How to Create your Own Insta-Ritual!

How to Create your Own Insta-Ritual!

I got home late on the Spring Equinox from a seminar I didn’t really want to go to that evening. I knew it before I even left, and I’m kicking myself for the wasted time in traffic getting there. But listening and responding to my body/energy level needs is still an aspect of myself that I’m mastering.

Anyway, I finally got home. As I jumped out of my Lyft and skipped up to the door, excited to be back at my peaceful repose, I glanced at my front door. Earlier I had planned to sacrifice the now, very dead wreath hanging on my otherwise cheerful red door.

I took it down remembering my intention to do a Spring Equinox ritual that evening, and realized it was going to take a little longer than expected. Each branch of my wreath was meticulously wire-wrapped to a metal frame. I had no intention of burning the metal, so I found my wire cutters and set out to separating the prickly bits from the smooth wire frame holding it all together, while sitting on my front porch listening to music and enjoying the night air.

Preparation

I realized that deconstructing my wreath was a little like constructing a magickal tool. Doing the work to create your own tools for ritual connects you to the energy better, even if it means separating wires from each other so you can burn your wreath without leftover waste.

Once separated into its constituent parts, I found a box to sweep the mess I had made on my front porch into, and set out for my backyard with this makeshift cauldron full of dead wreath. The symbology was emerging.

I don’t have a fire pit, and everything back there looked very flammable. So I set down my box and returned to my kitchen to find a bucket and fill it with water. Every ritual that contains more than a candle’s flame of fire could benefit from a little ‘water insurance.’ I took the bucket back outside and set it near my proposed fire pit.

This was a proposed ‘fire pit’ however because all I had was empty space where it would have been very convenient to have a firepit. I couldn’t just burn my wreath and cardboard box on the pavement behind my house. I needed something to burn on. So, I looked around and found some old cinder blocks to put together that I could set my box, I mean, cauldron onto.

Now I was all set! I had a central altar in the form of a fire offering with enough room to walk around when I called in the directions.

Invocation

Right…calling in the directions. It’s about now that I started to think about the exact intention of my ritual. What is it that I’m performing this ritual for anyway? I decided to align my space setting with the Hindu pantheon, for which I have a special relationship, so I went back inside to my magickal library to find the book with the random table I needed: deities from all the different traditions mapped to different elemental and solar symbols. Once my symbols are mapped to the elements, I can map each to one of the four directions.

Ok, I had my fire sacrifice. I had the deities I was invoking. My intention was emerging if not quite solidified. Having done space setting basically daily for the last 6 years, I had my preparatory rituals memorized. I was set!

I performed the magickal operations for clearing and setting space that I have learned in my magickal tradition—the Lineage of King Salomon. Since I was outside, under the full moon light, nature provided a lot of the sacredness of the space too!

Then I lit my fire and started calling in the directions. Afterward, I went around my circle again calling on the Hindu deities that I chose to work with in this ritual. I invoked them as poetically as possible, trying to draw a link between their unique personality or power, and the intention on my ritual.

Once the invocation was complete, I just stared at the fire. Learning to pause, and allow the energy to sink in, is wisdom that has come with experience. Try not to rush through your invocations, allow the energies time to get into the space and get comfortable with what you’ve created, especially if it doesn’t look all that grand (aka a cardboard box on cinder blocks). It is the intention that counts for everything!

Prayer

I stared into the fire, it was now time to say my prayer. I had created this sacred space on a beautiful, full moon evening, with a blazing fire for a reason. What was it? I searched my heart and my prayer emerged:

Great Spirit! With this fire, burn away all that does not serve my fullest expression. Allow the light of this fire to illuminate inside me all that yearns to be revealed and celebrating. Allow the warmth of this fire to tease open my heart to allow others in. Let my worries and concerns be carried away by the smoke, and let the coals that sprinkle the Earth become seeds for the new, flourishing me in service to my community.

So this is my prayer for you. I hope you enjoyed your Spring Equinox and felt some of this intention fill your life as well!

