What Our Rituals Say About Us - Episode 3

The gesture that brings us back to the present

The value of the ritual perhaps does not lie in the gesture itself, but in the way one inhabits it.

Because one and the same gesture can be empty or alive.

One can light a candle out of habit, the way one flicks a switch, or one can light a candle the way one opens a space.

One can close a door without thinking about it, or one can close a door truly feeling that one is leaving something.

One can take three breaths before entering one’s home, without it changing anything, or one can take three breaths as a real passage between two worlds: work and home, agitation and presence, outside and inside.

An outer gesture that is the same, but an inner state that is not.

Perhaps that is where the personal ritual begins, not in the object, not in the beauty of the setting, nor in the complexity of the sequence.

But in the instant when a gesture ceases to be only a gesture…

…and becomes a way of returning to oneself.

What we do without being there

We spend a large part of our life doing things without truly inhabiting them.

We get up, look at our phone, answer messages. We make the coffee, switch on the computer. We move from one room to another. We speak. We eat. We come home. We go to bed.

And all of this sometimes unfolds without our being really present to what is happening.

The body acts.

The mind is already running elsewhere.

The emotion stays in the background.

The day moves forward, but a part of us seems never to fully join the moment.

This is one of the great poverties of our modern lives: we lack not only time. We lack presence in the time we have.

We do a great deal. But we inhabit little.

And it is precisely here that the ritual can become useful again.

Not as a spiritual decoration added to daily life.

Not as one more technique to fit into an already saturated day.

Not as an additional obligation.

But as a point of pause.

A gesture that says: Come back.

You are here and now,

In what is.

The ritual interrupts the automatism

We now know that the great rites of passage help us to cross the thresholds of life (see Episodes 1 and 2).

To be born. To leave. To lose. To become. To say goodbye.

But there are also more discreet thresholds, daily, almost invisible.

The threshold between night and morning.

The threshold between work and home.

The threshold between a difficult conversation and the silence that follows it.

The threshold between agitation and rest.

The threshold between a rising emotion and the automatic reaction that seeks to set off on its own.

These are small thresholds, but they sometimes decide a great deal.

For it is often there, in these tiny passages, that our automatisms take back control.

We wake up and grab the phone.

We come home and still keep the body tense from work.

We receive a message and answer from the wound.

We feel a worry and immediately try to calm it, to fill it, to distract ourselves from it.

We pass from one state to another without transition. Without breath. Without threshold. Without gesture.

So the day becomes a succession of unconscious slippings, in which we cross our own states the way one crosses a corridor too fast.

Without looking at what we are leaving, without welcoming what we are entering.

The personal ritual, when it is right, comes to interrupt this.

It slows the sequence. It creates a break.

It gives the body a clear signal.

A different attention.

A different state.

A change of inner world.

When an ordinary gesture can become a threshold

A ritual need not be spectacular, nor ancient, nor religious, nor complicated or validated by a tradition.

A ritual can be very simple.

Such as placing one’s hands on the table before beginning to eat.

Closing one’s eyes for a few seconds before opening the computer.

Switching off one’s phone at a set hour.

Changing clothes on coming home, not only to be more comfortable, but to truly leave the outer day behind.

Opening a window in the morning and taking a conscious breath.

Lighting a candle before writing.

Washing one’s hands after a hard day, not to “erase” magically what happened, but to mark that one is returning to another space.

Walking a few minutes without earphones.

Saying an inner phrase before beginning something.

Folding a garment with attention.

Closing a door knowing what one is leaving.

It is not the gestures that are powerful in themselves. It is the relationship we establish with them.

A gesture becomes a ritual when it carries more than its immediate usefulness and brings the body into a meaning.

When it helps us to feel, to be present within oneself, in the “ I ”

I begin.

I end.

I leave.

I return.

I gather myself.

I prepare myself.

I make myself available.

I acknowledge what is here.

The ritual does not necessarily add something to life.

It reveals what we were doing without feeling it.

Inhabiting a world, and not only performing a gesture

The anthropologist Clifford Geertz saw in symbols a way for the human being to inhabit a world of meaning.

In other words, a symbol does not merely represent an idea, but organises a way of perceiving, of feeling, of being in the world.

