SGM June 2016 Weekly Message One: “How to Use Ritual to Get Out Of A Rut”
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Welcome to the June 2016 Edition of Spiritual Growth Monthly. I’m Kevin Schoeninger. It’s great to have you with us here at SGM.
This month, we’ll explore “The Path” by Harvard Professor Michael Puett and journalist Christine Gross-Loh. You’ll learn some mind-expanding insights from ancient Chinese philosophy that are powerfully pertinent to effectively following a spiritual path today. In this week’s message, you’ll discover how to use simple daily rituals to get out of being stuck in a rut.
Whether your rut is poor health, dysfunctional relationships, financial frustration, or lack of meaning and purpose, I think you’ll be surprised at how you can use rituals to quickly shift your perspective and open up new possibilities!
Now, you might look at that header, “Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself,” and be confused. Aren’t I always talking about how it’s important to “be who you are” and “do what you are here to do”? Isn’t that about being more “yourself” not breaking the habit of being yourself?
It all comes down to a misconception about “who you really are.” If you look at what people commonly think of as “me,” isn’t it really just a conglomeration of habits, conditioning, judgments, and roles?
For example, you might say “I am” followed by any number of roles you play such as “a wife/husband, mother/father, electrician, politician, journalist, school teacher, and so on. You may focus on things you like to do, by saying “I am” followed by “a gardener, a tennis player, a painter, a musician, and so on. You may focus on certain traits by saying “I am” followed by “nice, shy, generous, skeptical, smart, loving, thoughtful. . .” You may focus on your perceived flaws by saying “I am” followed by “a loser, a failure, clumsy, stupid, fat, lazy, and so on. Or you may focus on conditions you have or things you have achieved such as “I am” followed by “sick, a cancer survivor, an alcoholic, a college graduate, and so on. . .”
What comes to mind when you say “I am?” Take a moment to write down the first five things that come to mind. . .
Now consider this:
If you took away any one of those descriptors, would you still be you?
For example, if you took away an illness you have, or a character trait, or something you’ve done, or a role you play, would you still be you?
Can you think of times when you acted in ways other than those descriptors you’ve used? For example, if you said “shy” can you think of a time when you were outspoken? Were you really not being yourself in that moment? Or maybe you have much wider possibilities than you think?
What if your ideas about who you are or who you should be are severely limiting you? What if you get into ruts that are just habits that you’ve identified with, but they really have nothing to do with “who you are?”
For example, maybe your condition of “never having enough money” comes from a habit of thinking of yourself as “unworthy” of having more? Or your habit of not knowing what direction to go in comes from your personal history with parents, teachers, or peers who never let you decide what to do? What if you “not having what you want” comes from the habit of thinking that you can’t have it?
What if “you” are not any of those labels you have a habit of applying to yourself?
Now, at first, it may feel scary to entertain the notion that you are not all these identifications you’ve come to know and love—or hate—about you. After all, we all spend a lot of time and energy developing, cultivating, hanging onto, and defending “who we are.” Why would you want to give all that up? You have a lot invested in being “that.”
Yet, what if being “that” becomes a prison? What if it limits what you could experience and who else you could be? Just for a moment, consider another possibility.
What if, underneath it all, you are simply an open, clear, spacious presence? What if, you are an eternal spirit who can choose to inhabit any number of thoughts, feelings, traits, actions, and roles? Can you imagine what freedom you would have?
What if the eternal spirit that you are, came to inhabit this particular body, in your particular family, at this particular time, in this particular culture in order to experience a wide range of options that are available here and now? These possibilities do not define you, but you “put them on” to have certain experiences. That’s all.
This body you are living in, the family you are part of, the culture and time you live in give you a huge library of possible experiences. Given these conditions, you might not be able to be “anything at all,” but you do have a huge scope of possibilities—most likely a much wider scope than you are allowing yourself to experience.
If you are an open, clear, spacious presence who can choose to inhabit any possibility—from that perspective—what would you choose? Might this be vary depending on the situation? Might you choose to be one way at one moment and another at another moment depending on conditions and the needs of those involved?
What if who you are is a much more fluid experience? What if you could choose to be different things at different moments depending on the needs of the situation? If you did this, would you be compromising yourself? Would you not be authentic? What if your idea of authenticity is trapping you in labels and roles that are keeping you stuck?
If you are an open, clear, spacious presence, what if you could freely choose to inhabit whatever thoughts, feelings, traits, actions, and roles would be most helpful—that would bring about the best possible results for all concerned?
In ancient China, the philosopher Confucius (551 – 479 BC) saw that life was full of messy, fragmented encounters that we react to unconsciously, leading to being on a rollercoaster of different emotions. It’s sunny, we’re happy; it’s rainy, we’re sad. Someone smiles at us, we perk up; someone frowns at us, we get depressed. Someone praises us, we feel proud; someone criticizes us, we feel angry.
Not only are these momentary reactions, they can become chronic patterns. We develop personalities that are based on seeing things a certain way and reacting in certain ways. These become our ruts. And they can be hard to shake—especially when we define ourselves by them.