Alchemy Phase 3: Separation

Alchemy Phase 3: Separation

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In the last post of this series, we covered the second stage of alchemy: dissolution. We also reminded ourselves that it’s important to remain non-attached. At the same time, you will not complete the alchemy process powerfully without uncovering your ‘burning desire’ that drives you towards your goal. Without the attractive force of this desire pulling you, you are in danger of getting lost in the journey of this alchemical transformation. Finding your way out is impossible until a concrete goal emerges.

Into a million pieces

As life continues to throw curve balls, we get thrown out of our normal routine, and start to see what the essence of our life is. Normally, this essence gets drowned in the day-to-day dross of our waking life, and sometimes we access it through the subconscious when we sleep. But overall, we are usually unaware of the influence this essence has on our thoughts, behaviors, habits, and outcomes in life.

When we get out of our normal routine, or try to alter our life in some way (like learning a new habit), it’s not uncommon for anger, resentment, frustration, and depression to emerge. We can often have trouble with emotional boundaries as well, not being sure exactly what we want, which has the unfortunate bonus feature of making us more prone to conflict in our relationships.

Have you ever felt so emotionally fragile like you could burst into a million shards of glass on the ground at any moment? That’s separation.

There is perspective to be gained by separating and distinguishing the parts of our life that often go unnoticed. Human beings are meaning making machines, and we go around constantly making up stories about what others think of us, how otherwise meaningless actions have ruined our day, and what we’re going to do about the past when we act in the future. Most times we are not actually present to (and appreciating) what is!

Taking a moment to see each of those stories for what they are, mental objects that take up time and energy, that drive our thoughts, opinions, and actions. They enable us to move those otherwise subconscious drives to the conscious mind where we can evaluate and choose our relationship with them, rather than be driven by them. Freud was a big proponent of this theory of unconscious drives, and ended up taking it further, forming the concept of the id (or instincts/drives) as opposed to the superego (or conscience), which, from a metaphysical perspective, is necessarily aligned with our Higher Self.

In this stage of alchemy called separation, we separate out the parts of the whole that we were not noticing before, and we look at them. We start to see all kinds of relationships we never saw before. We compare and contrast the different parts of ourselves that make being a human so rewarding, giving color to our experience and rhythm to our steps. We have to have the honesty and integrity required within ourselves to acknowledge those parts of us that we don’t necessarily like before we can move towards wholeness.

Seeing the unseeable

After a particularly nasty breakup with his ex, Riley basically repressed her feelings for a year and it took her awhile to feel open to dating again. Understandably, when she put herself out there to date again, she had all kinds of caveats. “I’m never dating that kind of person again,” she decided. So she evaluated every prospective partner that came into her life from the lens of that list of traits she’d rather like to avoid, lest she find herself in the same position as last year, emotionally bruised and battered, closing herself off again to the happiness she was sure she could find if she just had another (not so crazy) partner.

She had one particularly memorable dating experience where, after dinner, she was feeling particularly attracted to her date, and decided to invite him over to her house for an after dinner aperitif. No sooner had they entered then the comments began. “Oh, what a nice space. I really like your sofa. How long have you lived in this house? Where did you get those curtains?” Riley was beside herself, one of the things on her list was no critical comments, because she felt emotionally shunned by her ex, who was always evaluating and criticizing her. Riley felt like she could never live up to his standard, so she ended the relationship.

Now it was happening all over again, except that it was happening with each person she became close with. Once the intimacy started to increase, she would start to get these comments. First they were relatively innocuous, but then later, there was some tension or even outright conflict. Riley didn’t know how to resolve this recurring issue.

One day, while at coffee with a friend, Riley was detailing how her most recent date wasn’t going to cut it again, when her friend stopped her and leaned over to say, “Riley, don’t you see a pattern here. Whenever you want to get intimate with someone, you immediately close yourself off, which defeats the whole purpose!”

Riley started to look at her most recent dates, and she was flabbergasted. Her friend was right, she always reacted with resistance whenever anyone got close enough to ask her a question that really mattered. She withdrew as soon as people were just getting to know her. This was no way to create a relationship.

