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Basic theory giving rise to using rituals, ceremony and metatheater
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A Releasing Your Unlimited Creativity discussion topic | |
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Copyright 2009 by K. Ferlic, All Rights Reserved | |
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There are many different ways to look at rituals and what they mean. From a creativity perspective and for our creative endeavors, the purpose is to access our creative power and to release our creativity from the cage of our own making. It is to work with the properties of energy consciousness and create powerful emotional experiences and to manipulate our energy to provide the driving energy to help manifest our intention. Within the creativity perspective, the ritual can used to set an intention, clear the fears and obstructions to manifesting that intention and sustaining a personal practice. Personal practice as used here is defined here a those methodologies an individual uses to develop and expand their personal power and develop the ability to manifest effectively. As such, this discussion on the background and theory of rituals may not be fully consistent with other uses of the term. However, the principles discussed here can be readily incorporated into one’s life that currently involve ritual if one so chooses to do so. Although not needed for the discussion provided here, the topic, "Underlying overall understanding of our creative power for application of rituals and metatheater in our creative endeavors" addresses the fundamental basis for rituals and this discussion build on that foundation. Within the creativity perspective, rituals are seen and used in different ways. Rituals can be used as a powerful creative tool to: obviously, explore the power of rituals in our life; step into our creativity and access our creativity ability and creative power; explore the depth and breadth of our creativity; step out of mind; transform our life; release our creative spirit and regain the ability to enter the most creative state of being; create a gentle phoenix in our creative endeavors; reenter a state of creative play for any creative endeavor; create a memory to catalyze our actions in which case they act as seeds which grow and unfold in our life; provide a boost of emotional energy to nurture a desired creation; and the like. Exploring rituals and associated metatheater allow us to enter our creative imagination to explore options and bring back solutions we find in our creative imagination to see how they may work in the physical world and/or to increase the probably of the Ultimate Accident and an experience of the infinity of our being. we can use rituals and metatheater with others in something like the Salon or other gathering to explore and probe the boundaries of our mind in playfulness and to probe the limits of our mind across the a broad range of experiences. A ritual is described as a prescribed form or method for the performance of an act. Traditionally, ritual was used to describe the form performed for formal acts, special acts or ceremonious acts and it was not considered ritual to perform the mundane acts of life, like the ritual we go through getting dressed to go to work. However, if we view the world in oneness, all forms that we use are, in fact, rituals and condition the psyche into a mode of operation. The main difference between a ritual and a habit is, hopefully, consciousness. The ritual hopefully produces and expands awareness. A habit is an act or practice that has so fixed in our psyche and body that it is essentially automatic in its performance. In fact, the main point we wish to stress about ritual is the conscious performance of the actions. The bottom line is that, the body and the psyche store memories through strong emotional experiences. When those strong emotional experiences are coupled with consciousness, tremendous personal power to manifest our intentions is created. The thrust of this material is to access and release our unlimited creativity and become a conscious creator. Ritual is seen as one way to create both a context and that powerful emotional experience in consciousness that keeps the our intention strongly present in our psyche to create a single point focus. Ritual helps to align all the parts of our being - body, cells, soul, psyche, emotional energies, and gets them moving in the same direction. Since this is not a psychology book or a medical book on the human psyche, we will not attempt to explain how this process works from that perspective. The premise here is we are all consciousness/Consciousness at play with itself/Itself. Rituals are discussed from this perspective and how energy consciousness molds itself in response to how consciousness how focused its attention and awareness based on how and what it thinks and believes. The goal is for the ritual to create a powerful emotional experience in consciousness because the psyche and the body stores memories through strong emotional experiences. In that context, we all have had strong emotional experiences, but many of them, if not most of them, have not been consciously chosen. For example, we an look at an example for which you may have a similar experience. On the afternoon of November 22, 1963, I was 12 years old and I clearly remember where and when I heard that President John Kennedy was assassinated. I have no real personal reason why it should stick in my mind, but