Power of Ritual

"A ritual cannot be created; it grows in accordance with the need to make meaning" N.Hall

"Everything in nature, the sum total of heavens and of earth become a temple and an altar for the services of God" Hildegard Von Bingen.

Deep breath, Melanie Weidner, 2005

Ritual of 
coffee
naps
daydreams
meditation
goodness
generosity
eating
looking at the moon
stretching
dancing
singing
breathing
being...

Ritual heals and celebrates and brings the microcosm into relationship with the macrocosm. (Matthew Fox)  As I contemplate these ideas this morning, I am aware of how one uses rituals to make oneself at home to bring awareness and familiarity to the day. I awaken, look out the window at the day (today's sunrise was spectacular), stretch, breathe, remember my dreams,  put the radio on, put the coffee machine on, and on it goes. Some of these rituals are common to many, some are common to self only. A ritual can deepen when we do it consciously, according to Woodman. 

So I wonder if we keep up these rituals if others around us don't? How strong is our need for it? Are we able to miss a day? In ancient times, rituals were how we survived and gave meaning to life...honouring the seasons, nature, the weather.  We would have harvested at certain times, the animals would have been at a certain watering hole, the tides would have been at a particular level. These days, our rituals do not mean that we die if we do not do honour them. At least not on a physical level. Our biggest ritual may be opening a bottle of wine at the end of the work week.

I love ritualised experiences. I grew up feasting on religious ritual and song. Marius Schneider is an ethnomusicologist. He states that most public ritual is accompanied by music and song as it was in old. Even the football grand final has a musical prelude.  Rituals used to be secret. There were the rites of passage for both males and females. Even the alphabet used to be secret apparently. People still die to this day standing up for their religious beliefs and rituals. 

Tea tree lake, Sister's beach, Rocky Cape National Park, Tasmania

Deep feminine is about ritual, magic, eternity, altered states of consciousness, art, music, lunar cycles, intuition. Ritual is also the primary means by which people get their inner houses into order, both at an individual level and as a community. One of my friends spoke of a beautiful Sri Lankan ritual of allowing prosperity into a new house by over-boiling milk onto the stove. 

How do we set up our lives so we can honour the ritual of our lives? Our society rewards those who have "been busy" not necessarily those who have been deep in reflection without 'anything' to show for it. 'Daydreamers' and 'slacking off' come to mind. Often our modern life is, on the whole, highly structured. In the past, my creative flow has felt stifled at times by the rigid set up of modern day. How many of us would like some days to not face the world, instead finish writing that poem, or song, nap or daydream rather than head off to work. I know many creatives whose lives are mixed between "day jobs"  and a few sacred hours of inspiration at the end of the working day. In such a patriarchal society, the deep feminine, or creativity is not often revered. I had a client say to me recently "I thought what you did was B-S at the beginning, but now I know it works. You are awesome" Yes, breathwork and technique is magic. So is being aware of what we are doing. 

Hildegard von Bingen wrote that "authentic ritual helps us find our inner selves." Lately, I have been exploring the deep feminine in relation to caves. I saw a beautiful river that had etched its way through the honeycomb cave last week. It furrowed in unusual ways. The water had found a way through the seemingly impenetrable structure, little by little making a path for itself that was sustainable and which supported its flow. This would have taken hundreds and thousands of years to achieve. It reminded me that nothing is permanent, such in the Buddhist teachings and knowing on a deep level that all things change with time.

Honeycomb Cave, Mole Creek

That is how I feel I am restructuring my world at the moment. Etching out a new course. It requires more structure, but of the kind that supports me on every level, whilst giving the flow the space, and the breath, to move and change course. I am grateful for this new possibility. It also provides hope that the flow can be a force powerful enough to facilitate change through what seems rock-like substances. Something I perceive as dense and solid might shift with time and persistence of flow.  

Whilst in Vanuatu this year, a ritual unexpectedly arose. Routine combined with an unexpected aspect of song resulting in a magical experience. After an operation, unplanned, the whole medical team walked behind a patient's trolley, wheeling him back to the ward. There were many family members on the ward who were singing beautiful songs of their home and hearts. Their melodious voices floated up as if carrying us all on poop'ed wings. Returning their brother, son, child, future elder back to the tribe after surgery. It was a procession of sorts. A handing over. It was honouring, moving and greater than the individual sum of its parts. I was moved, and the occasion was marked as unique and special. A sign of the great feminine. The kind of experience that gives one body shivers. The power of ritual.

xx

Voice Mysticism: The Harmony of the Spheres

"The knower of the mystery of sound knows the mystery of the entire universe" Khan

Some train themselves to hear in the solitude, on the sea shore, on a river bank, in caves.... 

