it. Sometimes after writing, I’ll step outside and pour water at the roots of a tree. I’ll breathe, hum, maybe sing a song. It’s small, but it reminds me that creation is about relationship, not production.

We don’t have to be perfect. We just have to stay awake.

And I keep reminding myself, the sacred can’t be coded. It lives in the crack of a voice mid-song, in trembling hands, in the dissonance of a note, in the marks that only a human can make, in the silence before devotion.

AI can make something that looks right, sounds perfect and like every other trending thing, but it can’t create something that feels true. So maybe the work now is to keep creating from the inside out. To remember what it's like to step inside a process. To sing and write and make from lived experience, not replication. To use the tool, but never become it.

If we can remember who we are while we create, we won’t lose ourselves. The world doesn’t need more perfect things. It needs presence. It needs our compassionate humanness. 

I don’t want to be someone who fears change. But I also don’t want to forget what it means to be human. So I come back to my breath, my body, my instruments, my physical tools and the land. I remind myself that my voice comes from lungs, crossses my heart and comes from wind and memory, not circuitry or a data center.

Maybe that’s how we keep the sacred alive, by walking beside the machine, not inside it. By using what helps us grow while never giving up what can’t be replaced: the heart, the song, the devotion, and the hands that still know how to create.