Obstacles cease to be obstacles and become simply a part of the terrain as we become more aware. You won’t bemoan the wall when you see the door, and often times especially in the case of sculptors they say they don’t know what they are going to shape until they do.

Is there not an aspect of all ritual that can be seen as creating the optimum conditions for the unconscious to become understandable in our waking awareness? In effect, the physical ceremony of marriage for example ‘promotes’ awareness of the intent to commit to another? To draw it into consciousness, make it real, actualise it? Yes indeed, and to engage a sense of connection between our intention and the world itself. The power of will used with the real control of awareness. Even in the case of flirting, much is communicated even if it seems vapid small talk.

Getting married is like telling everyone’s subconscious you’re committed to someone? Those attending the ceremony, yes, and a wedding ceremony typically moves even those not getting married to emotion. The ritual disarms the rational awareness.

Do the spirits respond to ritual like we do, or is it the same however we accomplish the connection as far as they are concerned? In the case of spirits involved in ritual, it can promote a sense of deeper non rational intimacy.

When I work on my healing artwork with the intention of creating balance within, is that a ritual? Yes. In fact, the cave paintings we study were the very same thing, if not as refined as your art.

I feel like you’re redefining things which have already been defined and are understood very plainly by everyone. If I say I’m married, you know what that means. I don’t have to have a ritualistic conversation about it. Your concern that I am redefining things that were already clearly defined is valid, and it’s been in redefinition that new insights have been arrived at. Most of science was a redefinition of beliefs and concepts that predated science. The word atom was a philosophical concept originally, and really still is. By claiming this gray area, by allowing for something other than the habitual routine though it may seem nothing new, new things can be created.

Perhaps to regress some more and give the topic more roots, language, Hebrew, Greek, Chinese, their structure was founded on a form of intuitive recognition. The symbols were components of words, directs symbols of objects and concepts, and even numbers.

Are we a ritual? It’s said that in the beginning there was the word, and the word was with God, and was God. We are in a sense a living ritual, a word uttered beyond our capacity for language, but we are not a word uttered by something else. We are one word of a chorus, each an individual logos or logical patterns, a giver of order, an archon made flesh.

I’ve heard ‘word’ is a mis-translation and it is actually ‘sound.’ Yes, that’s correct.

The divine breath that leads to animations that we comprehend as physical form? Yes. That divine breath comes to us as a word, a rune, the original meaning of the word rune being mystery.

The understanding we only ‘know’ in our unconscious and need ritual to tap into? Yes, that is why even if you are not of an orthodox faith, you stand the same chance of having a “religious experience” in sensory deprivation as someone who considers themselves more pious. In parapsychology research they have found they can induce experiences similar to near death experiences (nde), but without threat to your life. One process is already used in two different cultures, frantic movement and rapid dancing occupies those senses thus freeing the ‘real’ self. The true self?

Don’t they use that to treat someone with schizophrenia? They do, and it does give them a center though by itself it doesn’t stop their “hallucinations” which are stereotypically of a “religious” nature.

Because the spirit/soul is not actually designed to tune into the ‘senses’, the sensual world? Indeed. Ritual allowing the conscious self to communicate with the higher self. Gnosis.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~