The Waking Dream: Unlocking the Symbolic Language of Our Lives by Ray Grasse

Author:Ray Grasse [Grasse, Ray]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Body; Mind & Spirit, Astrology, General, Spiritualism, General Fiction
ISBN: 9780835630740
Google: CVZbBgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Quest Books
Published: 2013-08-14T22:00:00+00:00

THE SECRET POWER OF RITUAL

But if all actions are rituals, why do certain actions hold more power than others? And what determines a ritual’s degree of effectiveness? And why does the same ritual or action lead to different results for different people? To answer such questions, we need to explore the important distinction between ritual form and ritual intent.

Consider two men who travel great distances to reach the river Ganges in India. One is a devout Hindu who has waited his entire life to bathe in the holy waters of the sacred river, while the other is a travel-weary tourist for whom the river represents another stop on a seemingly endless tour of India. The devout Hindu arrives at the banks of the river, ecstatic at finally achieving a lifelong goal, and while bathing in the river’s waters, has a profound mystical experience. The tourist, by contrast, walks to the edge of the river, inadvertently gets his feet wet while walking near the banks, then returns to the tour bus, unfazed by his encounter with the “sacred” waters.

In both cases, the same essential action was performed: a long journey to the river, climaxed by physical contact with the waters—yet the results are different. Why? Whereas the Hindu invested the action with a lifetime’s worth of devotion and expectation (with roots extending deep into the collective Indian psyche), for the tourist, the only feelings or thoughts brought to the action were boredom and inattention. Thus the attitude or intent of the person performing an action largely determines whether the action has symbolic or ritual content and what its results will be.

Thus while the external form is by itself an important part of a ritual process, its true power lies in the quality of attunement or imaginal “charge” brought to bear on the symbolic form. To say it another way, a true ritual is an internal rather than an external event. The outer ritual form serves as a kind of lens through which the participant focuses psychic energies and the energy of the universe toward a specific end. In turn, the transformative qualities of any action are in direct relationship to the state of awareness brought to bear upon it. Although the ritual form may itself possess a certain power due to the nature of the symbols being used, without the application of conscious intent or attunement, its effect will be limited.

Another example of this idea is music. A piece of sheet music, say, Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” can be seen as a kind of ritual form in the way it employs a set of abstract symbolic patterns (musical tones and their geometrical relationships) to transform the consciousness of the performer or listener. Yet the power that a musical score holds depends on the state of mind of the performer and the listener. Even a work of Beethoven will have little or no transformative power if played without emotion or if heard by an unresponsive listener. This does not mean that the score

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