SourcePoint Therapy® and Ritual

Morning. After last night’s rain the air is filled with the sweet fragrance of garden, green vines and roses soaked in water. I light the candles, as I do every morning, on our simple shrine. I fill cups of water to offer outdoors. I offer words of acknowledgment and gratitude to the energies of Order, Balance, Harmony and Flow that sustain us and nourish us always, that are ever-present, waiting for us to recognize them and realize our connection to them. I offer light to light and water to water. Gratitude for the light of Awareness, and for all the healing energies that arise in the field of Source.  I say the words Source, Grounding, Activation, Transformation.  I acknowledge  the energies these words call forth. I meditate with the universal breath and the midline. This morning ritual fortifies me for the daily challenges of today’s world.

No, SourcePoint is not a religion nor is it even a “spiritual path” in and of itself!  However, increasingly people discover it can support and encourage whatever spiritual path they are following and/or help open a spiritual dimension in their healing process, and in their healing work with others.

The practice of SourcePoint Therapy is all about our connection with Source, so it’s implicit in it that we’re connecting with something larger than ourselves, acknowledging a larger context, a universal Presence, and that this network of being we call Source encompasses all human beings, all being.

Traditionally, historically, since time immemorial, connection to Source in whatever language, whatever name, whatever culture, whatever time, has always involved ritual. And, yes, SourcePoint Therapy definitely has its rituals, its protocols, for connection with the Blueprint of Health for the human being, the manifestation of Source we choose to connect with.

There was a time, a long time ago, when I rejected the concept of ritual, seeing how it had become so often an empty repetition of words that meant nothing except maybe for a little while on a Sunday morning, and often not even then. It felt constraining, unnecessary, in the way in fact, in connecting with Spirit. And that can happen. There’s lots of evidence that happens.

However, since that time I have been given the opportunities to see and experience over and over, in different traditions, in my spiritual day to day practice, the importance, the potency, of ritual rooted in vibrant, alive tradition and practice.

Recently one of the SourcePoint students in Japan said that doing a SourcePoint Therapy session felt to her like practicing the tea ceremony. That moved me deeply, that she felt an energy similar to such an ancient and respected tradition. And, having experienced tea ceremony myself in the past I could see the similarities, the precision of the practices, the protocols, the care and respect, the acknowledgment of the person receiving the tea…or in SourcePoint, the session.

So, what does the word ritual mean? What are the rituals of SourcePoint Therapy?

A simple dictionary definition goes something like this: “an act or series of acts regularly repeated in a set precise manner.”  Wikipedia says, “A ritual is a repeated, structured sequence of actions or behaviors that alters the internal or external state of an individual, group, or environment.”

Note the words “precise” and “structured.” These are extremely important words, and the primary ones I once long ago rejected. I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand the importance of precision and structure in connecting with Spirit, with the vast universe of which we are a part. I didn’t appreciate the immense precision and structure inherent in that immense universe we call Source.

The root of the word ritual is the Latin “ritus” which, I was delighted to read, may be connected to the Sanskrit word Rta, usually translated into English as “cosmic order.” There is a book, The Artful Universe: An Introduction to The Vedic Religious Imagination by scholar William Mahoney, in which he goes into this principle deeply. It is a book that, when I was introduced to it years ago, explained so much of SourcePoint Therapy to me, inspired me, and brought yet another confirmation to the universality of what was evolving as SourcePoint Therapy.

Words from this book:  “It may be of interest to note that the word rta is a distant relative not only of the English rite and thus of ritual (both of which signify actions that lend or establish dramatic order to the disorder of life as it is often experienced) but also of the English word harmony as well as art and thus of artful…By artful I want to suggest not only that Rta is universal truth and ritual order, but also that this structure of being is one in which all things fit together properly, smoothly, and harmoniously- artistically, if you will.”

Looking at it from the perspective of all I have experienced in the evolution of SourcePoint Therapy, I begin to see that the structure and precision of ritual arise from the structure and precision of Source itself, of this universal energy that is simultaneously ordered, vibrant, alive, sentient, creative, and flowing. Order, Balance, Harmony and Flow. Order is not a static state. Ritual loses its meaning and energy when it is separated from its Source and subsequently becomes static.

There’s an exchange that happens in meaningful ritual. We acknowledge the Presence of a reality larger than ourselves, a mystery we can’t understand with thought alone, an energy that flows freely when invited through word, action, protocol. And that Presence that goes by many names responds. Ritual is not an intellectual, mechanical process. It is a felt, somatic experience, a communication with Source.

Mahoney says that ritual “re-members” the “dismembered body.” That ritual as ordered activity “constructs, supports, creates…”

Speaking of the ceremonies of ancient times, he says, “Ritual transformed a fractured and disjunctive existence into a unified and harmonious whole.”

I think these last two statements sum up the relationship of SourcePoint Therapy and ritual. We have specific protocols that serve specific purposes in connecting us to the field of Order, Balance, Harmony, Flow, to that universal energetic Blueprint of Health present in Source. We do this precisely for the purpose of “re-membering the dismembered body.”  So that “a fractured and disjunctive existence” can be transformed into “a unified and harmonious whole.”

Note the word Transformation. 

And think of the words Source, Grounding, Activation, Transformation. In connecting with Source, Grounding ourselves in Source, we are activated to move in the world from that Ground, bringing Transformation. Reminding ourselves of  the innate and inherent health present in every fiber of our being. Remembering our connection. Remembering the vast network of being we are a part of.

So we can see the protocols of SourcePoint are indeed ritual in nature,  balanced between structure and flow. The protocols have their precision and structure but a SourcePoint session, for oneself or another, allows for a lot of flow, for individual variation in what protocols are chosen, the order in which they are used, in how they all serve the purpose of strengthening the connection of the body/mind/spirit to the Blueprint.

The Diamond Points are how we initially acknowledge, honor and activate the connection to Source and as such are an important container and foundation for strengthening our connection to Source – always easily accessible.

The ritual of the Diamond Points is simple to perform throughout the day. And night, if one is awake in the dark. It is performed inwardly, bringing the awareness to the breath, and then, however briefly, to the points. It is a space you can enter where suddenly you are re-connected, even though you have never really been separated. It’s a space to feel the shift that can come by simple focusing on the words Order, Balance, Harmony, Flow, while bringing awareness to the points.

If your work is helping others in their healing process, no matter what your modality, engaging in this self-practice at the beginning of your sessions shifts the context of the session, bringing the connection to the Blueprint forefront, no matter what other work you may do for the rest of the session.

We think of ritual as something special, as separate from daily life. Something you have to make time to do.  And perhaps that’s part of the problem, that it has become something regarded in that way. I imagine once upon a time, and perhaps still in some cultures, ritual was simply interwoven into daily life, from morning to night, following the rhythm of sunrise, sunset. Following the rhythm of the tides, of the breath.

The universal rhythm, expansion, contraction, inhalation, exhalation, arising and subsiding, Order, Balance, Harmony, Flow. Not some esoteric practice. Rather, rituals highlighting and reflecting the natural rhythms of life. 

Nowadays, our rituals are likely to involve phones and coffee. That’s totally understandable. But what about a few moments of ritual retreat, into a different dimension of awareness, into that space of health and healing, into a brief acknowledgement of that connection to Source that is always there? Woven into your day?

I’ve said it many times – meditation, other ritual practice, and working with energy – these are not esoteric practices today’s world. They are much needed survival skills.

 

May all beings be happy, peaceful, and free of suffering.