Spiritual Process Encompasses All Experience — the Agonies and Ecstasies — and Harmonizes All Reality Toward Our Unique Unfolding on a Path of Exquisiteness
Ritual Bonds One with Society, Not Self
So the upshot is that ritual is not a reunion with self, it is a reinforcement of the separation from self.
And why societies have these reenactments is for the person to bring forward and bring to bear those memories of an important and traumatic time—one’s birth—and associate it with coming more into alignment with society and its needs … that is, as if to die a little more to one’s real self and to create or birth a fake self in line with and to the liking of one’s culture.
The most obvious example of that is the way men and women are turned into killers and pawns of society through the elaborate rituals of becoming soldiers, as in boot camp. This is exactly the opposite of real inner transformation, which happens in a non-ritual-like manner and in which one “dies” to some elaborate act outs in society and culture—as they say, it is the giving up of “desires” or the relinquishing of false hopes and cherished dreams—and is reborn into one’s real self, rediscovering one’s real potentials and connection with Nature and the Divine.
The Psyche Heals Itself
For what may be most essential, at this critical time, is to learn to be a little humbler in our belief that we know what’s to be done. It was our controlling all-knowingness that compelled us to seek to rearrange Nature in our image in the first place. Maybe we should step back a bit from that attitude when we seek now to change that, instead of thinking to add this change of consciousness, like one more project, one more conquest, to our ego-nurturing list of achievements.
Maybe what is needed now is to stop doing, to stop ritualizing . . . to simply leave ourselves open to learning. It may be that what we need to learn is not another technique, another how-to this or that, but a simple letting be, of oneself, of allowing.
a natural psychological consciousness expansion is inevitable in human development … in giving up the struggle, the constant trying, out of fear of some consequences, or other, one falls into a process beyond oneself.
For what we are discovering is that a natural psychological consciousness expansion is inevitable in human development; that in giving up the struggle, the constant trying, out of fear of some consequences, or other, one falls into a process beyond oneself.
This may erupt initially in the form of a “spiritual emergency.” But this is only a seeming emergency and is actually a spiritual emergence; it is not a breakdown but a breakthrough — a real one.
we will always and everywhere do and be what is needed, what is exactly perfect
Gurus, shamans, and experiential pioneers of all stripes have noted the importance of accessing a spiritual process that pervades all aspects of one’s experience. In surrendering and trusting totally, in this way, we open up. And then what arises is always different from what we expect and includes all sorts of phenomena and experiences, all linked to our growth and resolving our blocks.
We begin to learn an attitude of surrender to process. That we can throw ourselves, time and again, into Experience and still, somehow, be upheld and even embraced, despite ourselves, gives us confidence in a beneficent Universe and allows us to foster surrender in all situations — knowing with a fuller knowing our link to the Divine, that we will always and everywhere do and be what is needed, what is exactly perfect at that particular time.
leaving ourselves open to Experience in any way that it should choose to teach us is what is required
Leaving ourselves open to Experience in any way that it should choose to teach us is what is required. Placing ourselves, for reasons of growth, into ritualistic situations that control, limit, and preordain the intensity and type of experience that one will have is to reinforce the problem.
The problem is control, is fear of the unexpected. And in this respect archaic rituals are as useless and time-wasting — and as likely to preclude, through immersion in the hypnotically familiar — as are more modern rituals such as evening TV-watching and the 9-to-5 daily routine.
The only major difference is that archaic rituals have currently the mystique about them of the mysterious and the mystically powerful. So in this aspect they are even more harmful in that they foster the illusion of growth, through the eliciting of pseudo-experience, and thereby make even more unlikely that one will be motivated toward surrendering to one’s authentic experience.
spiritual process takes over, leading us onward to more encompassing realms. The psyche “heals” itself, if only allowed to do so
Thus, what is most necessary is to simply “be” where we are “at.” And to be most fully where we are means to be most fully in process — to be in touch with the underlying flow that is the epigenetic protagonist of healing and creation, growth and transcendence. And once attuned to process, one can “be here” while working, walking, making love, or moongazing. For spiritual process takes over, leading us onward to more encompassing realms. The psyche “heals” itself, if only allowed to do so, and in a miraculously synchronous way that is reminiscent of the way the body does.
This spiritual process is a natural flow of creation that encompasses all experience, the agonies and ecstasies of existence, and harmonizes all of reality, both internal and external, in a pattern that is unique for every individual and oriented toward one’s patient unfolding in the path of exquisiteness.
Continue with Humans Have Developed Language Because of Their Inability to Truly Communicate … We Substitute Pseudo for Real Activity: Ritual as Shadow, Part Eleven
Return to Vision Quests, UFO Abductions, Brainwashings, and Boot Camps: Ritual As Shadow, Part Nine — Initiation, Authentic and Inauthentic
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Culture War, Class War 