Why Ceremony?
A thread that has grown steadily and mysteriously and has taken great prominence in my life over the last 20 years has been that of ceremony. Ceremony is not something that most of us in the modern world are easily or commonly introduced to. For most, the concept of ceremony is mysterious at best and feared at worst. And yet, for most of human history, our ancestors relied on frequent ceremonial practices to maintain harmony and balance for each individual, the village/society, and with the spirits, ancestors, and the natural world.
In today's world, most people turn to psychology to heal. We look to figures like Sigmund Freud or Jung, attachment theory, or modalities such as IFS or Hakomi. I weave many of these into my therapeutic work, and yet, they do not get us all the way to where we want to be. What I have found is that the missing piece for many people who have tried every kind of therapy or healing technique is ceremony.
The spirits of the land and ancestors, and our own souls, have evolved over tens of thousands of years to utilize the technology of ceremony—where the veils between the metaphysical and physical reality are thin—to communicate, to offer guidance, insight, vision, and healing to the people and the land. Ceremony allows for stuck and entrenched parts of ourselves to loosen, and even die completely. It lets us see beyond the narrow view that we have become habituated and even addicted to in our everyday realities and experience ourselves in new ways. Ceremony helps us deeply listen to our own soul, opening up our direct connection to the wisdom of the universe, the earth, and our own being. Rather than taking advice from another human, the telephone line between ourselves and a much vaster intelligence and wisdom is opened. Ceremony maintains a delicate and often fleeting connection between human and spirit, which is hard to achieve regularly without some form of ceremony.
Psychology only takes us so far because it stays in the mind, emotions, and sometimes body, but doesn’t include spirit. As spiritual beings having a physical experience, without a strong connection to our spirit and to the vast place that we come from, we can become extremely lost, bobbing around without knowing why we’re here or how to be here in a way that aligns with our highest self.
Colonization systematically destroyed many ceremonial practices worldwide, using great violence and force. They did not die easily, and many survived under the surface until it was safe enough to be shared again. Alongside the disappearance of these cultural traditions has come great suffering, loss, and a worldwide crisis of diseases of the body and mind, including unprecedented rates of depression, anxiety, disorders of the mind and body, and suicide. Along with this has come the ability for humans to destroy the very mother that gives us life.
Over the past several years, more and more of my life has become dedicated to offering ceremonies for healing, vision, and re-patterning. I have seen tremendous transformations and healings happen, shifts that would likely never be possible even through years of therapy. My greatest transformation has also come from participating in ceremonies. I believe in the power of ceremony to heal the individual as well as the collective—to offer us answers to our questions that come from the purest place of love and wholeness, unmanipulated by what we have been trained to think.
I am offering ceremonies for women as well as all-gender ceremonies with my beloved, Jens Jarvie. Both containers are held with integrity and informed by my learnings with Shipibo, Quechua, and Mazatec lineages, as well as years of study of shamanic and earth-based modalities. In every ceremony I support or attend, I continue my own apprenticeship in this ancient art. Consider joining us for one of the upcoming ceremonies, or schedule a one-on-one with me here at Earth Heart Sanctuary.
With love,
Sarai
