I started thinking about rituals recently. I have always been the type of person who is drawn the idea, the romance even, of having beautiful rituals that I complete daily. I thrive on discipline, which has seen me train for five marathons, go to yoga almost daily and I when I decided that I wanted to take up distance ocean swimming, I simply started swimming laps every day. This sort of motivation and discipline comes almost naturally to me. But I noticed something recently when I completed a 21 day meditation challenge. I meditated for 21 days straight, but as soon as the challenge was over, I seemed to stop my meditating.
ritual/ˈrɪtʃʊəl/ noun a religious or solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order.
So the question I keep asking myself is; Why? Why is it that I can’t seem to keep up a meditation practice or journaling or watching the sunrise, while I sip my coffee, each day? Paradoxically, I really enjoy all of the aforementioned activities, in fact I enjoy them immensely. So what is it that stops me? And then, like magic, as if there was a little ritual fairy watching over me as I was writing this post, I had an epiphany.
Nikki! There is a difference between a ritual and a practice!
How had I not thought of this before? Immediately I started to Google definitions of and differences between the two.
practise/ˈpraktɪs/ verb perform (an activity) or exercise (a skill) repeatedly or regularly in order to acquire, improve or maintain proficiency in it.
I stumbled across this explanation by Jos Buurman on Quora.com, explaining this very idea from a Buddhist perspective:
“[A] Ritual is like taking a small cloth to wipe off some dust from the table while the entire house is dirty. It’s doing stuff without looking at the results. [It] can be habit, [or] can be belief. [A] practice means predicting before you do [something], what the outcome should be….And afterwards evaluating if the predicted result was achieved.”
This resonated with me; I am a person who is highly driven by results and outcomes. It’s no wonder I am struggling to do the beautiful, daily rituals I so desperately want to be able to keep up every day. I am too attached to the outcome of the task at hand, when, in fact, a ritual is not about that at all. A ritual is about non-attachment, it’s about letting go of the results, it is a ceremonial doing.
It made sense to me; the meditation challenge was a ‘challenge’ and in a group setting. The outcome of finishing the challenge, whilst being accountable to the others in the group was what was keeping me to the task at hand. Does this mean that I wasn’t being ritualistic? Had I turned a ritual into a practice? Or does it just mean that I have become a little over-analytical here?
Either way, I came to this conclusion:
A ritual is described as a ceremony that consists of a series of actions, and a practice of an activity (or actions) performed repeatedly.
If I turn my ritual into a practice, initially, it will help me create a daily habit. And a daily habit means the action is completed competently and unconsciously. Here lies my theory; usually tasks that are completed unconsciously tend to be via muscle memory, without attachment to any outcome, but completed easily as we have conditioned ourselves, through repetition, to do them. If I can create a habit of journaling, mediation or watching the sunrise unconsciously, I can consciously distance myself from the perceived outcomes and have myself the rituals I have been drawn to.
Wish me luck!
Big love, Nikki x
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