A presidential inauguration is just one type of ritual among many. This post invites readers to consider making ritual a regular part of our everyday lives, wrapping the small, quiet moments of life in sacred meaning and creating a space where the soul waits. “Ritual maintains the world’s holiness. Knowing that everything we do, no matter how simple, has a halo of imagination around it and can serve the soul enriches life and makes the things around us more precious, more worthy of our protection and care.” These are the words of Thomas Moore, from his book Care of the Soul: A Guide to Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life, which inspires us to consider that the soul has requirements for thriving, one of which is ritual. Making ritual accessible is the invitation here, which begs the question; what are the basic ingredients for creating and honoring the sacredness of our daily lives through the practice of ritual?

I spoke with Boulder psychotherapist Merryl Rothaus, MA, LPC (see bio below) about this idea of the basic ingredients for creating ritual. She’s an artist and a believer in the healing potential of ritual and has been practicing the art of ritual with clients and in her personal life for years. In our recent phone conversation, Merryl shared with me what she believes the basic ingredients for ritual might be… remembering that there is so much freedom in it for each of us to explore for ourselves too. 

Intention

Merryl suggests that the first ingredient is to have an intention to make something in your life sacred or special. This could be as simple as intentionally setting a beautiful table for yourself for dinner each night or lighting a candle in the morning to illuminate your day. The options are endless… allowing intention to imbue our daily activities with focus and meaning is the point. Intention also helps us bypass the psyche and move out of the mind. Ask yourself… what do I want to welcome in to honor this moment or this activity? And how do I want to show up in it?

Witnessing

The next ingredient is to bring a spirit of collaboration to the space we intend to create. This means having an understanding of an I-Thou relationship, or as Merryl says “to invoke something outside ourselves… a Thou such as Mother Earth, the land, our ancestors, Spirit, God… there’s a witnessing component that is important here, because we are not alone. It’s important to remember and connect with the unseen realm”. Get quiet and ask yourself who or what would feel helpful to ask to join you in this ritual? 

Action

The third basic ingredient is to take an action. This can be, as suggested earlier, as simple as lighting a candle. Doing so creates a threshold or a bridge, beckoning us to cross from who we’ve been or who we are into a quiet space of not-knowing. In the language of mindfulness study, taking action signals a time to be still and step into presence. Merryl points out that “Ritual, brings presence, it is absolutely not necessary to be present already before engaging in ritual…  the ritual itself can infuse us with presence and connect us with life energy”. With this in mind, what action would feel meaningful to you in order to signal the start of your ritual and offers the possibility of stepping into the Now? Traditional options include burning incense, reading something meaningful, spending time in prayer, honoring a keepsake and connecting to the energy of it or simply sitting in silence. 

Author David Richo says that “a ritual enacts a newfound consciousness, making its deepest reality proximate and palpable. It sanctifies the place we are in and the things we feel by consecrating them to something higher than the transitory”. Try it yourself… explore how incorporating daily rituals opens up possibility and “newfound consciousness” in your life. 

Resources:

Moore, T. (1994). Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life. New York, New York: HarperPerennial.

Richo, D. (2002). How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving (1st ed.). Shambhala.

Merryl E. Rothaus, LPC, LMHC, ATR-BC, CHT, is a licensed psychotherapist, a registered and board-certified art therapist, a certified Hakomi therapist, and a Somatic Experiencing and Brainspotting practitioner. She is also a dedicated Meditation Practitioner and a Shamanic Practitioner. She is currently working on a book about her journey and attempts toward motherhood and what it is like to be a “Mother Without Children”. You can learn more by visiting her website https://www.merrylrothaus.com/ or by following her on Instagram @merrylrothaus.

Michelle is a mother, a partner, a friend, a spiritual seeker, a psychotherapist and someone who enjoys connecting with herself within a mindfulness meditation practice. She has a BA in Communications and Humanities from the University of Colorado and an MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling with a concentration in Mindfulness-based Transpersonal Psychology from Naropa University. Michelle’s practice, Soul Care Counseling, offers mindfulness-based practices that support clients seeking to become less anxious, less stressed, less reactive and more grounded, present and connected with their own inner ally. As a result of their work together, clients are able to communicate with themselves and others with greater clarity, care and compassion.  https://soulcaredenver.com/

~ Mark Nepo

For years I attended a church that offered an annual end of year ritual, a burning bowl ceremony. The event invited participants to release anything that felt important to let go of – unhealthy thought patterns, limiting beliefs, ego stories of limitation and lack – from the previous year. Each of us would release our stories by writing them out onto small pieces of paper and one by one we would give them over to a flame that would burn away our individual, perceived limitations as part of a collective experience. As we left the burning bowl, while witnessing the flame and smoke carry our words toward the heavens, we were handed new words… an affirmation for the new year. It was astonishing how appropriate, personal and powerful those seemingly random words could be. The ceremony always left me with a feeling of lightness and hopefulness for a fresh start.

