Do rituals matter? A law of attraction discussion

Absolutely! Rituals matter.

​I like to say that a ritual is “something we do on a regular basis in order to bring about a desired result”. In other words we try to control what will happen by performing an action that we believe increases the possibility of a manifestation. Humm…so the ritual replaces our ability to control manifestation by controlling our thoughts? Please grab a highlighter and highlight the preceding sentence, underline it, commit it to memory or do whatever will enable you to keep it top of mind as you read through the rest of this post.

A ritual is only as powerful as your ability to control your thoughts and understand the Law of Attraction. ​

According to the Oxford Dictionary a ritual is “a series of actions or type of behaviour regularly and invariably followed by someone “ or “a religious or solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order”.

​Unless we understand what a ritual is doing for us at a vibrational level, it becomes a crutch.  This may just be my perspective, but if you want to understand more about it, read on.
 
Generally speaking there are three types of rituals: our personal rituals, social rituals, and religious or spiritual rituals.
 
Personal Rituals
Our personal rituals are habits that we feel contribute to our well being or feeling better.  Some of my daily rituals are: drinking coffee in the morning, sleeping on my right side, and using a moisturizer.  Some of my friends have rituals like wanting a quick smoke after every meal, sitting in a specific chair or washing their hands soon as they come home.  Each one of these actions is one that is repeated on a regular, mostly daily basis. Each one of these actions is based on a belief that says “if I do this I will feel better”.  If I have my morning coffee I start my day right.  If I grab a smoke, I feel relaxed”.  “If I wash my hands, I won’t get sick”.  The truth is, the doing or not doing of any of these personal rituals has no real relationship with my well-being or yours.  We could fall sick despite washing our hands, and if my little boy is anything to go by, dirty hands actually contribute to good health!  The problem with these personal rituals is that if we can’t do them, now we don’t feel good.  Do you know anyone who can't sleep anywhere else except their own beds and travel everywhere with their pillows? Their sleep is held hostage by a habit/ritual that does not serve them.  It is important not to make our well-being conditional upon such things.
 
Social Rituals
Then again we have social rituals, these are things we feel we have to do in order to fit into our culture or family.  They are like the glue that holds a culture or society together.  As kids we would get together with family to apply henna on our hands the night before the Eid celebration.  Our weddings are preceded by a singing and dancing competition between the bride’s family and friends and the grooms.  When the bride and bride groom leave the wedding party, they would pass under the Holy Book Quran for blessings and good luck.  From having watched countless Hollywood movies and television programs, I know that such customs prevail in all cultures.  Some are performed for good luck and others to ward off bad luck, and some just to bring together to promote bonding.
 
Religious Rituals
My personal experience is that cultural rituals have got tangled with religious rituals in many places, certainly in the part of the world I come from and where I live.  For example, is Christmas a religious ritual or a cultural ritual, or a little bit of both? Do people know why they do what they do?   For example, fasting is a ritual in every religion that I have studied. It gets practiced in different ways. As I understand the concept of fasting through my law of attraction lens it is an act that creates contrast - the contrast gives birth to desire and appreciation for the simple everyday act of food preparation and consumption - but this is not taught by any religion, and therefore, most people fast without understanding how it truly helps.  Most people will fast because they believe they are earning brownie points towards their entry to heaven.  Think about it, how many other rituals do you know of that you can see the law of attraction based reason for, but the people who perform the ritual do so without this knowledge.  So are religious rituals bad?  Not so, from my perspective.  For people who are true believers of a religion and follow the rituals, they get the satisfaction that they are wanting from performing the rituals, and many of them live perfectly happy, fulfilled and successful lives.  The problem arises for those who perform the ritual and still don’t find what they are looking for.  And so it is that in every culture and every religion there are people who follow all the rituals and still live unhappy and unfulfilled lives.

Spirituality and Rituals
I don’t know if you will agree with me, but I have been looking around me and observing that our era where many have shifted from being religious to being spiritual has its own set of rituals that people are following yet again without the understanding of the vibrational reason behind them.  For example, people will construct vision boards, do yoga and meditation, use affirmations, do visualizations,  wear crystals and charms all without understanding how these things work.  As a result, some work for some people and not for others, and some work sometimes and not at other times.  Just like other times in history, people will adopt a ritual or practice just because it worked for someone else, or someone recommended it, and without understanding the vibrational reasons for how and why it worked when it did.  And that is why, there is no consistency in the results.  

Why is it that a visualization works for one person and not for others? 

If doing a visualization was enough to bring about a desired manifestation then everyone would practice it and everyone would get exactly what they wanted.  But it’s not working that way, is it?  And that’s because people don’t understand how energy works and that everything that happens, happens because of energy movements – our energy movements.
 
It seems to me that we have given up one set of rituals and adopted another set without really understanding what makes them work.  It’s the Law of Attraction. 
 
The Key to Manifesting
When you do something with high momentum of expectation it is more likely to bring you the results you want.

Most people confuse the intensity of desire or wanting with the intensity of expectation. 

But really these are two different things.  Just because you really, really want something doesn’t mean you really, really expect it.  Expectation is the key.  When you desire something but it doesn’t matter to you whether it comes or not, but you think that it is easy to accomplish, it drops into your lap – why? Well, because there is no opposition to it – there are no beliefs lurking in the dark keeping it from coming.  Most of the time, when we have been wanting something for a very long time our desire for it has a lot of momentum, and the fact that it hasn’t yet come means that we have limiting beliefs that are keeping it from coming.  The interesting thing about this situation is that, if you can’t figure out what your limiting beliefs are you can’t change them.  And so it feels as if you are beating your head against the wall and going nowhere.  In a situation like this, it is actually helpful to turn your thoughts away from the object of your desire.  Every time you think about that thing you want, tell yourself, “not going there” and then shift  your attention to something else.  You see, when you shift your attention away from the object of your desire, you also shift it away from all those limiting beliefs that are getting in your way, and when you do so, those obstacles/negative beliefs start losing their hold on you and with time (sometimes very little time), they are deactivated enough for what you want to come, because now there is less or perhaps no opposition to it.  Make sense?
 
The problem with most rituals like vision boards, visualization and affirmations is that they make us focus more intensely upon the things that we want.  And if those things have been a long time coming, that means that the use of the ritual is actually feeding the negative or limiting belief.  Instead of fueling the expectation, it is fueling the desire and when you fuel the desire you cannot help but fuel all the resistant thoughts and beliefs that surround it.  That, my dear friends is what Abraham means when they say “get off the subject”. 
 
At the end of the day, what I want to bring home to you is that it’s never the ritual that makes things happen; it’s the thoughts and the energies that you are putting out into the Universe.

A ritual is only as powerful as your ability to control your thoughts and understand the Law of Attraction. 

True power is in knowing how the Law of Attraction works, and with that power you can free yourself from all rituals and manifest anything your heart desires. 

Much love and appreciation,
Zehra
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