Use Ceremonial Actions to Prepare Yourself for Change
In my last post, I wrote about how ceremonial objects can shift your mindset, and help you do hard things.
Ceremonial actions shift your mindset too. Ceremony — ritual — is about transformation: ceremony, like a sturdy little boat, carries you from one mental stream to another.
If you have ever wondered why people get so fervent about religion, sports, and politics, part of the reason is that leaders of religious events, athletic events, and political events all embed ceremonial actions, words, and objects into their gatherings. (Watch for it: it’s fascinating.)
Religions have survived for thousands of years in part because ceremony is effective. Ceremony reverberates on the bodily, nonverbal level, even when a ceremony uses words (for example, using another language like Hebrew or Latin instead of English; using chant; using rhetoric, song, poetry).
And just as with ceremonial objects, we as individuals can make use of ritual actions, ceremonial actions, to shift ourselves from one mindset to another.
Ceremonial Actions Prepare You for Transitions
I often work from home, which notoriously makes it difficult to separate the work day from, well, everything else.
So when I end my working day, I turn off my laptop; and then I stand up, and ring this loud and lovely bell three times:
Do I feel silly doing this? Yeah, sometimes; especially when other people are home.
But I do it anyway — because it instantly shifts me from work mode, to home and family mode.
The action and sensations of physically striking the bell, my fingers grasping the mallet; the sound of the bell literally ringing in my ear, the vibrations of the bell literally buzzing through my hand, are just unusual enough to signal to my body, as well as my brain, that work is done for the day.
When I ring the bell after I do my daily shut-down routine , it’s weirdly effective in quieting my mind for the evening: “We’re cool; you don’t have to think about work until tomorrow.”
The ceremonial action of ringing the bell tells my body and mind to make the shift. Now, I can turn my full attention to other important things, like drawing, making dinner, playing with our cats, connecting with people I love.
Ceremonial Actions Also Prepare You for Shifts in your Sense of Self
Sometimes you know that a big change in your life is coming — something that will change your sense of self — but you do not know a lot about what it will be like, when it happens.
We’re talking here about changes big enough to potentially prompt an identity shift, a shift in your sense of who you are.
Changes like: making a cross-country move (“…if I live in Arizona, am I still a Midwesterner?”), getting married or divorced, becoming a parent, changing your career, retiring from your career.
It could also be a significant lifestyle change, that changes your sense of self: such as going from thinking of yourself as a smoker, to thinking of yourself as a non-smoker.
I once did a training program called “From Couch Potato to 5K.” I had thought — unhappily — of myself as a couch potato; by the end of the program, I thought of myself as someone who was fit enough to run a 5K (and I’ve got the tee shirt!).
Ceremonial Actions Prepare You for the Unknown
Sometimes people do not even know what the change will be; they just know that some kind of change is needed.
You might feel a sense of restlessness. You might try one thing, and then another, to re-engage with your life as it is, but your spirit remains restless.
One day, at a staff meeting over lunch at a large suburban church I worked at, the youth minister — an athletic young man who normally had an appetite to match — sipped slowly at a cup of hot tea, but he ate no food. When someone asked if he felt sick that day, he explained rather reluctantly that he was fasting, because he was facing an important decision.
Soon after that, he resigned his position at the suburban church, and moved to a war-torn country overseas, where he worked with children in a refugee camp. Fasting was his ceremonial action, which he combined with prayer, to help him decide whether or not to make this change.
Before he left, he told me that he had been feeling restless, with a sense that something was missing from his work at the suburban American church: a sense that he was supposed to be doing something else.
But he did not know what that “something else” was.
So, to prepare himself for change, he fasted for a few days.
Fasting was his ceremonial action, a signal to himself — mind, body, and spirit — that he was taking his inner sense of restlessness seriously; a signal that he was open and willing to make a big, risky change. Even if he did not know exactly what the change would be, or what it would entail.
Ceremonial Actions Help You Transform Yourself
Transactional actions are when we do something, to get a predictable result back: cause, effect.
This is so direct, even my cats know how to do transactional actions: They jump on Food Lady early in the morning; Food Lady (that would be me) groans, flings off the bed coverings, and serves them their little kitty-cat breakfasts.
Most of your actions are transactional: you do a load of laundry, and then you have clean clothes to wear. You tap your phone wallet on the device at the grocery store, and then you get to take the celery and the tortilla chips and the laundry detergent home, without getting arrested. (Wait… was that your grocery bag?)
Transactional actions are direct: when you do X, then you get Y.
But ceremonial actions are transformational actions. They are not direct, but can be very effective.
Transformation is an indirect process, more mysterious. Transformation is about identity shift.
By transformation, I mean major shifts in attitude, that lead to outward changes. Most of our transactional actions are routine, and don’t affect our sense of ourselves, our sense of our own identities.
But transformation always involves some kind of inner shift, some change in your sense of your own identity.