With all that we’ve all been through this particular year, and as 2020 comes to an end, I invite you, dear reader, to engage in your own burning bowl ceremony (safely, of course).

And I’d like to suggest including an additional step to the letting go process I described above. Before writing anything down, take some time in private to sit quietly and center yourself. Become present and open, and cultivate a spirit of kind heartedness and compassion for yourself as you begin to reflect on the last twelve months. What was your unique journey over the course of 2020 like for you? What did you lose, what did you gain, what did you learn, what surprised you, what challenged you, what felt easy and okay, what felt impossible, what made you laugh and what made you cry? Allow yourself to grieve the disappointments, frustrations, uncertainties and sadness that you might be carrying as a part of the unprecedented events of the last year.

Grieving is a process and grief rituals have been relied on throughout human history to help us manage and navigate the weight of loss in our lives. Author David Richo, in his book How to Be an Adult in Relationships, recommends these four steps as part of creating a grief ritual; acknowledging, abolishing, renewing and giving back. We might incorporate these steps in our end of year mindful grieving ritual like this:

1. Acknowledge what happened this past year, pandemic and all, and allow yourself, with the same kindness and compassion you would offer a friend in pain, the opportunity to write about your experience and how you were impacted by the past year. Without judgment, use your own words to describe what the year was like for you.

2. When you’re ready and feel complete, abolish your words by burning the pages that you’ve written, perhaps even gathering the ashes and sprinkling them into the wind or onto your garden. Do this mindfully, by being fully present to what you are letting go of and why and how it no longer serves you. 

3. Renew your commitment to the now by being present to any expanding awareness or healing release you notice in this process. Notice anything positive that emerges too. Is there something you learned or a strength that surfaced that you want to carry forward with you into the new year? If so, have an intention to tend to it and build on it. 

4. Look ahead and decide how you want to give back and make your own healing a part of our collective healing. For me, the energy of a new year feels like a blank canvas or a box of brand-new crayons or even a tiny seed… all filled with potential and creative possibilities. What seeds will you plant in this newly tilled garden? What do you want to grow and expand in you? What do you want to come alive in your life? What will you choose for yourself and offer with love to the world?

Words have power… Don Miguel Ruiz, author of The Four Agreements teaches us that “the word is a force, it is the power you have to communicate, to think, and thereby to create the events in your life”.  Working with your words, with the stories that you tell yourself about the things that have happened to you actually gives your brain and body instructions on how to operate physiologically. Current research in the field of self-compassion shows us that the brain does not know the difference between our negative internal dialogue and a triggering conversation with another person. BOTH elicit our threat response and release stress hormones. Letting go of words that limit and embracing words that empower and inspire is part of the science AND magic of the grieving process and the burning bowl ceremony. These practices offer us the chance to choose how we want to move forward into a new year… what we can release and let go of and what we want to carry with us. 

Resources:

Nepo, M. (2000). The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have. San Francisco: Conari Press. 

Richo, D. (2002). How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving (1st ed.). Shambhala.

Ruiz, D. M. (2018). The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (A Toltec Wisdom Book). Amber-Allen Publishing, Incorporated.

Michelle is a mother, a partner, a friend, a spiritual seeker, a psychotherapist and someone who enjoys connecting with herself within a mindfulness meditation practice. She has a BA in Communications and Humanities from the University of Colorado and an MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling with a concentration in Mindfulness-based Transpersonal Psychology from Naropa University. Michelle’s practice, Soul Care Counseling, offers mindfulness-based practices that support clients seeking to become less anxious, less stressed, less reactive and more grounded, present and connected with their own inner ally. As a result of their work together, clients are able to communicate with themselves and others with greater clarity, care and compassion.  https://soulcaredenver.com/

I would wager the vast majority of people these days probably don’t consider much of a spiritual element in the way that they care for their dwelling space, save, perhaps, for a yoga or meditation corner. The closest iteration of ritual for some people is likely in the way they decorate, or even the regularity with which they clean their homes. 

As a person who is drawn to the art of subtle energies (intuition, psychic experiences, empathic feelings, etc.), I was very intrigued to come across The House Witch by Arin Murphy-Hiscock just days before our move. In all my studies of magic, alternative healing, and the like, the most I’ve ever come across about “hearthcraft,” if you will, can be generally summed up by the following statement:

“It’s important to take care of the energy in your space.”

