Awakening Ceremony and Ritual in your life
The Role of Ceremony in Healing & Awakening
Ceremonies are ways of marking great life transitions, seasonal changes, hallmarks in a life, beginnings, endings, grief and loss as well as transformations. Each ending in our life is also a beginning. Each fresh start, also marks an end. Life is full of these transitions. Ceremonies help us keep a hand on the sacred thread, help us remember that we are part of a process, that our Earth is also in cycles of transition and that we will also be held in its movements.
In the monastery where I trained, we have monthly ceremonies of atonement, renewal of vow, connecting to the ancestors and affirming our oneness with the Earth. Each ceremony is both collective and uniquely individual. It honors the movements and processes of our individual lives, as well as putting us in touch with the clarity, love and spaciousness of the unconditioned--that which is within us that does not change.
In these ceremonies we remember ourselves as fully human, capable of skillful and unskillful actions, beings that need to constantly remember who we are and what we stand for. And we also remember ourselves interconnected with all beings, the great earth and the ancestors who have lived before us--whose help is available to us in this life as well.
We also have seasonal ceremonies, ceremonies that honor the changes of the seasons, the energies that are present at different times of the year. In the Autumn there are ceremonies for letting go, for welcoming what is difficult, for turning inward. In the Winter there are ceremonies for celebrating and remembering the light, contemplating death, and making vows. In the Spring there are ceremonies of birth and connecting to new life. In the Summer there are ceremonies to honor the Earth and Sun and our intimate relationship with the changing climate/all beings.
As the world changes and evolves we are being asked to breathe new life into ceremonies. Ceremonies have always been ways to communicate beyond words with the forces of the universe, the invisible realms and to our spirit as humans. What does it look like to co-create/recreate ceremonies that are in direct relationship and response to ourselves as evolving beings, to our changing climate and world.
How do we honor our collective and individual feelings that arise in relationship with what is happening on our planet? How do we make space for grief, anxiety, fear and anger? How do we make space for hope, compassion, wisdom and love to be shared? How do we make space for creativity to emerge both collectively and individually? How do we atone together? Dwell in the unknown? Keep going?
Ceremonies make space for healing, transformation and awakening. There is so much potential in a single ceremony. Let’s discover together what kinds of ceremonies you might want to bring into your life and the life of your community and our planet.
Discovering Daily Ritual to Heal, Transform and Awaken
Everyday we process through countless transitions, from sleeping to waking, from family-time to work-time, from inside to outside, from community to aloneness, from eating to working, from talking to quiet…and on and on.
When we honor our transitions with awareness, we weave a life of presence and attention into our habitual activities. Ritual is a way of bringing presence, awareness and love into the most mundane of our human activities. Ritual is a way of remembering that each part of this life is sacred.
A ritual act can be as simple as placing your hands palm to palm, kissing the earth or looking up at the Sun. A ritual can last as long as an exhale, the strike of a match, the time it takes to proclaim the syllable AH! And then there are more elaborate rituals, like a daily meditation practice, or making bows and prayers at a particular time of the day. With mindfulness and attention preparing a meal can become a ritual, eating a meal can be too! So can going for a walk, having sex, commuting and doing chores around the house.
Ritual is about bringing meaning and intention into your actions—infusing your living with care and compassion.
Some rituals we may do daily, some weekly, some seasonally. We might pick up a daily ritual for a set period of time; say to honor a loss or grief, or to remember a budding intention. Over the summer I had a ritual of sitting on the earth everyday for forty days, as a way of honoring and remembering my commitment to staying present to our changing climate. It came to open for me experientially my interconnection with all beings that come from the earth and left me feeling more grounded and in loving mutuality with the earth and my environment.
I use this simple example to demonstrate that rituals often open beyond their intended outcomes. We may pick up a ritual to help bring more presence into our mornings, and end up connecting with the birds who are awake at that time, or the air or the changing light. This may inspire a deeper appreciation of our shared life, or may inspire you to undertake a poetry or embodiment practice.
Ritual life opens ourselves up to ourselves, it is healing, transformative and facilitates the awakening process. Part of the work I do as a Spiritual Counselor and Zen Teacher is to help people discover the power of ritual in their daily lives. I can help you design a ritual that meets your needs in your current life situation and honors your deepest intentions for this life.
