Change the World, And Yourself, Through Rituals and Ceremonies

All the challenges we face in our communities, our countries, and the world can make us feel overwhelmed and helpless. Even so, you can affect the larger whole in small but important ways. For example, you can vote, volunteer, help your neighbors, and make lifestyle changes that contribute to a sustainable environment, such as no longer using chemicals on your lawn to maintain its health. However, you might also choose to change the world—and yourself—through rituals and ceremonies. You can use these occasions to alter your personal energy field and our shared energy field. That can lead to changes that might have been difficult to make had you not performed the ceremony. Because all of creation is intertwined energetically, the changes that come about due to choices you make as one person might be far greater than you can imagine.

 If you think that transforming energy and redirecting it isn’t powerful, remember this: Physical form begins with energy, whether it is a new life born from the meeting of two cells or a painting created after an initial idea sparks actions that lead to the completion of the piece. Consequently, by changing energy—its qualities, the information it carries, how it moves, and where it goes—you are changing something outside of you and within you. After all, we are integrated into the larger energy field: What changes outside of you affects you, and what changes inside you affects what seems to be outside of you and even separate from you.

Why are rituals and ceremonies powerful tools for change?

Rituals and ceremonies alter the energy field we all share. If you’ve ever wondered how a dog can find its way home even though it is lost and many miles away in an unfamiliar place, or pondered how birds in a flock can suddenly shift direction simultaneously, it’s because animals are tuned into the energy field we all share and can communicate with others and their environment through this field. As humans, we have lost much of our instincts. Many of us have forgotten how to align ourselves with this field we’re integrated into and communicate with it effectively. Rituals and ceremonies can help us feel our connection. They can alter our own energy as well as the energy we share—because we bring to the ceremony the power of our thoughts and emotions. We know that emotions create biochemical changes in our bodies. Amusement and laughter create endorphins, to give just one example. Why wouldn’t they affect the energy field our bodies share with others?

Rituals and ceremonies can also open us to insights we wouldn’t have had if not for engaging in these experiences. Whether it is the familiarity of a particular ritual or ceremony, the unexpected events that occur within it, or the sense of connection we have with other people, nature, and the universal field of energy we all share, something about these experiences seems to open us up to hidden wisdom and insights. We can try our best to come up with solutions to problems only to find that the best answers often come from becoming quiet and participating in a ceremony or ritual undertaken with the intention of gaining insights and wisdom that can help us make the wisest choices when faced with difficult decisions and challenges.

Rituals and ceremonies can strongly affect those who participate in them. All of us have, at one time or another, participated in a ritual or ceremony that felt stilted and should have moved us but didn’t. Haven’t we also felt an intense response to a ritual or ceremony that did have significance for us? I have performed many fire ceremonies for transformation with people who blew into sticks that which they wanted to release—and later, that which they wanted to bring in—and tossed those sticks into the fire. I have seen the expressions on their faces and watched tears form in participants’ eyes as they expressed their intentions in this symbolic way. They were deeply moved, and in some cases, their intentions manifested into reality.

Maybe it’s the seriousness with which we approach rituals and ceremonies that makes them powerful tools for change. Maybe resonance can amplify their effect—that is, because a ritual or ceremony has been performed in the same way (or nearly so) many times by others, or even just by ourselves, that repetition somehow gives it strength and greater influence on us and our environment. Perhaps not knowing just how powerful an effect we can have on our own individual energy fields and the one we share with all of creation when we perform rituals or ceremonies brings us to these experiences with the kind of enthusiasm and hope that fuels transformation. I believe that change can happen through a mysterious communication and alignment among ourselves, Spirit, and the universe.

Carl Jung, a founder of modern psychology, wrote about synchronicities, that is, meaningful coincidences. These can help us develop deeper insights into ourselves. And in surrendering to the mysterious powers that can be at work in a ritual or mystery, we might experience synchronicities that make us feel connected to something much larger than ourselves, to other participants, and to a wise inner self that has much wisdom to share with us.

Perhaps any synchronicities we experience with others are meant to alert us to our power to align with those who share the universal field of energy with us and increase our ability to effect change. One person’s ability to change the world is limited. A small group has even more power. However, a group of individuals or even just one person might, through ritual and ceremony, tune into Spirit and the universal field in such a way that the influence their intention has to transform the world becomes exponentially more powerful. We are often amazed at how quickly something goes viral on the internet or in everyday life. Do we believe that we can be that unsuspecting person who takes an action or puts out into the world an intention and sparks a massive fire of transformation?

Some say that we are only imagining that as individuals or small groups, we can change the energy field shared by all in significant ways. Having participated in many rituals and ceremonies with others dedicated to improving the state of the world in some way, I can’t agree. I have talked with people who felt, as I had, that rituals and ceremonies had altered their personal energy field and that they were never the same afterward. They brought the positive changes they experienced into the world through their relationships and interactions with others.

Rituals and ceremonies performed with others remind us of our interconnectedness with each other, nature, and Spirit—and with the past, present, and future. Ceremonies around a fire or using water can remind us of those who came before us. Our ancestors were connected to the natural world and recognized the power of gathering around a fire together or using water to cleanse and release what we no longer wish to hold onto. The ancients felt it was important to mark transitions in their lives and express their hope and wishes for a better tomorrow. Rituals and ceremonies can remind us of our humanity and the universal experiences we humans have. Ceremonies and rituals with natural elements can also help us feel connected to people of previous generations who taught us particular rituals and ceremonies we continue to use. When we update them, modifying them to be more aligned with who we are rather than who our ancestors were, we honor the fact that as humans, we are always transforming and evolving—and can do it consciously.  

One of the most moving and affecting rituals a community can share is one in which people spontaneously offer their wishes for what they can experience together, whether it is personal healing or the healing of a community’s traumas, a renewed faith in each other, or something else. These moments can remind us of how easy it can be to work with each other collaboratively and respectfully. They also help us be mindful of our responsibilities to our ancestors, to the people who will inhabit our planet long after we are gone, and to the people around us, whether they’re individuals we know well or strangers.

Even if something goes wrong, rituals and ceremonies can be catalysts for change. I believe that even when we come to a ritual or ceremony with great solemnity and reference, it’s okay to allow laughter to arise when we make a mistake or something unexpected and humorous happens. Maybe these moments happen because Spirit wants to remind us of the need to go with the flow and not be too rigid in our responses to life. Once, I was undergoing a deeply moving ceremony in which several shamans transferred powerful energies to me so I could expand their work out into the world, taking their healing and nurturing energies home with me and sharing them with my community. I had been kneeling for some time, and when I stood up, not realizing my legs had fallen asleep, I fell flat on my face. The shamans began to laugh, and I found myself laughing, too. Afterward, I felt the energy of that ceremony and the rites that had been bestowed upon me—I could sense it in my body’s energy field. I knew that despite the mishap, I had experienced something life-changing, and I drew upon those energies, feeling their power, in the years to come as I did my own shamanic work to help others heal.

Whatever the ritual or ceremony, I encourage you to trust its power to bring about transformation. Drop any cynicism about its potential and come to it with the intention of using the ceremony to change yourself and, by extension, the world.

A version of this article appeared in Inner Self and Mystic Living Today.

You can learn more about transformation and how to change your story and your life by reading my books, including my newest book, Go Within to Change Your Life. They’re available at bookstores everywhere.