 Making CeremonyMaking Ceremony | Labyrinths | Medicine Wheel | Earth Dance Ceremony Article in progress
There is a big difference between ceremony and ritual. Ceremony adds meaning to our lives and bridges the gap between earthly life and spirit. It has a framework so people know how to interact but it is still open to allow the spontaneity and spirit to flow and make each ceremony unique. Ritual on the other hand is something we do out of habit; it has lost its meaning to the majority of people who are involved. It has become stagnant and no longer allows for the flow of spirit to interact with it spontaneously to make it serve everyone in the group assembled. It is a repetitive action that has lost the heart and true intent of those participating. Making ceremony is an important part of life, connecting us with the earth and the elements of our environment as well as the spiritual realms. For humans it has always been a great challenge to keep ceremony alive and not allow it to become ritual. Our ceremonies have been turned to ritual, bogged down by the clock and over scheduling leaving no room for spirit to participate with us, and by people’s desire to control others and using the sacredness of our lives to do this. There is no culture that has been free of this. We are often given so many rules to follow that there is no way for our own unique gifts to be shared let alone give room for any higher power we recognize to be heard. Boundaries however are important to making ceremony, without them there is no way to insure that a ceremony with a particular intent can indeed place the energy created toward that intent, nor can the respect of participants be assured without boundaries. Balance is the goal in all things, and it is especially important to keeping ceremony alive and free from becoming ritual, while remaining pure to its intent. Finding the balance of boundaries is no easy task and at this time we go with a system of trial and error to find this balance. Many of us have been brought up in religious environments that have taught us ritual instead of ceremony and it is then difficult as we start to participate in ceremony together to not take control and make the ceremony into ritual by our fears of losing control. The well known churches are not the only learning ground for this ritual behavior. Those brought up in many American Indian traditions are taught yet another type of ritual that is believed whole heartedly to be ceremony, yet the rules exclude and limit and there is no one who is able to explain the reasons for the boundaries given. A ceremonial boundary should only exist where there are ceremonial leaders who can explain its purpose and reason within the ceremony. If you ask “why do we do it this way” someone better have an answer other than “because that is how we have always done it”. That is ritual disguised as tradition and is ritual protected by pride and ego, not the ceremony of our true spirit. Ceremony does not exclude based on race, background or finances and rarely gender. There are some ceremonies that are unique to each men and women, but once again if it is only for one gender, we must question why and if there is no obvious reason then the ceremony should be given to both genders. Ceremonies are often hijacked over time started with one intent which was gradually lost and then given a new intent. When this is a conscious choice and those who made this choice can explain this change, this can be positive, but in other cases we come here with a memory of what has been in other lives and times and participate in a ceremony that is not as our soul/spirit remembers it and no one has explained why, leaving many feeling a void that they cannot explain after participating. An example of this for me is when I see a group of people participating in a Medicine Wheel ceremony. My spirit memory knows that the Medicine Wheel was always a personal journey, not a group ceremony. There may be a medicine person there with you for support a short distance from the wheel, but the journey in the wheel was a journey within. I know those who are participating in these group ceremonies have no negative intent in doing so and yet I am left feeling something sacred has been corrupted. There is no explanation given as to why those facilitating in these group ceremonies feel this is a purposeful ceremony for a group to do around a wheel. Most times it appears as if these thoughts have simply never occurred to those facilitating these ceremonies. The most important element in ceremony is an open heart. This is for two reasons the first is that ceremony is all about what is happening with energy, if your heart is closed then you are not consciously offering your own energy and are a spectator instead of a participant. The second is that your heart must be open in order to have energy awareness and this is the key to facilitating a ceremony, and giving and receiving the gifts of a ceremony. To give and receive our energies to each other, to the earth, to the Creator and all life, is the whole foundation of all ceremony, without it we have missed the whole point in doing ceremony at all. For those whose hearts are closed or who have not fully developed their energy awareness all or most of the ceremony it out of reach. It is not what we do with our bodies, what we can see, hear, smell, feel or touch physically that is important, it is what is going on beyond our physical senses, that is what ceremony is all about. To experience this you must open your heart and desire to develop this energy awareness. Sometimes when the greatest things are happening in ceremony, from the view of a spectator nothing is happening. The people are doing nothing! That is another difference between ceremony and ritual, ritual wants every moment to be planned out. Ceremony welcomes this time that appears to be meaningless to those who cannot feel the energy. Too often people with little or no energy awareness whose intent is good, decide to facilitate a ceremony and are unable to assess and truly facilitate because they have no idea what is happening other than what they see. We also see people come to ceremony filled with expectation and then they are restless and uncomfortable during these times when they are unaware of what is happening because the energy of the ceremony is out of reach to them. The more energy awareness you develop the more you can receive the gifts of any given ceremony, and with this same awareness you will be able to discern if you have walked into a ceremony being held by a facilitator who is in some way taking advantage of the people participating. This may be because of ignorance of what spirits they are working with, the unconscious desire to steal energy and life force from people, to the extreme of outright wanting to use your energy to help them perpetuate evil deeds in the world. We all have a responsibility to be aware of what is happening with our own energies and the energies around us and this responsibility is intensified when working together in ceremony. NOTES FOR FINISHING THIS ARTICLE Ceremony is a living prayer or creation The point is to create an energy that is a higher vibration than the daily vibration of the highest vibrating person there and sustain it through the ceremony and hopefully beyond the ceremony Integrity spiritual and personal ELEMENTS OF CEREMONY How to create and use ceremony Understanding that you have no control over the exact people who come to the ceremony in a spiritual ceremony whoever is there is who spirit feels are the correct people to be there for the energy, in a community ceremony (such as marriage baptism) you may choose who attends TYPES OF CEREMONIES Catholic Meaning: Ceremony in liturgy, an external action, gesture, or movement which accompanies the prayers and public exercise of divine worship. Make a marriage sacred by for example having no photos of the ceremony itself only the reception Healing circles how they work the way the energy moves the reason who goes in the middle and why The difference between a shared community ceremony such as a marriage in most societies and a sacred spiritual ceremony that is for a greater spiritual practice like a vision quest why its ok to photograph one and not the other Community (ok to photograph in most societies) Marriage Spiritual (not to be photographed) Vision quest Other mentions of Ceremonies I found online Expelling bad spirits in Bali
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