Quotes About Ritual

We must get back into relation, vivid and nourishing relation to the cosmos and the universe. The way is through daily ritual, andis an affair of the individual and the household, a ritual of dawn and noon and sunset, the ritual of the kindling fire and pouring water, the ritual of the first breath, and the last.

A ritual is the enactment of a myth. And, by participating in the ritual, you are participating in the myth. And since myth is a projection of the depth wisdom of the psyche, by participating in a ritual, participating in the myth, you are being, as it were, put in accord with that wisdom, which is the wisdom that is inherent within you anyhow. Your consciousness is being re-minded of the wisdom of your own life.

This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don't have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down. We all need such places of ritual safekeeping. And I do believe that if your culture or tradition doesn't have the specific ritual you are craving, then you are absolutely permitted to make up a ceremony of your own devising, fixing your own broken-down emotional systems with all the do-it-yourself resourcefulness of a generous plumber/poet.

An inordinate love of ritual can be harmful to the soul, unless, of course, in times of great crisis, when ritual can protect the soul from fracture.

When my neighbor walks the dogs, he performs a ritual act of sacer simplicitas, to use the church Latin: "sacred simplicity." Walking the dog is in truth a ritual of renewal and revival on an intimate scale - a small rebirth of well-being on a daily basis.

Metaphor is ritual sacrifice. It kills the look-alike. No, metaphor is homeopathy.

Even feigning surprise, pretending it was unexpected and saying a ritual thanks, is surely wiser than just expecting everything so carelessly.

It's easy to see golf not as a game at all but as some whey-faced, nineteenth-century Presbyterian minister's fever dream of exorcism achieved through ritual and self-mortification.

The ritual sacrifice of children has been taboo for thousands of years. Yet tragically it is practiced every day across our world. We sacrifice children on the altars of our most destructive sins. When the sickness of pornography has run to its most evil and destructive end, it takes the form of child pornography. When prostitution reaches its sickest, most depraved form, it becomes child prostitution.

Lead the people with administrative injunctions and put them in their place with penal law, and they will avoid punishments but will be without a sense of shame. Lead them with excellence and put them in their place through roles and ritual practices, and in addition to developing a sense of shame, they will order themselves harmoniously

I try and get on my yoga mat at least three times a week, and if I don't, things start to unravel. I admire routine and ritual, but I am not inherently good at keeping a schedule. I eat at different times every day, I wake up at different times, I change my mind about things I was so sure of the day before. Perhaps I am too passionate, too willing to bend the rules in the name of fun, or to pass the time, or who knows what? Being on stage is truly what puts it all into perspective, and after I get on stage, I take a moment to reflect, and I am set for another 24 hours.

The very nature of marriage means saying yes before you know what it will cost. Though you may say the “I do” of the wedding ritual in all sincerity, it is the testing of that vow over time that makes you married.

It's something that exists on a daily basis on practically every street in India. You have people who are Hindus, Muslims, Christians - not just Catholics, but Protestants, you name it, all kinds of Christians - a hundred other religions, living side by side. And the kind of personal religion that people end up practicing is a bizarre concoction of ritual drawn from each other. So everybody ends up celebrating everyone else's festivals.

I simply decided that dope wasn't worth the ritual.

Amnesia may well be the highest sacrament in the great gray ritual of existence.

Thanksgiving isn't the only thing that has changed. This makes it reassuring somehow to go through the same ritual with the people you're connected to. I guess the truth is, it all boils down to family. Right?

Coastal sailing as long as it is perfectly safe and easy commands no magic. Overseas expeditions are invariably bound up with ceremonies and ritual. Man resorts to magic only where chance and circumstances are not fully controlled by knowledge.

Three of the four elements are shared by all creatures, but fire was a gift to humans alone. Smoking cigarettes is as intimate as we can become with fire without immediate excruciation. Every smoker is an embodiment of Prometheus, stealing fire from the gods and bringing it on back home. We smoke to capture the power of the sun, to pacify Hell, to identify with the primordial spark, to feed on the marrow of the volcano. It’s not the tobacco we’re after but the fire. When we smoke, we are performing a version of the fire dance, a ritual as ancient as lightning.

When we develop reverence for food and the miracle of transformation inherent in it, just the simple act of eating creates a ritual of celebration.

For faithful Catholics, communion is not just a nice ritual: It is the body and blood of Jesus Christ, and the ultimate sign of our willingness to be incorporated into the church.

I painted my toenails before Dennis Rodman. One time at training camp, I stubbed my toe and the nail came loose. My mom gave me some toenail hardener, and I painted over it. I scored 40-something points that night, so it became a ritual. Paint my toenails, score 40 points.

