Ritual Is a Process, Not a Content

In The Marriage of Sense and Soul, Ken Wilber argues that religion stripped of its cultural baggage can offer transformative technologies for elevating consciousness. He is making a distinction between the technology of religion and its content. I believe this is an important distinction.

In today's session of SDi Level II, Jean Houston -- well-known New Age teacher, psychologist, and anthropologist -- talked about the need for ritual when dealing with periods of transformation in our lives, those time when we are betwixt and between. These in-between times are known as liminal space in religious studies and in anthropology. The initiation stage of ritual is a period of liminality.

Houston feels that when we are in the liminality associated with change we should return to the ritual forms of the Purple vMeme. She feels that the myths and rituals from that archaic stage of human development hold the keys to helping us navigate the change process. I disagree.

Ritual is a process, not a content. We do not need to regress to prepersonal rituals in order to deal with transformational change, for example, the movement from Orange to Green. These are distinctly personal stages. Purple is prepersonal. Unless there is some kind of blockage or pathology at the Purple level, regressing to that stage is only going to confuse the situation.

However, we can use the tools of that stage, including myth and ritual, to navigate change at these higher levels. In essence, ritual is a technology involving the separation from where we were, the initiation into a new way of being, and the return to our lives with new knowledge and a larger perspective. This is the also the monomyth that Joseph Campbell made popular through his books (see The Hero With a Thousand Faces).

If we can reframe the change process as a personal ritual in the monomyth of our lives, we can work with the process instead of being subject to its action on us. We can take advantage of liminality, while honoring its power and its risks, to work with the dissolution of identity inherent in any form of initiation. During a period of liminality, we are free to redefine boundaries and explore new conceptions of who we might become.

None of this requires regression to the undifferentiated fusion with tribe and nature that comprises the Purple vMeme. One of the marks of the Spiral Wizard is the wisdom to use the tools of each of the vMemes in ways that can facilitate Spiral evolution.