A ritual is a discipline for uniting your mind with what you are doing, and what you are doing is mysterious. – Joseph Campbell

When you are completely absorbed or caught up in something, you become oblivious to things around you, or to the passage of time. It is this absorption in what you are doing that frees your unconscious and releases your creative imagination. – Rollo May

A thought that came to mind this morning: when we are united with spirit, everything is ritual. Said differently: when we are aligned within ourselves, or when we are listening to our own souls, we are free to engage fully and deeply with the present moment and thus to find mystery, awe, enchantment, and even bliss in everyday life.

When we are not aligned within ourselves—that is, when we are not allowing ourselves to be led through life by the urgings of our own souls—life can look dreary, indeed. Our routines can be shallow, mundane, and unsatisfying. We may move through life mindlessly and act without enthusiasm or suffer bouts of meaninglessness. It’s the sense that “this is all there is” that, in my opinion, is at the center of this kind of spiritual malaise. We often forget that we are not rational, one-dimensional creatures in a rational, one-dimensional world. Nor are we machines that were made to be hacked and rewired.

What our souls crave is a sense of our own mystery, a sense that, as the Campbell quote above suggests, we are, even in the simple acts of daily life, participating in something that is at once incomprehensible, awe-inspiring, and cause for celebration. We need to remember, too, that that mystery is also unfolding within us all the time, that there is a part of the psyche that transcends time and space. We have depth. This isn’t all there is: we are already more than the here-and-now.

Indeed, to sense our own mystery is, in some respects, to sense our own souls. It is to allow the unconscious (irrational tendencies included) to filter our perception and superimpose itself on the physical world such that the stuff of our environment, and even our own actions, light up with mystery and enchantment. This means, as Jung suggests, living in such a way that “express[es] the full rights of all parts of the psyche to exist.” 

How, then, do we make space for all parts of the psyche, and thus a sense of mystery, in our own lives? Through creativity, as May (above) suggests. In my experience, this means transforming ordinary activities into rituals that are both imaginative and fun. Indeed, I’ve written previously about the ways in which I turn reading and cooking into the kinds of rituals that nourish my soul, that make the everyday feel a bit sublime. It also helps to engage with myth and exercises in storytelling. I am currently reading Joanna Gardner’s The Practice of Enchantment, and I recommend it highly for anyone who is looking for creative and practical ways to infuse enchantment into their daily lives. 

Something else that both Campbell and May address—and that I’d be remiss to ignore—is the importance of acting intentionally, of focusing the mind on whatever it is that we’re doing and really engaging with our environment. This opens us to the creative possibilities of the present. 

I’ll conclude with one last thought that came to mind during my meditation this morning: having a sense of mystery gives us permission to act with our whole being. Not to suppress the unconscious, but to integrate it. Not to dismiss the irrational or mystical or instinctual, but to embrace them and use them as sources of depth, enrichment, and creative power.

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This post is the last in a series that introduces The Four Principles of Human-Centered Living. Here are the first three installments:

1. Alignment: The First Principle
2. Sensitivity: The Second Principle
3. Creativity: The Third Principle