This is exactly what the ritual does when it is alive.

It does not only change what one does; it changes the world in which the gesture takes place.

Drinking a tea can be a simple consumption, but it can also become a moment when one returns to warmth, to silence, to slowness, to care.

Writing in a notebook can be a personal-development task, but it can also become a space where one stops fleeing what is passing through us.

Breathing three times can be an exercise, but it can also become a doorway.

It is in this that the ritual is not reducible to a routine.

The routine organises time, whereas the ritual organises presence.

The routine says: “ this is what I do every day ”.

The ritual says: “ this is how I choose to be here ”.

And this difference changes everything.

Soothing: creating a safe space

The first function of a personal ritual is probably soothing.

Not soothing as anaesthesia, nor a façade of calm, and even less a smile laid over what is trembling.

But soothing in the deep sense, in the sense of creating a space where one can at last feel what is here without being immediately overwhelmed.

A simple ritual can become that.

A cup set before oneself, a hand on the heart, three breaths. Or even a silence.

An inner phrase. A piece of music. A personal object.

A gesture that says:

I can stop.

I can return.

I can feel without being carried away.

And already, something changes.

Because the automatism needs speed. It needs us to react before being present. It needs to draw us onto the old path.

The ritual, for its part, introduces a slowness.

A micro-pause, a form.

And within this form, the emotion can begin to breathe.

It is not yet to understand.

It is not yet to transform.

It is first of all to soothe.

To create a ground.

A space stable enough no longer to be confused with what passes through us.

Understanding: seeing what the gesture reveals

Then comes a second level, understanding.

For a ritual serves not only to calm, but can also reveal.

What we choose to ritualise says something about us.

An evening ritual can reveal our difficulty in leaving the day behind.

A writing ritual can reveal our need to clarify what remains confused.

A tidying ritual can reveal our need to bring order back into a saturated inner world.

A ritual before a session, a creation, a moment of speaking, can reveal our need to connect to a vaster, calmer, truer part of ourselves.

And sometimes, the absence of ritual also reveals something.

The fact of never marking the endings, of never taking the time to begin, or of passing from one relationship to another, from one project to another, from one pain to another.

Without transition. Without acknowledgement. Without gesture.

As if our non-rituals were saying:

I have not learned to end.

I do not know how to say goodbye.

I do not know how to receive.

I do not know how to celebrate.

I do not know how to stop.

The ritual then becomes an embodied question.

Not: “ What gesture must I add to my life? ”

But:

“ What passage do I need to acknowledge? ”

“ What, within me, is asking for a form? ”

“ What am I doing without presence? ”

“ What am I going through without inhabiting it? ”

“ What do I repeat to reassure myself? ”

“ And what gesture could I set down to return more consciously into my life? ”

Reconciliation: giving back a place to what was separated

A living ritual serves not only to begin or to end, but can also reconcile.

To reconcile parts of oneself that no longer speak to each other.

The body and the mind.

The emotion and the decision.

The old and the new.

The wound and the resource.

What one leaves and what one becomes.

There are moments when a part of us understands that it must move forward, while another stays attached to what has been lost.

One part wants to turn the page, but another wants to read it again.

One part wants to forgive, but another has not yet been heard.

One part wants to love again, but another is afraid of reliving the same thing.

The ritual can become a meeting place between these parts and allow each one to have a place.

Writing a letter one does not send can sometimes allow us to say what could not be said.

Keeping an object for a time, then consciously choosing to move it, can help to acknowledge that a bond is changing form.

Creating a small space to honour a loss can allow us not to confuse moving forward with forgetting.

Breathing before a conversation can allow us not to let an old wound speak in our place.

In this perspective, the ritual is not a suppression.

It is a bringing into relation.

Which does not say: “ forget”, but says: “  acknowledge”.

Which does not say: “ cut off ”, but says: “ look at what still binds you, and consciously choose what you want to do with it ”.

Which does not say “ already be healed ”, but says: “ begin by being present to what still asks to be reconciled ”.

Emergence: letting another way of being appear

When soothing, understanding and reconciliation meet, something else can appear.

Not necessarily a great revelation, nor a spectacular upheaval.

