What is a ritual? A ritual is guided by some principles. The first is that there is ritual space and ordinary space that are delineated. The second is that rituals always have a beginning and an end. The third is that there is a clear intention for a ritual. And the fourth is that a ritual is done with presence.
And. The clearer the intention. And the more presence that a ritual is undertaken with.
The more clearly a ritual is marked with a beginning and an end and ritual space and ordinary space delineated. The more powerful the ritual. Now, that may sound quite woowoo to a lot of you, but we’ve been using ritual, I think, for as long as human beings have been around, because it works and we use them every day.
Now, a meeting, for example, is a really good example of a ritual that we all know well, and we all know that declare the intention of a meeting. And the more present we are in the meeting, the more clearly the meeting has boundaries around it, the more effective a meeting is.
And okay, we don’t know how ritual works, but we know that it does. And we use many technologies that we don’t understand. You know, anti-depressants, some serotonin, some reduce serotonin. We use it because they work.
And what can be achieved when done ritualistically is far more effective than when the very same thing is done outside of a ritual. So in my work and in my life, I use the technology of ritual, to move more wisely and more effectively in life. And I think that when ritual is understood that way, and once you practice it and you start to see that it actually is supportive. It’s interesting to see how we can bring those principles of ritual into different practices, quite simply, in our everyday life.