Ritual

What follows is short essay offering on the concept of Ritual and Unbreakable Resolve.  It is in it's current offered format, but will be edited and improved soon.

I’ve had teachers. I’ve read books. And the Lord knows I’ve done practices. I’ve pushed myself in extremes. But what I discovered was that all of that learning and practice had minimal effect compared to the power of achievement that can be obtained when you combine anything you do with ritual.

Speaking in the only language the Universe Understands

Here is my take on it:  The universe speaks a certain language, which is a combination of focused intent and action. We’ve all heard about creating intentions.  We’ve heard about The Secret.  We’ve heard about creative visualization, etc.  But most of that amounts to what I call wishcraft.

For me the way to move FAR beyond wishcraft and into positive measurable results is Ritual.

We’ve also heard and are all deeply versed in the concept of practice, working at it, perfecting our lives and our craft. But any deep practitioner can tell you the same thing: After a while it becomes more about practice and less about results. We get mired in the breath, and wonder why we just spent the last 20 years of our life meditating with no discernable progress.

Peter Caroll is quoted as saying: "There seems little point in practicing magic unless you want to do at least a few extraordinary things with this incarnation.”

-Octavo Page 115

He also says: "Beware gnostic of burnout. Religions depend on frequent low intensity ritual, magic uses less frequent high intensity ritual."

-Post on the Arcanorium Website under the topic Illumination – HGA

So for me the way to speak to the universe is to display intent and action within a highly intense structured ritual.

What is Ritual?

Granted, I’m defining all of this for myself as I’ve discovered it. You will find other definitions of it out there, and all of those are equally valid.  The point isn’t so much to follow what I’ve done, but to find your own method of ritual intent and action. 

First I’ll tell you what I use ritual for:  Ritual works for me in three ways.  One it is a sacred space that I can go into to rest, recharge, and just enjoy.  Second it is a powerful space of divination, where great answers are asked and great questions are revealed.  Third, it is where I express my intent (usually gained from the divinatory side of Ritual) through action. 

So what really is ritual? In any creative space or method you desire, it’s a declaration of clear intent within a tight container.  Hence, anyone can do this in any way they want.  There is no right or wrong way to do it. It really doesn’t matter. Some on this group use a ‘magic’ paradigm, and that is fine.  I use it as well, mostly because the results of clarity of direction and measurable achievement is so great that it often can only be described as MAGIC.

However there are some principles I’ve discovered that may be of use to you.  (Others can probably add to this list, and I hope they do).

It’s a Solo Journey:  Drop your baggage, drop your friends, your lover, drop your teachers, drop everything. You are alone on this journey and you don’t need anyone. This is you and the universe. You are telling the story of your life, you are the author of your destiny, you are the power here. You are alone. You set yourself against yourself, and within a very tight sphere you declare your mighty intent and act it out using proven techniques of belief, gnosis, and sleight of mind. If you do this, the universe WILL listen and respond. The more you bring in baggage from your other selves and other people the more you will dilute the effect.  This isn’t about teachings. This isn’t about practice. This is about you, alone, defining the terms of your existence. It is not for nothing that Ritual is often a bloody battleground. (See L’s commentary on Mars Rituals and the concept of Self-Sabotage).  Here in this first point, I see how the power of severance can help you the most.

Short Term Pain for Long Term Gain: The power of ritual is that it focuses your intent to a white hot fury, unleashes your subconscious and creates results beyond your wildest imaginations. The way to do this is to SELL OUT within the ritual. In this small, contained, powerful space, you go all the way. This intense short term pain can be very difficult and yet delicious to the taste, and the results that come out the other end are nothing short of remarkable. 
Keep the container tight:  I think L spoke of this to someone elsewhere and he also mentions that once out of the container, let it go and move on.

Do the Steps:  Whatever needs to be done in the normal sphere of the world, do it.

Unbreakable Resolve

So what is the answer to Unbreakable Resolve?  Ritual.  If you have searched your soul, found that Unbreakable Resolve is the thing you want to do, then begin now to design a ritual around it. Put work into it. Use your brain, use creativity, use inspiration. Set up the space. The more short term pain you put into this the longer the gain. Research, ask help setting up the structure from the universe, it will all come together for you. There are quite a few men on this group who could help you design a ritual that would augment your doing Unbreakable Resolve. 

I feel confident in saying that if you put your genius, creativity, and madness into a ritual you will obtain results doing Unbreakable Resolve that will frankly surprise and delight you.

The Concept of Ritual

The best way I’ve found to describe ritual is to discuss a cooking tool called a pressure cooker.  A pressure cooker is a pot that seals so that steam pressure builds inside.  This in turn helps food cook faster. The steam raises the boiling point of the water in the pot. Risotto can take six minutes instead of 25.  Stocks that take all day to make can be done in 90 minutes. Beans cook well and meats really cook beautifully breaking down the proteins and creating very tender pieces of meat.

The idea of ritual is to do the exact same thing.  We’ve all experience this in some way, shape or form, where we’ve entered into a container, sealed that contained with various energetic and physical actions, and proceeded to watch ourselves, and probably others, proceed to grow at a tremendous rate, far faster than could normally be achieved outside the container.  The results can be stunning.  We are all witness to this.

Now the kind of ritual we are talking about is a method of entering into a self-made container, alone, to obtain some very specific results. 

Ritual for Divination

It’s worth noting that one of the simplest uses for ritual is to obtain information:  DIVINATION.  You are essentially looking for knowledge and or guidance.  The pressure cooker of ritual along with some specific methods allows a person to tap into the pan psychic collective wisdom of the human race on that planet.  Now whether this wisdom is collected in your DNA, Chromosomes, Neural Networks of your Brain, or where the collective wisdom of all your ancestors is stored… it doesn’t matter.  What matters is that it works.

Using the principles of Consciousness you psychically are able to absorb the information of the entire planet throughout time, and even off planet into the stars.

All of us probably have our own ways of obtaining our own inner guidance.  We’ve all heard the idea of getting alone, being quiet.  A type of meditation.  There is also a lot of other divinatory methods, astrology, numerology, tarot, I-ching, reading the tea leaves, throwing the bones, reading the entrails, etc, etc, etc. 

But there is a difference in the information we can gain in the ritual pressure cooker, a reaching out into the collective wisdom of the entire human history of psychic knowledge, or even as I mentioned, going beyond.

Here would be a good time to mention the use of allies such as substances, peyote, psilocybin, san Pedro, lsd, and of course Ayehuasca, all of which, to some degree or another, allow for contact with the sum total of pan-psychic human consciousness.  I suggest that ritual combined with some of the substances can have even more dramatic results, but such substances NOT necessary.

Now using ritual to obtain information, knowledge and guidance is very powerful.  It alone would be fantastic practice or series of practices to learn and would be immensely useful to a man throughout his life. 

Ritual for Illumination

You can also use ritual to gain skills or aspects.  Within the pressure cooker of ritual you can develop stronger emotional abilities, such as love, laughter, compassion, courage, anger, sex, magic, death, intelligence.  I like to supplement ritual in this nature with a good dose of research.  Let me give you an example. If I wanted to develop a deeper breathing practice for instances, I could go into ritual and set that intention and turn on the pressure cooker.  Outside the ritual, I would still pick up books, look at videos, perhaps ask someone who specializes in it, and practice.  I find that it is the combination of both where the real progress happens.