Sometimes simply a space, a new breath, a different gesture, a less automatic response, a truer way of inhabiting a situation.

That is emergence.

What could not appear as long as everything was saturated by the old movement.

As long as the emotion overflowed.

As long as the automatism decided.

As long as the passage stayed unacknowledged.

As long as the form was missing.

The ritual, when it is alive, does not artificially manufacture this emergence, but creates the conditions for it to become possible.

It prepares the space, opens a door, makes the system more available.

We believed we had to answer immediately, and we choose to wait.

We believed we had to justify ourselves, and we choose to breathe.

We believed we had to go back to the old, and we feel that the threshold has been crossed.

We believed we had to keep carrying, and we understand that we can set down.

It is not the ritual that does everything.

But it has allowed something no longer to be swallowed by the automatism.

And that is sometimes enough to change what follows.

Meditation, mindfulness, hypnosis: three paths toward inhabiting the gesture

Here we find a natural link with many practices of presence.

Meditation teaches one to observe.

Mindfulness teaches one to return to what is here.

Hypnosis, depending on the approach, can allow one to modify the state of consciousness, to explore representations, to dialogue with the imagination, the body and the unconscious.

And Humanistic Hypnosis, in its specificity, offers something particular: entering an expanded state of consciousness, not to fall asleep to oneself, but to become more present to what is at play within.

In this perspective, the personal ritual can become a first step.

A simple, conscious, symbolic gesture, that prepares a different relationship to oneself. It is not about believing that the gesture possesses an outer power. It is about understanding that a gesture, when it is carried by consciousness, can become a language.

A language between the body and the mind.

Between the visible and the invisible.

Between the everyday and the depths.

Between what one does and what one lives.

This is where the ritual meets symbolic work. Closing a door can become a way of acknowledging an ending. Lighting a lamp can become a way of calling for clarity. Placing a hand on the heart can become a way of returning to the centre. Entering an inner place can become a way of meeting a resource.

But the condition always remains the same.

Consciousness.

Without consciousness, the ritual becomes automatism.

With consciousness, a simple gesture can become a passage.

How to create a living ritual?

A living ritual does not need to be complicated, but it calls for rightness.

The first question is not:

“ What ritual must I do? ”

The first question is:

“ What am I going through? ”

Is it an ending? A beginning? A separation? A return? A decision? A tiredness? A fear? A gratitude? A transition between two states?

Then comes the second question:

“ What gesture can give a simple form to that? ”

Nothing spectacular. A right gesture.

Sometimes, writing a phrase is enough.

Sometimes, closing a door is enough.

Sometimes, saying thank you is enough.

Sometimes, breathing three times is enough…

Then comes the third question:

“ Does this gesture make me more present or more absent? ”

It is perhaps the best criterion.

A living ritual can make us more present.

To ourselves.

To the real.

To what we feel.

To what we must acknowledge.

To what we must perhaps do next.

A dead ritual takes us further away.

It anaesthetises.

It avoids.

It gives an impression of depth without real contact with what is here.

It repeats a form, but without passage.

The question is therefore not: “ Is it beautiful? ”

The question is: “ Is it true? ”

Coming back present enough to cross through life

Perhaps, at bottom, a right personal ritual does not serve to add artificial sacredness to daily life.

It serves to acknowledge that certain ordinary moments are already thresholds.

The morning.

The evening.

The arrival.

The departure.

The beginning of a conversation.

The end of a relationship.

The moment when something new asks to appear.

We do not always need great ceremonies, but we need not to cross our life in absence.

We need gestures that bring us back to the body, to the breath, to the threshold, to consciousness.

Not to control what overwhelms us, but no longer to be entirely controlled by our automatisms.

And perhaps that is what the ritual is, when it becomes alive again.

A gesture simple enough to be set down.

Deep enough to be inhabited.

Conscious enough to open a passage.

Not a message sent to the heavens, but an answer given to oneself.

A way of saying:

I am here.

I acknowledge what I am going through.

I no longer want to spend my life passing from one state to another without meeting myself in it.

So I stop.

I breathe, and I set down a gesture.

And, in this gesture, I return.

To the instant.

To the body.

To the passage.

To myself.