Religion and ritual can be vehicles for entering stillness. It says in Psalm 46:10, 'Be still, and know that I am God.' But they are still just vehicles. The Buddha called his teaching a raft: You don't need to carry it around with you after you've crossed the river.

In meditation take care not to impose anything on the mind, or to tax it. When you meditate there should be no effort to control, and no attempt to be peaceful. Don't be overly solemn or feel that you are taking part in some special ritual; let go even of the idea that you are meditating. Let your body remain as it is, your breath as you find it, and remain in your natural condition of unchanging pure awareness.

I liked the ceremony, the ritual of preparing cocaine, as much as doing it. I did it for a year, loved it, then stopped. Now I feel the same way about cooking.

The best trick I learned was when a priest came to me when I was an altar boy and said, "Always, when you make a mistake, pretend it's ritual." It's beautiful!

A cosmic war is like a ritual drama in which participants act out on Earth a battle they believe is actually taking place in the heavens.

When a writer with a voice as good as Richard Christian Matheson's tells you something, you have no choice but to listen. In THE RITUAL OF ILLUSION the voices are legion, and the gaps between their testimonies drag us closer to understanding the darkly beating heart of all our, ephemeral, transfixing dreams. Dark, subtle, horrifically funny.

My brother, this "religiosity" is not the standard by which true men of God are measured. In all the rituals that Islam has, deeply imbedded in those rituals are principles of truth. And sometimes we get lost in the religiosity; we get lost in the "symbol," but we miss the substance of the truth that is buried in the ritual!

People do need a social license to go, "Ha ha ha," and have a good time. It's a strange thing. There's a lot of social ritual around comedy and laughter. It's a bonding experience for groups, but nobody can tell you much about how funny somebody is. Sometimes people just need to be in a group and be laughing together, just like they need to be in a group in watching some really terrifying film.

Boxing is fascinating. It's good for the soul to be made to feel clumsy. I swank around during the week thinking I'm a big cheese, but you don't feel like that when you're in the ring with a chap who knows what he's doing. It's ritual humiliation. I'm going to be slugged about and probably killed, but I love it and have to do something to keep fit.

I loved the atmosphere of the dance studios - the wooden floors, the big mirrors, everyone dressed in pink or black tights, the musicians accompanying us - and the feeling of ritual the classes had.

Cinema is the culmination of the obsessive, mechanistic male drive in western culture. The movie projector is an Apollonian straight-shooter, demonstrating the link between aggression and art. Every pictorial framing is a ritual limitation, a barred precinct.

The main problem is that most commentators are accustomed to thinking of spiritual schools as 'systems', which are more or less alike, and which depend upon dogma and ritual: and especially upon repetition and the application of continual and standardised pressures upon their followers.The Sufi way, except in degenerate forms which are not to be classified as Sufic, is entirely different from this.

I beg people not to accept the seasonal ritual of well-timed charity on Christmas Eve. It's blasphemy.

Mathematics is a form of poetry which transcends poetry in that it proclaims a truth; a form of reasoning which transcends reasoning in that it wants to bring about the truth it proclaims; a form of action, of ritual behavior, which does not find fulfilment in the act but must proclaim and elaborate a poetic form of truth.

Compare the cinema with theatre. Both are dramatic arts. Theatre brings actors before a public and every night during the season they re-enact the same drama. Deep in the nature of theatre is a sense of ritual. The cinema, by contrast, transports its audience individually, singly, out of the theatre towards the unknown.

Decoration can be a state of mind, an unusual perception, a ritual whisper.

My spirit life very much depends on my work. My work very much depends on my spirit life. And I pray every day, as part of my own ritual, to a god I believe in, not a god somebody else believes in.

Music is a gut thing. You're working in a medium which is more in touch with the primal than the modern. A gig is a ritual. There's a congregation.

Ancient worship . . . does truth. All one has to do is to study the ancient liturgies to see that liturgies clearly do truth by their order and in their substance. This is why so many young people today are now adding ancient elements to their worship. . . . This recovery of ancient practices is not the mere restoration of ritual but a deep, profound, and passionate engagement with truth—truth that forms and shapes the spiritual life into a Christlikeness that issues forth in the call to a godly and holy life and into a deep commitment to justice and to the needs of the poor.

The only [working] ritual is making tea. I use the loose leaves and drink it by the gallon.

I had this whole ritual with my mother making the bed with me inside it so I would be invisible.

Since the nature of people is bad, to become corrected they must be taught by teachers and to be orderly they must acquire ritual and moral principles.

Tea-making is a ritual that, like the drink itself, warms the heart somehow.