Ritual or not (I am not big on ritual myself), part of what often keeps us stuck in our problems is the struggle we have with them.

On modern application of twisted ritual, the reason we often stay stuck in problems is because we fight the problem. An example of twisted ritual would be to take your coping mechanism and reverse it, if only in your mind. Or rehearse the reversed behaviour in private and dramatize it. Blow it out of proportion. We tend to believe our problems have more power than they actually do. The acting out of the supposed power of the problem often inspires us to see the opposite.

Having money problems? Spend a day in private pretending like you have never had any money ever, at any time. Make certain to include everything that involves. You never had it. Do your utmost to convince yourself of this. You won’t actually be able to. What this does is put your reality checking mechanism into overdrive. It will reveal to you each and every absurdity associated with this little ritual. Often with surprising insights as it shows you that even some of the things you believed were true are actually false.

You mean after you cry you run out of tears and will be happy again? Basically, and you will see the reasons why you can be happy. Like the simple realization that someone loves you, or that you actually do have friends. But it goes deeper than mood shifts. Moods are just the start, and we often get into mixed moods because we think our problem is some single thing, when it fact it’s a complex of things. It can include our whole world view.

People get stuck in ends and destroy means, thus wind up having no means to achieve their ends. Get so hung up on goals they ignore the process, and the process that gets you to any goal always seems either like a problem or like experience. It’s a problem when you are not paying attention to it and are instead stuck on how it makes you feel, like frustrated, angry, or sad. Ritual takes you out of yourself and into the focus of the ritual, into the problem. If you come to identify fully with your problem as if it were God or as if it were yourself, then you can see it intimately for what it is, just an experience.

At the moment, I have a problem and identify with the frustrated anger thing. I see, and if you identify with the frustration and anger, the problem will endure.

Unless I can do something about it. How do I go about getting beyond that? What if you saw the problem as unsolvable? How would you act? Imagine it’s too powerful and is eating up your whole life. What is that life like?

I would calm down and look to do something else or take another path to my goal. So you use contrary ritual to bring your inner mind to that point, and after the ritual, which might need to be practised for a bit even if it’s a meditation, you begin to have insights as to how you can do what you described, intuitively.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~