Foundations 1: Rituals

One of the least talked about foundational skills for a healthy spiritual practice is Ritual. The word ritual is often mistakenly compounded with Ceremony and therefore isn't taught as a foundational skill in spiritual practices and reserved for "intermediate."

BUT ritual is, in my opinion, the first skill that should be taught. Because what Ritual IS synonymous with is Habit. And healthy habits/rituals are how you grow your spiritual lifestyle.

For example, we all want strong, shiny, beautiful smiles. So to achieve this we wake up in the morning and brush, floss, and or mouthwash. This is a healthy ritual.

There are also unhealthy rituals. An example of this is found in art. In paintings, horses were painted in motion NOT how horses move but how crocodiles move instead. Someone painted a horse like that, and others copied that style, it was not disputed until the 1700s, and not fully corrected until the late 1800s when photography was used. The unhealthy lack of reference and copying from other artists created unrealistic interpretations but it went unquestioned for centuries.

Rituals can be as simple or complex as you want them to be. There isn't a right or wrong. Just healthy or unhealthy. If you wake up and clap three times to signify your gratitude for starting a new day, then do it!! Just make it something that has a desired result and be consistent with it. Consistency is key to healthy rituals. You'll know if something is unhealthy if you dread it or if it doesn't serve you in any way.

With all of that being said, I have recently started hearing, “Don’t let your practice become habitual or it will lose power.” In reality, it is quite the opposite. Habits increase power and potency. The more rooted you become in your practices the more natural it becomes. It grows into an inherent part of you. Inconsistency is when you lose power.

Throughout the day you experience different emotions from the entire spectrum. Tiny minor irritations, moments of joy from little successes, etc. All of these build up. In a healthy ritual or habit of processing your emotions, you can do a Releasing Ritual every morning that frees you up from the past. But the key to it is being consistent. If you only do it when you think about it then you run the risk of all the past events catching up to you and compounding on the event happening at that moment.

Sample Scenarios

Do you work in customer service or retail? All day long you have minor irritations from customers making demands against what you can do. One day a customer comes in and they tick off all the wrong boxes with you.

A healthy daily Releasing Ritual would allow you to take the customer as an individual. You know at the end of the day their actions and behaviors don’t matter. You may still get into a slight altercation with them because we are all still human and have a right to defend ourselves and express our emotions. Or you may just say simply, “I’m not going to help you anymore. Have a great day.” And then you walk away. But after a few minutes and the dust has settled you are back to your normal state and the next customer gets a fresh new experience.

An unhealthy, inconsistent Releasing Ritual would see you pulling the irritations from all the other minor instances to fuel the fire. Instead of a small altercation of defending yourself, you go on the offensive and volley your attacks at the customer. It becomes a match and you lose control. All the past nonsense acting as dry kindling thrown into a bonfire all at once and built too close to a pile of fireworks on New Year’s Eve. After it is all over, luckily a coworker was around and witnessed the antics of the customer which led to it all so your job is still safe. But you still end up with some repercussions. You go home that day still thinking about it and fuming. You say, “I’m going to do a release on this and just start over tomorrow.” That release can be telling a significant other or friend about it in a venting session or even a hot bath with a full glass of wine.

When we dissect this scenario we can have three points of view:

1. Healthy Ritual

2. Unhealthy Ritual

3. Temperament of Individual

You can easily dismiss the notion of ritual effectiveness with Temperament. But not all people have a strong resilient temperament. So by dismissing the effectiveness of ritual, you are essentially saying that unless someone is naturally gifted with a strong temperament then they are doomed. And I am also going to argue that no one is naturally born with this either. I guarantee they learned it. You can ask them and they will say they don’t know how they developed it because whatever they did is just a natural part of them now. In other words, ritual became a habit which became a subconscious behavior.

