On the importance of rituals
I am not a genius. If you compare me to Leonardo Da Vinci, who was elite at everything he did, I am not even good enough at all the things I do. If you judge me relative to the skill of a Paco de Lucía or the insight of an Isaac Newton, I am several leagues away from them. Similarly, if you measure me against the technical acumen of the likes of Alan Turing or Linus Torvalds, I fall short. My intelligence is slightly above average, while the skills I have largely taught myself are full of lacunae: they are only worthwhile if we charitably apply the discount of “good enough for an autodidact”.
Still, I do something very well that few people learn and fewer still master: I slow things down, understand my surroundings, and am in control of the situation. I have the capacity for situational awareness that allows me to discern patterns and thus connections which are otherwise obscure even though they are always present in plain sight. This is not a matter of intelligence but of attitude.
This is because I have learnt through observation that perception is a function of speed. The faster our pace in life, the narrower our field of view, the fewer the details we can capture, the more superficial the reality we will be experiencing.
Speed is not even a metaphor here. I mean it literally, though an analogy helps communicate the point: while standing, you have a wide field of view, but as you pick up pace the field of view becomes increasingly narrow until its boundaries converge at a singular point. Speed creates a tunnelling effect. If you go fast, you are thus not seeing—literally “not seeing”—what is around you.
Life is high-paced when it does not allow for moments of mindfulness. In the present era, this usually happens when we work under the pressure to deliver results, log each second of the effort we put in, capture every datum that empowers our employer to assess our productivity, and do everything else beside our profession, including relationships and recreational activities, as if it is a task on a rigid timeline.
A life of high pace is a life of disturbance. There is an elusive void within and we do not know what is the cause of it. It will manifest as anxiety or some low intensity sadness or numbness and apathy. It may be expressed as disturbance that bursts into wanton violence or, simply, anti-social abrasiveness. This is the life of the person who, like a wolf in captivity, is denied of their open vistas, of the wide field of view that allows each one to stay calm.
In narrowness there is fear. It runs counter to our constitution and thus triggers in us the feeling of estrangement or disconnect from our roots. We are not meant to be super fast at all times. In going full speed we depart from our baseline and in making that our default we operate beyond the boundaries of the sustainable, hence the disturbance and the fear of that which remains undetectable.
The slow pace is how we regain control of the situation and effectively open our conscience to the world that envelops us. Any action that forces us to reduce our speed is benign. When done with intent, this will typically be embedded as a ritual. For example, if we spend 5 minutes praying before each meal, those are 5 minutes that we have forced ourselves to be patient: what the prayer itself says is irrelevant to the detunnelling effect that is unfolding.
Rituals with a spiritual significance have the advantage of establishing in our conscience the notion of necessity. If we think that we can always skip them, then we introduce cheat days and eventually come up with all sorts of exceptions that turn into excuses for not committing to the ritual at all. Whereas when the ritual is expressed as a matter of spirituality, it becomes non-negotiable. Only absolute necessity stops you from carrying out what you believe in.
To the disciplined person, such as myself, rituals and the overall structure for daily life come from within. I personally do not need anybody to force me to slow down. I am always patient and undisturbed because my own rules are sacrosanct: I do not have off days in how I apply them. To everybody else though, religiosity is the best way to make rituals, and thus detunnelling, happen with regularity. Within a religious setting, you have fellow practitioners that all commit to observing the rituals without taking shortcuts. And, if you believe in the divine, you also recognise that a higher power is involved.
God is everywhere, but to the person with the tunnelled conscience God does not exist even if they consider themselves religious. Belief as such is not relevant. One can make the casual claim “I believe in God”, which usually has the same meaning as “I do not believe in anything in particular”. The reason is that belief only matters when it is expressed as a lifestyle. It otherwise is tokenistic, an exercise in virtue signalling, or a parroting of precepts that are devoid of substance.
Belief in God means that you understand how you are part of the whole and, as such, how the widest possible field of view is the one that allows you to notice divine presence throughout. Your sense of self extends beyond the confines of your body to encompass increasingly more of your extended reality. You are closer to the divine when your mind is not racing anywhere and, conversely, you turn towards yourself, effectively deifying your ego, the faster your experience gets.
Through rituals we can get a glimpse of cosmic oneness by expanding our conscience. There no longer are indelible lines between the “me” and the “we”, between human and plant, animate and inanimate. All that is present exists on a continuum. Me, you, those who think they are great, and those who resent their failures while seeking to become somebody special, we all are equally partaking of the whole like folds of the same cloth.
Slowing down puts things in perspective. It empowers us to overcome petty concerns with their squabbles. It also frames our mind to understand the symbolism of our deeds, that the rituals and all the items we rely on are media for our detunnelling. Their value consists in slowing us down, in making us experience the oneness, but they are otherwise not worthy of our worship.
You do not need to spend 5 minutes expressing the most eloquent words ever codified as a prayer, for example. Even mumbling or remaining silent will suffice. Similarly, you do not require a theology or social apparatus of power, with high priests and opulent temples, to notice the vastness that environs you. Whether those structures are helpful or not will depend on your attitude: to see what they help you achieve, rather than to treat them as worthwhile in their own right.
The tokenistic mind is that of the person who speaks with impeccable political correctness and the most class-appropriate accent while actually expressing contempt for all those it considers inferior. It also is the mind of the idolater who misunderstands the function of sanctity at-large. There are no miraculous icons or temples or mountains or motions of the body or whatnot. All are designed to instil in us a sense of a world that extends beyond our self; a world we begin to notice through the openness of the slow-paced life.