A simple gesture was all it took for Judith to unlock a new awareness for me. In an instant, she unknowingly revealed to me why, for so much of my life, ritual has had such an attraction for me, why it has been so important. As she prepared to strike the bell, she did it with such deliberation that I became intently aware of her action and I was drawn into her movement. Her movement was an invitation for me to join her, and I did. Now I understand ritual in a deeper way.
I think that ritual raises my awareness because it is so deliberate and intentional. It is something I have done before, perhaps many times, and because of that familiarity, there is an ease in becoming very aware of what I am doing. Since I’ve done it before, I can instantly remember what it feels like to be aware. I go to that awareness smoothly because I am familiar with the way.
The irony of this is almost laughable. In my culture ,”ritual” has almost taken on an opposite meaning. Ritual has often come to mean something I do out of habit. It is something I can do without thinking, particularly without thinking of what I am actually doing. Rituals have become things people do because they have always done it this way. In a twisted way, ritual often means something I might do to remind me of something else.
For a long time, I have insisted that a ritual action must be real. What is done is what has meaning. If someone has to explain a ritual, that is a distraction, a fake veneer that often hides the real meaning of the action. I suppose it can be useful if a ritual is used to remind someone of something else, but the inherent meaning of a ritual is what is actually happening.
I know that it helps me to assume a certain posture when I want to raise my awareness. If I turn my palms up, or if I turn them outward, my awareness instantly rises in the palms of my hands. It is a practiced ritual, and always has the same effect. My attention can be focused on my palms almost effortlessly because I am very familiar with the pathway to that place. Once I have my attention under control, it is so much easier to direct it wherever I want.
This is what Judith taught me. Her gesture is what was happening, it was the only real thing I saw at that moment. It was the focus of my awareness. The ritual exists for its own sake. It doesn’t have to have a hidden meaning. Its true meaning is easy to see because I have seen it before and I can more easily enter into in. I joined Judith in her movement with ease, but only because she adroitly invited me to become aware of what she was doing.