it does. I know I don’t retain the memory because of any personal attachment to President Kennedy, such that I thought he was a great leader or I suffered some type of personal loss. It is in only because of the process of how our memories from our environment and society as they are imprinted on our nonconscious that I retain that memory. Similarly, I hold a similar memory of when President Ronald Reagan was shot. Yet, I had no personal attachment to him either. I believe what caused me to retain the vivid memory of these particular instances is not my interest in Kennedy or Reagan but, the emotional response of the people around me. I also remember how the people around me responded and their emotions. It is the emotional content of the memory, not necessarily my emotional response, as to why the time and place of these events are so etched in the memory. It is not what I was doing nor the shooting of a man that was important per say. Rather, it was the emotional energy being sent out around the event and what it represented to my belief structure and the belief structure of those around me. As I sit and recall these memories, it is as though I felt all this energy coming in from all around me, but not necessarily from the person telling me what happened. It is as though, as soon as the words were spoken, my psyche was open to the energy around me and the imprint of the emotional feelings associated with the energy I was feeling was registered - the shutter of a camera going off and the film being exposed to the picture. It was probably the words "president" and "shot" together in that combination, that opened my psyche. There was a superposition of to the concept of "president:" big, all powerful, country, significant, important; and the word "shot:" destruction, loss, take away. Then I registered the emotional energy of all the people around me in the environment, the shock, the surprise, and the memory was forever etched. Remembering the Cuban Missile Crisis taking the US and the USSR to the brink of war provides a similar type memory. The power of the emotional content of an action is basically how the process for rituals we are trying to describe here works. The way memories register does not necessarily have to do with just what we ourselves are doing. But, it has to do with the environment around us and how open we are to that environment. Many people do not understand they cannot compartment their lives or their psyche from what is happening around them. No matter how much we try there is spill-over of emotional and psychic energy and it has to deal with how we radiate our energy and our awareness of that energy. This phenomenon is similar to a concept common in analog broadcasting before digital broadcasting where the energy spills over from one broadcast frequency into other frequencies if the energy levels are too high or one is too close to the transmitter. As we pass the transmitter tower in our car we can take note that the signal spills over from the transmitting station into the one to which are listening on the car radio. It is for this reason why context is key to unleashing emotional energies and imprinting the intention on the psyche. In the same way, we only need a close approximation to the original situation and we can tap into all that energy that was imprinted in that situation and release it. The key idea behind a well prepared ritual is to create an environment and simultaneously open the psyche through the words, actions, or some other type of stimulus. In keeping with the premise of this material as consciousness/Consciousness at play with itself/Itself, much of what is presented here can be considered by some readers as postulated with little experimental verification presented that adequately satisfies the reader. However, three points will be made. The information here is what has been pieced together from, first and foremost, personal experiences and the observations made in how rituals have impacted the lives of individuals who use them. Where appropriate, personal experiences have been presented. Second, the model and context presented here has been pieced together from the esoteric, occult, spiritual, religious, scientific and body-mind medicine fields. Third, much is drawn from the original premise that we are consciousness/Consciousness at play and consciousness/Consciousness intends creation out of an energy-consciousness matrix that permeates all things. No attempt is made to justify want is presented here since this explanation, in the opinion of the author is the current best fit model of the universe which allows all views held to be true - that each person is the creator of their own reality and it explains how such a phenomenon is possible. However, it should be noted that what is presented here is just not theory. It has been effective and works very effectively in the author’s personal life and the lives with whom the author has worked to recreate their lives or manifest what they desired. As to how the Universe and consciousness "really" works, humanity is still trying to figure that one out, and we may never know - but then again, maybe will. The recommendation for each individual is to allow effectiveness to be the measure of truth. It is to use what is effective to create what is desired and both serves us to create an inner satisfaction which never runs dry and create a life worth living. Using the river analogy for creation/Creation (Top) There are several different models that can be used to understand how rituals, ceremony