What is a ritual?

You use rituals every day. You just might not realize it.

The technology of ritual has four fundamental principles:

The first is that ritual space and ordinary space are clearly delineated.

The second is that rituals always have a clear beginning and a clear end.

The third is that there is a clear intention for a ritual.

And the fourth is that a ritual is done with presence.

The clearer the intention, the more presence that a ritual is undertaken with, and the more clearly a ritual is marked with a beginning and an end in a ritual space—the more powerful the ritual becomes in its effect.

You already use rituals

Now that may sound quite woo to a lot of you, but we’ve been using ritual I think for as long as human beings have been around, because it works. And we use them every day.

A meeting, for example, is a really good example of a ritual that we all know well. And we all know that the clearer the intention of a meeting and the more present we are in a meeting, the more clearly a meeting has some boundaries around it—the more effective a meeting is.

We don’t know how it works, but we know it does

And today we use many technologies that we don’t understand. For example, many of the meditations we use because we know they work, not necessarily because scientists understand the mechanisms by which they do.

And what can be achieved when done ritualistically is far more effective than when the very same thing is done outside of a ritual.

Ritual in my work

This is why in my work and in my life, I use the technology of ritual to move more wisely and more effectively in life. And I think that when ritual is understood this way, and once you embed the principles of ritual into your life you realise the potential of ritual for transformative effect.