The rules have all changed now. We are no longer bound by societal expectations about our religious devotions. Only decades ago, any American who didn’t belong to a church got a side-eye from the rest of society. A hundred years ago, there were actually men who wandered the streets on Sunday mornings to collect your tithe if you weren’t in church. And you’d better have a good reason for not being there. Truancy from worship was even punishable in some places.
It brings to mind the resistance that has built up over these last decades to spiritual and religious rituals and ceremonies. And with good reason (see above). But not only from the obvious challenges people have with organized religion. We are going through a systematic appraisal of every single element within our human society right now. Nothing is off limits from inspection. Every symbolic carton of milk, loaf of bread, and jar of honey is being checked for an expiration date.
Is this a good thing? Of course. Is it painful? Usually very. And often, the baby is temporarily thrown out with the bathwater in the process. It will all be okay in the end, I promise. There is much to be admired in the fact that we, as humans, are always on the lookout for how to improve things. That instinct will ultimately be the source of our greatest achievements as a society of people.
In the meantime, however, we—specifically this current set of generations—are subjecting ourselves to the excruciating task of assessment in a way that future generations will never have to. Thankfully.
The irony is that, in the action of it, we are often discounting an aspect of our humanity that we need very much in order to best cope with this very process we have undertaken. That of ritual and ceremony.
Of course there are many rituals and ceremonies in which we easily participate every day from brushing our teeth to graduating from college. But, while these are essential aspects of our human experience, they are not the entire food pyramid of human thriving.
Spiritual, religious, and metaphysical rituals and ceremonies have come under fire by the more pragmatic skeptical world. And while that is a necessary part of the sorting process, it must be acknowledged that science backs up the need for them, even if it doesn’t confirm the cosmic claims each tradition makes of their purpose or function. Long story short, there’s good stuff here and you probably could use some of it.
Science has repeatedly shown that rituals and ceremonies enhance confidence and emotional stability, soften the effects of grief, and even make food taste better when done mindfully and with intent.
Some rituals, ancient in origin, have proven themselves to have surprisingly beneficial aspects which science is only now recognizing. Purification ceremonies, for which water is the ubiquitous ingredient across all cultures, have often included with them the burning of various plants, such as sage and sweetgrass here in the Americas. These plants have now been found to have the power to not just spiritually, but physically cleanse an environment of bacteria and other contaminants. And of course, water cleansing rituals also have the added benefit of not just cleaning one’s soul, but their germy hands as well.
Yet these findings are somewhat beside the point. Because science, specifically quantum physics, has also shown that matter is affected by our expectations. It has proven that what we think has an impact on our physical reality. Of course, this is on the quantum level and difficult to observe, but the quantum level is the basis of our physical reality after all. How can the foundation not affect the house?
Yesterday, my husband decided to sweep out our apartment. Not just sweep out the dirt, but more as well. He began to conceptualize the dirt as being an inhibitor to good communication, old heavy feelings, resentments, grief. He went through the rooms and, one by one, he collected it all in his mind, entangled with the debris, and swept it right out the back door. We scooped it into a pile and ritually threw it over the embankment behind our house.
To anyone looking at us, it would have appeared as simply dirt being thrown down an embankment following a house cleaning. But we could have even more easily thrown it into the trash. Vaulting it down an embankment, however, was better symbolism and therefore made for a better ceremony.
Where can you add ceremony to your life? Where can you take everyday events, like house cleaning, and transform them into something more powerful? (It’s called mindfulness, by the way.) Also, where can you create new opportunities for authoring ceremonies and rituals of your own? For there are no rules to it anymore. You can look up the symbolisms of various traditions and use them in spiritual experiences that resonate with you. That’s what will give them the most beneficial impact after all: your belief.
Consider adding deliberate metaphysical ritual to your experience, regardless of your belief in the claims of any religion or spiritual tradition. Atheism and agnosticism are not mutually exclusive to metaphysics. There’s enough science to support its existence in your life.
As any worthwhile spiritual practice should.
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