As our society and culture moves further and further away from religion and spirituality, and we become more and more disconnected from one another and the earth. Many of us feel that something is missing from our lives. We feel lonely, disconnected and, increasingly, without any real sense of direction and hope.
Some of us turn to the religions to correct this, we feel new inspiration, we discover that which was missing in our lives. But as religion is no longer a normal part of our society we can find it hard to connect deeply with the new ideas we are being given. All of the core concepts we are taught are often deeply hidden behind cultural veils and have been transmitted to us though a lineage that had it’s roots in a society extremely different from the the one we find ourselves in now. They seem exotic and no longer relevant to us in this modern age.
I think, however, it is important not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Can we take the common essence of what we are taught by the religions and spiritual traditions and combine these with our own creativity to bring deeper meaning and connection to our lives?
I would like to try at least.
Our ancestors understood that we are inter-dependant, that our bodies are made from the earth and the sun, and that we sustain ourselves though their continuing generosity. This simple obvious fact led our ancestors to form religions that had the common theme of kindness and humility running though them. When a society has these values in place it functions harmoniously, our ancestors knew this.
Almost all religions have rituals in which people come together, to be reminded of those unwritten rules that help cultivate kindness and to focus their attention on spiritual, non physical benevolent entities who can assist us in living a good life. At these regular and often cyclical rituals, people meet with one collective focus, they may be silent, they may pray, they may visualise, they may make certain movements together and often they may sing or make music of some kind.
Can we take these key elements, strip away all the trappings and with our own creativity invent new rituals that bring us together, that remind us, that place our focus out side of ourselves on something higher than the ego? Can we use, intent, silence, prayer, visualisation, movement, and music to elevate ourselves for a few hours, at least, out of our daily routines? We could use the moments dictated by nature and the heavens to decide when these rituals take place, the phases of the moon, the phases of the sun. Perhaps if we did so we might tap into an energy greater than ourselves, and find ourselves more aligned with the cyclical program of nature, of harmony of balance.
All of us living on the earth are bound by her rules and cycles, in the past the worship of the sun was an obvious choice for many of our ancestors who lived from the land. The coming to an end of the winter and the beginning of the first signs of spring at Imbolc was of course an important reminder of the returning of the light, of hope, of the first buds and flowers heralding the beginning of Spring. It was a time when the hardship of Winter was coming to an end and was well worth celebrating. It was at this time that the people set up alters to the Goddess Bridget and invited her into their homes to bring in the light after the dark of winter.
As such, although our modern lives have removed us from being so dependant on the seasons, we can at least see within ourselves the importance of hope, or planting of seeds, new ideas, preparing ourselves for the year to come. We can tap into this archetypal energy of rebirth that is around at this time, because of the changing the seasons, caused by the movement of the planets around the sun.
We can also understand that we do indeed come from the earth, we are completely dependant on her for everything that sustains us, food, shelter, warmth, water and companions. We need the sun the rain, the earth, the plants, animals and rocks for life. We can see that the earth is the archetypal Mother from whom we all come.
If we let down the walls of our arrogance that says we are all powerful and create the world around us and realise that we are only here because of countless causes, that we are not islands, but completely dependant on each other and the earth and sun. We might even find some humility and reverence for this incredible earth and elevate her to the status of Goddess. We might find that our gratitude to her for our lives, food and shelter lead us to see her as an entity worth revering.
We might find that this attitude and these beliefs, actually help us when times are hard, they give us courage and strength, because now we can see out of our everyday struggles, we see something bigger than ourselves, we realise our deep insignificance and inter-dependence, but also as the butterfly beating it’s wings may cause a hurricane on the other side of the planet we feel our deep significance and our connection to all that exists.