Once Riley saw this in her behavior, she was able to catch herself going down that trail, and decided to she her experience differently. “No, he’s not trying to criticize me, he’s just curious because he doesn’t know! I haven’t shared that part of myself with him yet.”

After this, Riley was able to have a relatively long-term relationship again. Though still looking for that life partner, she is enjoying emotionally-fulfilling relationships both with her intimate partners and her friends.

Reflective Quote:

“He [William S Burroughs] has no patience for my kind of neurosis, I know… But since then I’ve been facing my nature full in the face and the result is a purge.”

Jack Kerouac, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters

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In searching for truth, I found Spiritual

In searching for truth, I found Spiritual

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As a young man, I ventured out into the world searching for truth, not for ‘spiritual things.’ I was curious about why things worked the way they did, and realized understanding human consciousness was the key to most of the things I was interested in.

In my experience, that requires a peek into the Pandora’s box of what can’t be seen, smelled, tasted, or measured. A place where relinquishing what you know is the rule, alignment with your heart is the measure, and intuition is the guide. In other words, science only tells us part of the story—the part we can observe. But how much exists in the Universe that you haven’t seen? How much exists that you can’t possibly sense with your five physical senses? How much exists that you don’t know that you don’t know exists?

We already have seen how our individuated minds pervade space beyond our physical body. This person in front of you is the culmination of generations of culture, genetics, and energetic forces that continue to shape her or him at this very moment. And because of that fact, this being has the ability to shift to a new reality, a new vibration, in any moment, at any time. That is an amazing ability! That is spectacular to see!

I went out to be a research scientist studying how the brain works and why people think and act the way they do. I found that science can’t even measure what it is we’re studying. I dove into Eastern philosophy and metaphysics, reading luminaries who were essentially the first psychologists tackling these questions as well, and I found that they produce real, replicable results! They were practicing and refining techniques that worked within various fields including: meditation, martial arts, and magick.

I wasn’t looking for ‘Spiritual’—but the irony is that in my search for truth, all roads led to the spiritual.

Over the last few years, I’ve attempted to describe, analyze, explain, and clarify what ‘spiritual’ is as it relates to my work. Three years ago, I even wrote a blog called *drum roll please* “Personal Spiritual Development.”

However…I have a dirty little secret.

The dirty little secret is that the term ‘spiritual’ frustrates me. It’s like trying to describe ‘water’ to a fish. When we’re surrounded by all things spiritual everyday, how are we to distinguish what’s spiritual from what is not?

There has to be a fundamental awareness of what’s in front of us first—we have to truly see concrete reality, objective reality (ironically) before we can see the spiritual. That’s because our minds makes up all sorts of stories to explain away what’s actually happening in front of our very eyes. And this makes it difficult to truly see the divine in action.

We give our power away to authority figures—PhD’s, government agents, news reporters, etc. rather than take the time to think for ourselves. These ‘authorities’ give us stories to explain what’s happening, and we fail to see the alternatives parading themselves in front of our very own eyes.

When we take on another’s point of view rather than observe our direct experience, we rob ourselves of the opportunity to transform our reality.

My goal is to transform lives, but I can’t do it for others. If people can’t see the results I’m creating in my life, or value what I’m able to accomplish with freedom and ease… if they have an idea about what the right way to do things is at the expense of seeing what actually works…then I’m probably not going to be able to help.

The best I can do is demonstrate what works by living my life with integrity and transparency and invite people along for the adventure than try and logic with their minds.

You’ll either want to get on this ride with me or you’ll want to stay where you’re at. Both can be true perfection—if you understand why you’re making the choice you’re making.

But do you? In a universe as vast and complex as the one we are still discovering, do you really know your place in it? Aren’t you curious about how you came to be born at this time and in this small corner of the universe?

I encourage each of you to find something you’re truly attracted to, that’s living the kind of life you want to live. Then put your stories aside and listen with your heart.

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