I bought a book a while ago, The Mysticism Of Sound and Music: The Sufi Teaching of Hazrat Inayat Khan. Several years actually, and since then it has been sitting on the shelf. I "randomly" opened a page today and found answers to questions I have been pondering all year. Right under my nose.  Clear answers. Clearly I have been in training.

I am exploring my sensory engagement to my environment, and associated issues with perception. I have been exploring the melodies that come by exploring natural structures. It is sometimes nudged by the etheric (almost above the tree tops) and sometimes it is the denseness of the physical environment, more like a Pranic energy. Inside the caves, sometimes there is a mixture of both of these.

Accoridng to Khan, abstract sound is called 'sawt-e-sarmad' by the Sufi's; all space is filled with it...the sound of the abstract plane, which Muhammad heard in the cave...Moses heard on Mt Sinai....Christ heard in the wilderness...Shiva in the cave in the Himalayas.

"Space is in the body and the body is in space". Almost like in the caves: being in the cave, and the caverns in the body. Paradox within paradox. Space within the space. Infinite. 98% of our body cells are empty space. 

Those who are able to hear the sawt-e-sarmad and meditate on it are releived from all worries, anxieties, fears, sorrows, diseases and the soul is freed from capitivity in the senses and in the physical body.

A shell, found on Bateman's Bay, possibly
 like the shanka, that awakens in man his
inner tone, his "inner song".

I went to a beautiful concert at the State Library of Victoria "Love and Devotion" back in March. It was on Rumi, one of the greatest poets of all time, in my opinion. It was presented as a combination of the Persian Flute, poems said aloud in both Farsi and English. Such a creative presentation. Exquisitely beautiful. Rumi states that he did not belong to any religion although he was Muslim. Persian poetry is highly symbolic, acting as a bridge that links earthly and heavenly images, spiritual and profane ideas. Shahnama of Firdausi is one of the songs. and so powerfully moving. 

Listening is active, hearing is passive. In his TED talk, Julian Treasure speaks of the concept of 'Sound Health'. (Check him out, there are several other great talks he does. I am a big fan) One of his comments is "It's when the birds stop singing that we need to pay attention". As I woke to the sound of chopping wood this morning, and the distinct absence of bird song, I was reminded of this. He urges us to consider listening consciously to the world around us. He also talks of "earlids" which i like immensely. Except that unlike eyelids, we cannot close our earlids when we do not want to hear something.

Marius Schneider is an ethnomusicologist  who coined the term "Acoustic Spirituality" and stated that all matter vibrates, and therefore everything in the world has a sound.

"The astronomy of the Pythagoreans marked an important advance in ancient scientific thought, for they were the first to consider the earth as a globe revolving with the other planets around a central fire.  They explained the harmonious arrangement of things as that of bodies in a single, all-inclusive sphere of reality, moving according to a numerical scheme.  Because the Pythagoreans thought that the heavenly bodies are separated from one another by intervals corresponding to the harmonic lengths of strings, they held that the movement of the spheres gives rise to a musical sound-the "harmony of the spheres.""
Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 2000

In the  TED talk by Janna Levin, she speaks of how the universe isn't silent, but has distinct sounds and rhythms which is the sound of the planets vibrating. Just think, the big bang likely had a song! a description is that it is like a low banging on a drum. Perhaps the future of music is "Gravitational Tunes"? How can we listen to this? Open our ears more to that which surrounds us? What kind of equipment do we need? And because we can't hear it at our frequency, does that mean it doesn't exist ? And because we can't hear it with our ears, does it not impact upon our physical body? Sandra Selig says that there are "hidden rhythms and structures so that we can sense sound through the visual." Evelyn Glennie's aim is to teach the world to listen. As our accessibilty to sound has increased, how can we listen to music with our whole body?

So if everything has a sound, including the trees, caves, rocks, water, perhaps I can continue to make aural landscapes for these visual and kinaesthetic objects. So that they can be perceived on a multi-sensory and multi-dimensional level, and that I may be able to share with others such an aural experience that I perceive.

"We are ourselves works of art, and as we work to bring forward the art within us, we express our inner divinity" Julia Cameron.