A career change, a change in family status, embarking on a large and risky project — all of these are transformative rather than transactional. They reshape your life and update or entirely revise your sense of who you are, as a person.
My friend the youth director had to stop seeing himself as a suburbanite, and start seeing himself as a person resourceful and resilient enough, to work near a war zone.
Transformations change your sense of self.
Ceremonial Actions Carry You From One Mindset to Another
If you feel stuck in your thinking about a problem, try a ceremonial action. Maybe you have to get out of your brain, and do something that speaks to the rest of you. We human beings can often act our way into new ways of thinking. But the actions don’t have to start out with being direct. You can start with a ceremonial action now, to prime yourself for direct action later.
Ceremonial actions prepare your inward self to to be willing to venture into the unknown, to take risks, to be surprised, to do a new thing.
Unsurprisingly we can look to spiritual traditions all over the world to find all kinds of transformational actions, ceremonial actions, which prepare their practitioners for change, for taking on risk, for going into the unknown.
I have a friend — a businesswoman — who never goes into a meeting, without saying a short prayer first. The prayer helps her set her intentions for the meeting, reminds her of the personhood of everyone present, and helps her release her anxiety about the results. It prepares her, mentally and emotionally, before she walks in to negotiate.
This is how religion works. It’s much more about actions than beliefs. Often religious people are called “believers,” but I prefer another term: “practitioners.” When it comes to belief, some people take everything literally, and some people take everything as metaphor. (Fine either way. It’s my job to challenge people to go deeper in their theological thinking; it’s not my job to be a mind cop.)
But if you want to understand a religion, reading about its doctrines isn’t enough. You practice a religion. You must do the religion, do what its practitioners do, in order for it to be understood; and for sure, for it to be transformative. You do the actions, many of which are ceremonial: pray the prayers, pack food for the food bank, recite the words, chant the chants, sing the songs, gather with the others, study and discuss, participate in rites and rituals.
Doctrine is informative. Practices are transformative.
Thinking is important; planning is important; visualization and imagination are important: but action is what changes you.
The cool thing is, that rites, rituals, and ceremonial actions work for individuals, as well. They can be personal.
The cool thing is, you can come at transformation sideways.
Show Yourself That You Are Serious About Making a Shift, By Practicing a Personal, Ceremonial Action
We can tap into the power of transformative, ritual, ceremonial actions for making personal, individual change.
What makes a regular action, perhaps even a routine action, into a ceremonial action?
I think the main thing is, tying it to a specific purpose.
The youth minister fasted because he had this purpose: he wanted to get internal clarity about whether he should move from something stable that he was used to (working at an affluent suburban church), to something risky that he had not done before (working at a refugee camp).
So the first step is to be clear about what you want to prepare yourself for. Then, you tie your ceremonial action to that.
You show yourself that you are SERIOUS about change, you show that you are SERIOUS about being open to new opportunities and risks, by tying a ceremonial action to your intentions.
Let’s say you know you have to downsize, but you’re not ready to do that, yet. Maybe your ceremonial action is start by saying “thank you” to any objects you put in the compost bin, recycle bin or trash can, as you dispose of them.
Might you feel silly doing that? Sure.
But play a game with me for a moment, and try that action; say “thank you” out loud to the banana peel as you dispose of it; see if it sparks some new thinking for you about consumption, disposal, and letting go.
Perhaps a sign that your action is truly a ceremonial action, is that it makes you feel a bit silly when you do it.
We are brainwashed into believing that all of our actions ought to be immediately useful, “productive.”
But ceremony is much closer to play.
Ceremony is interwoven with the arts.
Ceremony is much closer to the child’s “let’s pretend,” than the adult’s “let’s get it done.”
My friend the youth minister would be the first to tell you that the ability to play is vitally serious and important. Much of his therapeutic work in the refugee camp was to help traumatized children learn how to play again.
Play allows us to approach what we fear: and most human beings fear change.
Your ceremonial action helps you become more open to change. More open to surprises. More open to seeing yourself, and seeing your life, in a different way.
By changing up your old routine — even in a small way, even for a short time — you signal to yourself that you are open to bigger transitions.
You might try things like fasting (but check with your medical provider first, on that one).
You might set time aside for activities devoted to contemplation: such as journaling, drawing, prayer, walks outside without your phone, meditation.
Walk a labyrinth. Light a candle. Ring a bell. Beat a drum. Draw your demons. Listen to music.
Go on a pilgrimage. Go to an art museum. Go to the woods.
Go on retreat: maybe a weekend by yourself in a cabin, maybe a day at a retreat center.
Give something up that you are habituated to having, like sweets.
The idea of a ceremonial action is to help to prepare yourself and strengthen yourself for transitions, for change and the unknowns that come with it.
And for some of us; it’s also an excuse to ring a bell.
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References
Barry, L. (2017) One! Hundred! Demons! First Drawn & Quarterly Edition. Drawn & Quarterly.