and metatheater can be used to help us to create what we desire. The river analogy model has been found to be one of the more informative as to what the ritual, ceremony or metatheater addresses. Within the energy consciousness model of Creation, the creative life energy of Creation flows to create an experience of that on which consciousness focuses its attention and awareness. The role of consciousness in the creative process is to be the cause. The experience we have as a result of the flow of energy created by consciousness is the effect. For any experience we have, there is a cause effect relationship between the focus of consciousness and the flow of energy that focus creates. As long as consciousness maintains its focus, the Creation created by the resulting flow of energy persists. When the focus of consciousness changes, the flow of energy terminates and depending on how consciousness changes its focus, the flow of energy slowly or quickly ceases to exist and the resulting creation also ceases to exist. As discussed in "The rain-river analogy for the creative/creation process," an experience of creation/Creation can be seen as rain falling in the mountains and a river flowing from the mountains across some terrain to the sea. In the sea the river dissipates and the river no longer exists. The experience of Creation we have is the river flowing through the terrain. The flow water in the river is the flow of our creative life energy creating our desired experience within the Creation we find ourselves. The terrain over which the river flows is determined by how and what we think and believe. Our beliefs both direct the flow into the terrain to flow to the sea but our beliefs also create the terrain through which the river flows. As such, we can have a one time experience of the terrain, we can sustain an on going flow of energy through the terrain, or we can change the terrain as the water is flowing to the sea. Unless all the water flows to the sea, we do not recover it for another experience of creation/Creation. That is, we lose some of our creative ability and creative power by what does not return to the sea. Reconstitution of our creative ability and creative power is about freeing any and all blocked energy so that it is free to dissipate and be made available for the next creation. The "trick" to creation/Creation within this river perspective is to allow all the water which falls in the mountains to flow completely to the sea to be dissipated. It does not matter which terrain the water uses to flow to the sea. It does not matter how many rivers are created. Nor does it matter how many different types and kinds of terrain through which the water flows. It does not matter how much we change any one terrain as the water flows to the sea. The issue is all the water must be dissipated in the sea to be able to be return to us such that we do not lose any of our creative ability and creative power. The issue we face is that because of our attachments and/or the way we think and believe we do not allow all the flow available to us to return to the sea to be dissipated. Often we block the flow or keep directing the flow in a way that the energy is never fully dissipated. We block and bind the flow of our creative life energy by our attachments, the memories we hold and how we hold them, and by our beliefs. Attachments for or against anything binds some of our creative life energy. In essence, what we do is use our energy to fix or hold a flow of energy through a particular terrain. The flow may be small but it nevertheless exists. To hold an attachment means we must continually supply a flow of energy in a particular direction across a particular terrain to continue to have the experience of the attachment. Most of the time we are unaware of our attachments and never realize how much of our creative life energy is flowing into our attachments and robbing us our of creative power and creative ability. Similarly, we bind our creative life energy in our memories. Memories of themselves hold no energy. A memory is, in essence, just a passing thought. For example, we can have a memory of a saying goodbye to our mother or we can imagine saying good by. Depending on the details we supply to what we imagine, the two images can be the same. Neither will bind our energy unless we hold onto it in some way. We may not say we are attached to the memory in the way we are attached to something we like and want or what we desire to avoid. But, nevertheless, because the memory is something we experiences, a part of our energy attaches that memory to us as opposed to just letting it be one of the myriad of experiences consciousness can have. It is the very subtle attachment of thinking "my" memory as opposed to just an experience of consciousness is what gives rise to both the transcendental ego and enculturated ego. The issue isn’t the subtle energy connection that gives rise to our transcendental ego and enculturated ego by holding memories as our own as opposed to just an experience of consciousness. The subtle energy connection is only important if we desire to change our ego. The issue in most creative endeavors is when the memory holds what we would call emotional energy. That is, the memory causes some feeling to rise within us. It can be a very pleasurable feeling or a very negative feeling. Of course, there is a spectrum here. Some memories cause little or no feeling to arise. Some however, cause tremendous passion to raise. Most memories lies somewhere in between. In