There often isn’t much more to it, so in the past I’ve done a few things here and there, but mostly ignored the energy in my home because, save for a neglected altar and a periodic smoke cleansing, I didn’t know what else to do. 

It is not a new concept to make the home a sacred space, but it is, I believe, in this period of collective upheaval and uncertainty, a better time than most to start trying. Cultivating helpful, loving energy in your home can be as simple or as formal (I’m looking at you, Capricorn!) as you’d like to make it. One of the most beneficial aspects of cultivating magic, chi, or energy in your home is that this spruced-up vibration then flows into other areas of your life. If this seems like a foreign concept, consider this:

Many of the principles of home and hearth magic share their ethos with Buddhist and mindfulness-based practices. 

In a nutshell, cultivating the energy in your home can be done by focusing in the following key areas, which have been paraphrased and expanded from The House Witch:

1. Learning to be present. This can be especially helpful in moments when we feel tired or rushed, such as trying to get dressed to get out the door, or sluggishly putting together a meal at the end of a long day. Focusing on the task at hand rather than what has happened in the past or the future helps to calm the mind and as such, the environment around you.
2. Creating intention. Even the smallest task, such as seasoning food or washing dishes, becomes an elevated experience when the intention is made to do it just so. This is not about micromanaging, but about creating awareness around why you are doing something, rather than just zoning out or seeing it as something to get through. With intention we harness the energy to nurture ourselves and our space.
3. Clearly direct your energy. Somewhat of an extension of creating intention, directing your energy means using your focus to pinpoint where you want your energy to go and what you want the outcome to be. When we are less mindful, especially when we are tired or rushed, we lose a lot of valuable energy simply because we are not creating clear intention and direction with our tasks. 
4. Hocus, focus. Pick one thing at a time to focus on. Life starts to feel overwhelming when our minds run rampant, trying to decipher and problem-solve everything at once. Meditation can certainly help with this, as can creating awareness around moments of feeling overwhelmed and scatterbrained. Even if you’re worried about tomorrow’s project, give yourself the gift of taking a mental break from that while you stir your soup, or place the blanket back on the couch. 

Humans also have a tendency to focus their attention on what they perceive as their personal space within a home, such as a bedroom or office. Collective spaces, like the kitchen and living room, are then left at the mercy of whatever energies collect by the colliding of multiple lives that occur there. Paying attention to shared spaces is just as important, if not more so, than monitoring the energy of private parts of the home. 

If you’re feeling ready to take a more active role in guiding the energy of your home, here are a few simple ways to get started:

a. Place a bowl of water or salt in a room to absorb unwanted energy. This can also be done in the four corners of the house to create a grid, but should be discarded and refreshed frequently. The same can be done using crystals and cleansing them on a regular basis. Smoky quartz and black tourmaline are good for this.

b. Clean with intention. Sweep towards the doors that lead outside, mentally picturing any unhelpful energy getting swept away along with it. Dispose of any debris in trash cans outside the home; don’t let it sit inside once it’s been intentionally collected. If you like you can follow this up with an herbal floor wash. Simply make a tea of your favorite loose herbs and dilute a bit with water, using the energy of your hands or focused intention that the herbs fill the water and your home with blessings and protection. 

c. Smoke is a common choice for cleansing a space these days, and can be very effective, but seeing as how white sage and palo santo are now at risk plants due to overharvesting, and are sacred to certain cultures, it’s great to look into other options. Juniper and mugwort are both quite prolific and cleansing in their own rite. Chimes or singing bowls can also be used to cleanse a space using sound vibration. For more folk-inspired techniques, hanging a rope of garlic or placing a cut onion in the center of the room are also said to dispel unhelpful energies. 

I tend to prefer philosophies that value the depth of intention over how closely one follows specific instructions. To that end, if there are ideas that come to you naturally about how you’d like to cultivate your space, I think that is just as valid as any instructions found in a book.

If you find yourself feeling frayed, lacking energy, or simply feeling the weight of the world these days, you are certainly not alone.

Taking time to care for both yourself and your home can provide a much-needed refuge, a place for you to rest and restore as you follow your path in this world. 

Blessed be. 

If you’re interested in more ways to take care of your home, including recipes and more complex rituals, please do read “The House Witch” by Arin Murphy-Hiscock. It does not fall under the category of “Wicca” but is simply based on the author’s personal practice, which takes inspiration from many different areas.