Letting go rituals that don’t serve you is one of the hardest parts of spiritual growth. When you decide to start working with energy or head out on your spiritual quest, you are going to quickly get into some weird rituals. Tapping, chanting, toning, yoga, hypnosis, crystal baths, affirmations. The list goes on and on.
But even more detrimental to spiritual growth are the rituals that seem normal. Meditation, prayer, going to work at 9am every morning. As humans, we are very good at programming our own auto-pilot and then forgetting about it.
The Problem With Rituals
Rituals are important, for a while. Unfortunately, we are hard programmed to believe that we need outside stimuli to create things, be successful, or find peace. This results in obsessive compulsive behavior that we believe is serving us.
Something I struggle with daily is really understanding what it means to be an infinite being and creator. And I mean really accepting it, not just saying it in an affirmation every morning. We let the mind get in the way. The mind wants to feel useful, so it tries to make everything as complex as it possibly can.
Rituals Serve the Mind
Rituals serve the mind, they do not serve the heart. And the heart is where you live.
You can tell if a ritual is serving you because it will get rid of resistance in your body or mind. What happens, though, is that you get to a place of well-being, but then you forget to meditate one day. And then you worry all day that you are falling out of balance. This is when a ritual is no longer serving you.
Training Wheels for Well-Being
Rituals are like training wheels for well-being. We start out with them, but eventually we just know how to get there. As an infinite being, your natural state is one of balance and well-being. A ritual is a great way to discover what that feels like, but once you know the feeling, the ritual becomes less important.
Buddhism has meditations and mantras. Catholicism has recited prayer and sacramentals. Christianity invites Jesus Christ to live in your heart. Each of these rituals make up a series of metaphors for your own potential.
Buddha said, The way is not in the sky, the way is in the heart. Mother Theresa said, Profound joy of the heart is like a magnet that indicates the path of life.
The Ritual Points to You
Each ritual is a method to getting into your heart and bypassing the human mind. From your heart, you can access the eternal power that has always been you. Too often, though, we worship the ritual, when the ritual is just nodding at the potential that lies within you.
Take a look at the rituals in your life. Cigarettes, alcohol, food, exercise, employment, relationships. All of these can turn into unhealthy rituals if you let them. Remember that you control the ritual, the ritual does not control you.
This is the lens the Bible is meant to be read through.
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