Circle
People who Make Ceremony– the Circle, the Four Elements, the Roles and the Purpose – exercise some control over their lives and find a place to help community/family do the same. We can dazzle you with all kinds of evidence behind that statement, but there’s nothing like you finding out for yourself.
Our point is, and if you’re here maybe you agree, if you’ve tried everything to create the change you want in your life and it hasn’t panned out, then consider making ceremony.
We talked about Purpose last time, how it pervades, supports, transports and reaches the ears of God throughout the process. The ceremony begins, remember, the moment you have a purpose, place and time. The purpose animates the process.
Our aim, with you, of course, is to compose two ceremonies with Purpose:
Fall Equinox, September 22, 2020. Virtual and live. We’ll show you how we do it, hope to hear your ceremony goes and help anyway we can.
Personal Ceremony, your ceremony – practical, useful, a ceremony that will make a difference for you. We expect you to put together your personal ceremony, but our example will be around Finding a Job.
After our talk around Purpose we left you with a couple of questions: Can you imagine where you’d do a Fall Equinox ceremony? And what about a good location for the Finding the Job ceremony?
Fall Equinox ceremony celebrates the change of season. The coming winter was a serious threat to survival at one time, so this celebration was a serious and practical preparation.
With the world political scene gearing up like never before. in the middle of a deadly pandemic of which we are the epicenter, I’d say the need for a better winter is obvious.
So where are we going to do this?
Purpose: We seek Wisdom and Balance in our Fall Equinox Ceremony. Since we’re planning to film our ceremony, we chose Elena Gallegos Park up on Sandia, off Tramway. I know the place well so I can visualize the parking lot, access to bathrooms and a not-too-far walk to an appropriate space.
Now our ceremony is animated, moving.
Purpose 2: Finding a job. I don’t want to talk it about from any one job, because I don’t want any mental or emotional limitations on whatever job you want/need now. If I use a job talking about skills you don’t have or don’t care for, it might keep you from pursuing this little ceremony.
So, we’re going to use a fantasy job. It has skills, decent pay and benefits available, and if you want to be or go independent one day you can. We are applying for a job at “Come On 2020” because we are 2020 engineers, good ones. We’re going to make our ceremonial circle around the work surface/space we hope to have.
The Circle– the Circle is the physical space where you will perform your ceremony, but it started when you found Purpose. The Circle begins in our minds, upon our decision. Why?
The Circle, circles, roundness, coming around, are simply in our human DNA, like squares and rectangles, too. These are the shapes we see our world in.
Granted there are way too many human circles that mean nothing and many of those are worthy of criticism, however, our ancestors, yours and mine, have done quite a bit with circles over the ages. We’ve protected, proclaimed, unified, suffered together, decided together, hunted, taught, and so much more, in circle, encircled, at a round table, and so forth.
Outcomes from a circle ceremony tend toward harmony, healing and strength. A square ceremony is more about power and order.
Now we decide what goes in the Circle and why. Consciously creating a space to differentiate from everything outside it makes the space sacred. Purposed circle makes sacred circle.
Let’s explore a very specific context of “sacred.” When we speak, for instance, sacred words, we are swearing, right? As in taking an oath.
How many stories have you heard when someone regrets having said something because now, like it or not, they’ re stuck with it? How many times have you told that story? I don’t even want to talk about the times I’ve put foot in mouth.
To take “sacred swearing” even a little darker, our altar experience has led us to many patients who vowed, or swore, or regretted or promised in such a way that they got stuck with the words they uttered.
For instance, the guy who gets drunk, deep in guilt, swears never again to curse at his wife or mother. After that every time he does curse at them his Guilty Account grows. Enough guilt can bury everything good a person might have, along with all the other types of judgment people lay out.
And then there’s the closeted gentleman who swears in his “sacred moment,” when his decisions and words have power, he’ll never kiss another man. Ten years later, well, you know the story – a stressed out closet.
I’m going dark a little here to make the point that you are entering a situation where once you’ve got purpose and location, you are indeed making sacred. Sacred Speaking can raise the quality of your life if you intend it that way!
We have to be very clear and somewhat careful about what we are going to say. That goes for participants and the items we include.
The Fall Equinox Circle we make at the Park will mark the four directions – yes, that’s a part of the Four Elements portion. Four large Grandfather Stones, one each in the East, South, West and North, then four markers – feathers, in between those to mark the directions in between.
Participants will enter and exit through the East always moving in a Sunwise (clockwise) direction unless there is reason to go counter (more on that later).
You could say we are staking out our circle, right now, in our mind. We’ll either take the Stones from here or go early enough to find them out there. The feathers we have, but if a feather or two shows up out there, we may use them.
Our Find a Job ceremony/circle will feature eight items, a Square, Rectangle, Circle and a Triangle. The other items can also take the role of one of the shapes. We’ll use a Ruler, Pencil, pad of graph paper and a timecard.
These eight elements, to be placed in balanced manner in our ceremonial circle define our sample ceremony. If you are getting ideas about other items and even the number of items, go for it. This is a good thing. If you have questions about this, don’t hesitate.
We’ll title/label the circle with a little sign, “Come On 2020!”
There. Both of our prospective ceremonies have Circle plans that align to Purpose: Let’s begin gathering our materials and setting our space, as we talk next about the Four Elements and Roles.
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