Gabriela Maria Petre, holistic life coaching student
We humans need spirituality. We need to feel we are part of something bigger than ourselves, that we are part of a Whole. We feel this need because this is actually the real reality: we are really parts of something bigger than ourselves. The spirituality – the communion with/consciousness of our human essence, the soul, and in the same time with/of our Creator – fulfils exactly this role, our reintegration in this unitary and vast Whole.
Rituals are moments of plateau, when one reaches in a certain state, a phase that marks something important in someone’s life, something important to someone and/or community. The rituals have the power to bring people together or to make time for yourself to reconnect to your soul, to who you are, and to bring awareness to the moment, meaning and energetic and soulful charge.
Our life is a journey that passes through various ‘stations’, some of them being more important than others. Those important moments of our lives are related to certain moments of awareness frequently related to certain rituals.
The rituals may be performed daily, weekly, monthly, seasonal, annual, at some certain periods of time according to their meaning and role.
For example, my daily rituals are:
- I listen every day some recorded prayer with some specific intention of achieving something important in my life. I feel a kind of ease doing this and purifying and charging my ‘batteries’ and faith.
- I do yoga almost every day for gaining good energy within my body every day to clean, harmonize and activate my chakras. I feel I am improving every day and my consciousness expands as so my energy.
- I do meditation and prayer every day for my relation and connection to God.
I feel that my ritual gives me a connection to my Creator and a feeling of safety, confidence, and trust.
My weekly rituals
- I talk to my family and dear ones weekly, we make time for ourselves to talk and share the important things in our lives. My ritual keeps me connected to what is important in my life and what really matters at the end of life. People on the deathbed usually regret not spending enough time with people who matter to them and working too much instead of having a balance in life, creating beautiful moments and enjoying the connection with people who are important to them.
- Spend time in nature and absorbing the energy of nature being aware of inner modifications that nature induces inside me and of the connection to my soul that nature supports.
I love nature. When being in nature I feel my energy expands, my powers increase, my sense of wellbeing and happiness is into place and I feel connected to God. Even when I was a little girl (3-4 years young) I knew God exists but I didn’t have a name for ‘That’ or a representation of ‘It’ and even my parents didn’t tell me about God, but spending time in nature my soul knew about ‘This Wonderful Beneficial Creature/ Bigger Parent’ that today we humans call ‘It’ with all kind of names naming the One-Who-Created-Us.
And I know deep in my heart that this knowledge from inside that I had at the time was coming from nature within and from outside as well. The nature from outside helps me to feel the one from inside, it is like a reflection.
My monthly rituals
- Every month I go to a new place/city to know and connect to ‘that something bigger’ and to understand better the world I live in and I am part of. My ritual gives me the feeling of connection to ‘something greater’ that I have the chance to know and feel being part of.
- Every month I make a new healthy habit with the intention to practice and master it during the time and when my list of new healthy habits is finished then I start to improve each habit again for the next months. My ritual gives me the feeling of improvement, becoming ‘something’ bigger that is already part of me in a latent mode, actually being me expressing my complexity and uniqueness.
My seasonal rituals
- Going on holidays. It is an acknowledgment of love and appreciation to myself. It is a way to say ‘I love me’ and that means I want me happy.
- I love the most May, June, and July and I consider these months being a ‘season’ together and I like to savor each day of ‘sweet-spring-summer’ season and spend time in nature often.
In this period is my birthday as well and during this period I feel as if the energy specific to my soul is emitted again (in nature) and I like to be open on this frequency and nurture my soul with this energy. This period is helping me to feel better my soul and have an even better relationship with myself. Spending summer evenings and nights in nature during this period is one of my rituals.
My annual rituals
- I celebrate my birthday. It is a celebration for my soul and thanks to God that He chose to create me and protect me.
- I do some spiritual retreat with my birthday occasion according to the time I have in that period. It is a ‘real gift that matters’ for such an occasion.
- I celebrate the month of Ramadan (that starts right now in this evening) with more awareness to my spiritual practice and devotion to God especially because my faith is my choice and not ‘inherited’ from my family so it is really deeply rooted inside my heart and intention and feel connected to what is important to me.
Rituals have the power to ‘take us out’ from the common living and connect us to ‘something greater than us’. They have the power to make us feel as being a piece of a greater Creation which functions ruled by a specific Order and by specific Laws. This creates a feeling of harmony and safety. We feel that even we don’t have total control over ourselves and our lives but things are still in control in the safe hands of a ‘Good Being’.