The Role of Ceremony
Ceremony in modern living has been so under-rated and rarely used. It is a reflection of the way majority live within our society. The focus appears to be on earning a living, spending that money on things, being in a rush, being stressed, not having any time to ourselves.....and keeping that on repeat. But, when you consider for a moment that many ancient civilizations knew about frequency, vibration and energy as well as the physical and mental components we can start to look at maybe adding just a little bit of this into our lives to help stop the exhausting cycle mentioned above. Even for a moment. They knew the true medicine is to stop. To not be stressed and to rest the mind, body and soul at once.
The whole point of a ceremony is to hold sacredness in the every day. It is that opportunity to go deeper into your timeless self where you can raise your vibrations and become more empowered and more in line with your essence, as opposed to who you think you should be and trying to squeeze into that box and into a structure of isolation and disengagement that is so obviously not working... look at the amount of anxiety, depression, incidence of suicide, and mental illness there is in the world- especially in our 1st world Western culture. Look at the way we are living!! The art of ceremony is to create time to nurture and surrender to aspects of ourselves we ordinarily are detached from. It is freedom and peace. And it is connection with yourself and others- that connection in which we yearn for......
You will never go to the same ceremony twice. Ceremony is flavoured or influenced by many different factors, including the energy in the room, people in the room, the type of tea used, and whatever wishes to flow through for the person running the ceremony at any given time during the process. I have never done the same type of ceremony twice. For me, it is mainly unplanned and relies heavily upon connection, timelessness and flow to occur. I sometimes invite others in the ceremony to work with the energy within the room following ancient techniques to access the deeper parts of ourselves that lay dorment or hiding under many layers.
Tea ceremony can be a vital tool to help you to access that stillness within. That freedom you seek. It is within you. Ceremony with tea makes you stop and feel your own depths. It is stopping to feel the warm liquid in your mouth, and as you swallow, feeling the warm liquid touching and soothing your throat, your chest... dropping down to the belly, warming you internally- and as you breathe that sacredness and warmth into you..... there in that moment you are thinking of nothing else but the tea. You are free from your crazy life for a moment. Take it. Do your own ceremony. Empower yourself to heal, to live in your passion.