In the Healthy vs Unhealthy aspect, the real piece that sets them apart is that by doing a release of some kind every day you are being PROACTIVE. You set yourself up for success. You don't need to go back on anything else from the past. You take each moment as it is. And this shifts your mindset to being fully present in the moment. Whereas the unhealthy version was REACTIVE. You are still tethered to the moments of the past and they weigh you down. You aren’t able to live fluidly. And you end up carrying those emotions until you purposely do something to release them.

And this is just one example of how healthy rituals are important for a better way of life. And I only went into “anger” as an example because it is so common. Happiness also needs to be kept in check. Robin Williams, one of my favorite actors of all time, is a serious reminder of that.

But getting back to Rituals, in general, what needs to be known is their structure.

• You have a goal

• You perform specific actions to achieve that goal.

• You perform the actions consistently over a set frequency.

Let’s go back to an earlier example, brushing your teeth.

• The goal is oral hygiene, clean breath, and less tooth decay.

• The actions=Brushing, Flossing, and Mouthwash

• The frequency=Daily at least once

Frequency in ritual is determined by what works for you. I made an example of a daily release. For some people that may not be feasible. Maybe every other day or every three days. The point of frequency is that once you determine a frequency that works for you for whatever the ritual is, stick to it and be consistent about it. I personally, as a ritual, celebrate Summer Solstice every year with Mead, and fresh fruit, and I bake a Honey Cake.

• My goal-Honor the beginning of Summer and promise to work on goals I set during the Spring

• My actions-Celebration with mead, honey cake, and fruit while focusing on the goals.

• My frequency-Once a year

See? Not every ritual has to be daily. And they don’t need to be complicated either. They can be simple. Like the clapping example I gave earlier.

Finding healthy rituals can be challenging because the view of them is confused with Ceremony and Ceremonial work. Instead, work on developing your own, and don’t be afraid to experiment with it and have fun with it as well.

Here are the steps for developing rituals:

1. Recognize a need or desire you want in your life.

2. Find actions that work towards that goal.

3. Perform the actions and find a frequency that fits your lifestyle comfortably.

4. Be consistent in the frequency of the actions.

5. Let the ritual become a habit.

6. Let the habit become second nature.

And last but not least, be flexible, fluid, and forgiving with yourself.

If you want to add to a ritual something new that you discovered, DO IT!

If you want to take an action away from a ritual because it doesn’t serve anymore, DO IT!

If you miss a day because life happens, it is fine. Catch it the next time and don’t stress out.

I have a daily morning ritual. It was long and, at the time I created it, I was commuting about 45 minutes per day one way. Now I work from home. Doing the 30-minute ritual at home is a lot especially if I wake up a little late for my desk job. I removed about 90% of the actions from the daily ritual to make sure I at least did one important part of it. I adapted it to my current needs.

Now I do the 10% part daily and the 100% version once a week. But if I know I have a healing session I make sure to do the 100% version the morning of as well. I have a consistent frequency still but I made it more fluid and flexible to my individual needs. Don’t get so hung up on rules and structure that you wear yourself out. Don’t be an immovable mountain. A mountain may not bend to the wind, but the wind does pick up little pieces of dust and erode the mountain over time. Scientifically, this is called Wind and Sheet Erosion. The mountain may stand strong but it doesn’t realize that every day it gets a little smaller.

Your ability to change your life is only limited by you. Ritual is the cornerstone to EVERYTHING in spiritual lifestyles and beyond really. Without the discipline of consistency and the creativity of experimenting that comes from ritual, the rest kind of falls apart.

Like what good is telling someone to meditate or be forgiving if they don’t have the discipline of consistency? Meditation practices are still rituals. Purposefully forgiving oneself and others is a ritual. It all comes back to ritual. And that is why it is again, in my opinion, the very first step to creating a spiritual lifestyle.

Thank you for reading and I hope this helps you in some way. I want to leave you one final thing. The immortal words of Ms. Frizzle. “Take chances, make mistakes, get messy.”

See you next time!!