any case, most memories bind some amount of our creative life energy . The question is how much and which memories need to be address to release that energy to make it available to other creative endeavors. The third area where our energy is bound is by our beliefs. Our beliefs give rise to the creation/Creation we experience. Our beliefs are a fixed focus of our attention and awareness. As such, they are continually creating a flow of energy to be experienced in a particular way. They create the overall terrain through which our creative life energy will flow to give us any one desired experience. Our beliefs are layered and create a belief structure which causes our beliefs to become very entwined. For example, the belief we hold as to the origins of Creation underpins every experience we have in Physical Creation. Changing that one belief can cause us to change our entire life. Our beliefs are layered in the sense that there are beliefs that we hold as an individual. There are beliefs we hold about being male or female. Then there are beliefs which hold as an individual human being. There are beliefs we hold about the nature of Physical Creation and about the nature of Creation itself. These beliefs channel our creative life energy to gives us an experience of these belief. They cause our creative life energy to flow as an undercurrent to our life that seems to be inaccessible. However, the flow caused by these beliefs is accessible if we adjust the beliefs that is giving rise to the flow. Rituals are a doorway to communication with the Creator in whatever way we see the Creator. We need to realize a doctor talks another doctor differently than they talk to a patient. Similarly, an engineer talks differently to an engineer than they talk to a lay person. So too the Creator talking to another creator. As we engage in creative activities as a creator we open a direct communication to the Creator. When we are creating we can ask our questions and expect to get answers from the Creator. However, we may just not get the answer in the way we expect. We need to be prepared for the way the Creator talks to up. In creating rituals we can design our ritual to provide opportunities for the type and kind of communication and/or information we desire. In fact, the ritual itself can be a communication. However, we must be actively creating and not petitioning . The issue we may encounter is we look to perform the ritual thinking the ritual gets the Creator’s attention. It does not. It is the activity of creating that gets the Creator’s attention. The act of creating is the vehicle, not what we create. This is true for any creative activity and any creative activity can be used as a vehicle to communicate with the creator. Using rituals and metatheater (Top) Rituals provide a way to experiment and explore options pursued in our creative imagination. Rituals allow us to begin to make what we explore in our creative imagination manifested in Physical Creation in some way. More importantly, the ritual and metatheater allow us to see where we are free or not free to explore options. Energetically, rituals ceremonies, metatheater and the like are a way to work with the flow of our creative life energy that animates our life and the events in our life. They work with the flow closer to the source as it manifests to redirect the flow into new or different experiences. They are methods that we can use to access the beliefs, memories and attachments we hold. We can use them to understand and explore the attachment, understand what energy a particular memory holds, and/or explore our beliefs to see how they are channeling our energy. Similarly we can use them to change the attachment, release the energy or change the beliefs. Or, we can use them to create new attachments or new memories which an energize and catalyze our creative endeavors and or add new beliefs to change both the experiences we have to change flow of the undercurrent to change the reality we experience. In using rituals, ceremonies, metatheater and the like often the results are not instantaneous. Rather it is more like turning a valve off and then slowly waiting until the pressure in the line decreases until there is no more flow. Then, the experiences of our life which were being supplied by that flow of energy will slowly die since it has been cut of from the source of creative life energy that has been the source of its life and sustaining it. Why is there a time lag? It can be seen in a variety of way. But it is basically a result of the fact that we have habits, both mental habits and body memories, which need to be dissolved and/or broken. At the most basic level, the ritual, ceremony, metatheater and the like if done properly as a minimum will create a memory that will slowly provide a new energy flow to create a new set of experiences as the old experiences are dissolved in favor of the new. However, for the ritual ceremony, metatheater and the like to work, the individual must believe they have been changed at the deepest levels by what they experiences. Ritual ceremony, metatheater and the like normally do not work if the individual does not believe in them and how our mind works as a switching station to direct our creative life energy by our beliefs and the memories we hold. They will also not work if the ritual ceremony, metatheater and the like does not address the correct beliefs to change what is desired and/or has little or no ownership by the individual..
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