But, according to Confucius, “all is not hopeless: we can refine the way we react during these endless encounters and create pockets of order.” He suggests “we should strive to move from a state where we just randomly respond to things emotionally (qing) to a state where we are able to respond with propriety, or ‘better ways of responding’ (yi).” (p.27, TP)
For Confucius, this means “cultivating our emotions so that we internalize better ways of responding to others. These better ways become a part of us. When we have learned to refine our responses, we can start to respond to people in ways that we have cultivated, instead of through immediate emotional reaction. We do this refining through ritual.” (p.27, TP)
Let’s consider the simple ritual of saying “please” and “thank you.” Did you know that this convention was developed to create equality?
Puett and Gross-Loh tell us that, in Europe three centuries ago, society was ruled by hierarchical relationships. Aristocrats and peasants had defined roles and weren’t permitted to act outside these boundaries. In this society, aspiration for something different was not allowed. People lived in well-defined ruts.
“As markets began to develop in the cities, people from different classes began to interact in different ways. Rituals developed in which buyers and sellers could act as if they were equal, though they were anything but. The ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ exchange was a brief moment in which participants could experience a semblance of equality. (p.36, TP)
“Please” and “Thank you” are rituals that train us to how to respectfully approach a fellow being and to express gratitude. This is why we teach our children this—to create respect and gratitude. “Please pass the salt. . . Thank you.” Think of how different an experience this is from “Hey you, give me the salt.”
We have all kinds of similar rituals that we participate in daily, such as:
-Saying “Good morning”
-Holding the door for the person behind you and allowing them to go in first
-Smiling and calling someone by name
-Sending birthday, get well, anniversary, and sympathy cards to let others know we are thinking of them
What other rituals do you engage in that create positive feelings and smooth social interactions?
Now, we engage in many, if not most, of our rituals unconsciously. They are just habits. We might even think of these as confining or limiting if we just participate in them because we “should” or “have to.” When rituals are rote, they are similar to personality patterns that we are stuck in. They become unconscious, repetitive, and limiting.
What Confucius suggests is that rituals can transform us and better our lives when we engage in them consciously, with full engagement, positive intention, and attention to detail. If you are an open, clear, spacious presence, you can choose to engage in rituals that make your life and the lives of those around you better. When you perform a ritual consciously, you act “as if” something were true so as to make it a part of your life, the lives of those around you, and a part of yourself.
For example, you might engage in the Santa Claus ritual to bring joy to the holiday season; play hide and seek with a young child to let the child “win” over the adult and the adult to play like a child; have “Date Night” to bring fresh young energy to long-term relationships; or bring Mom breakfast in bed to treat her “like a queen.”
Travel is another great ritual that can break us out of our ruts. When we travel, we see how others live and engage in things they do that are different than what we would usually do.
The ancient world was filled with such rituals. For example, Confucius describes the ritual of making sacrifices or giving offerings to deceased ancestors as a way to change our relationship to them and each other. Though the deceased may have hurt us, or perpetuated family patterns of pain, we act in respect to create a new relationship to them.
In these ceremonies, family members would often take on different roles, such as a father playing a son or daughter, or a son or daughter playing an elder, to experience the other’s point of view. By taking on different roles, the participants learned about the other’s perspective and came away with a better understanding of family dynamics.
In all these rituals, we act “as if” something is true to bring different emotional qualities and perspectives into our lives. In this way, ritual transforms us.
Engaging in rituals gives us momentary experiences of alternative realities and new perspectives. Think of how different you feel when you play charades.
If you want to expand upon these experiences and really grow these alternative qualities, so they become stronger parts of yourself and more pervasive in your life, you can repeat them. In fact, if you want to really transform yourself, to really embody a new way of being, it’s essential to repeat a ritual until it becomes an effortless way of being.
Meditation is one great example. By starting each day with this ritual, you connect with that essential level of your being in which you are open, clear, and spacious presence. This is deeply relaxing and freeing. It releases you from feeling compelled by habits and connects you with your ability to choose. By repeating this ritual daily, you develop that calm intentional state as a reliable baseline that you can inhabit and return to at any moment you choose.
Another daily ritual I love is to make my family breakfast. I make each person exactly what they like and present it to them with a smile, looking into their eyes, and saying “Enjoy your breakfast.” This ritual makes me feel good—and purposeful. I am giving special care to those most important to me—and I see that it makes them feel special and loved to start their day.
The great thing about rituals is that they don’t have to be elaborate. It’s your full conscious engagement in them and the feeling you express that matters. It can be as simple as looking in someone’s eyes and saying “I love you.”
What rituals might you consider to start your day from a good place and connect with those you love? What rituals might you start at work to bring others together or to give them a relaxing break? How can you use conscious rituals to transform yourself and your relationships?
I would love to hear any of your favorite rituals in our Discussion below.
In next week’s message, we learn sage advice from the philosopher Mencius about how to deal with setbacks and disappointment.
Until next time,
How can you use ritual to improve life for yourself and others?
Kevin