What I’ve seen and experienced is a lot of people (of all ages, including young people) having initiatory / rites of passage experiences on psychedelics. They often struggle to contextualize and integrate the experience. The result can be very disorienting.
The thing about cultures who practice legitimate rites of passages is there’s a lot of support and understanding leading up to and after the initiation.
Initiations challenge one’s identity, they help old ways of being come undone and make space for connecting with a more authentic sense of self. But if one isn’t prepared, the coming apart of an old sense of self and be terrifying.
Trauma is inherently initiatory, so long as it’s processed / integrated. Otherwise it’s just traumatic. Hoping we can create better understanding and support structures to not just facilitate ritual initiation but also help those who have not yet integrated the spontaneous initiations that inevitably happen.
They have this ‘Divine Liturgy’ down at the church on Sundays does a symbolic ritual representing the gruesome death of a man every week! Apparently he let himself be the scapegoat, so we could get off scot free! They drink the blood!!
How New York Lost and Regained Control of Union Square
Question. How can you (we) offer thoughts on the absence of Ritual and Rite of Passage that could directly expand the Times subjective news and interpretation of this event?
Thanks for the thought provocation as always! Really enjoy your writing.
This essay made me think about the mind-body connection, or lack thereof, and how ritual can be a conduit to establish deeper connection with the body and therefore existence at large. While the disconnection from body is practical (as I believe you’ve discussed before, the corporeal filtering that happens every second to reduce awe no doubt helps us function), as adults, our built-in reducers may also inhibit the conscious acceptance of our physical selves as infinite vessels because we’re aware of our constant degradation. But when do we start noticing this? For adults it can be hard to accept we will soon become reorganized particulates in the mysterious swirl of the infinite. Why attempt connection with the body, a thing in such constant and eroding flux? Why not start building the blockade as soon as possible to shore up the failing dam? I believe this awe-reduction creep is passed on to youth from the important adults in their lives, at least this was true for me.
That youth create scapegoat rituals and rites of passage unconsciously, to me signals a primal yearning to return to the body, where the uncertainty of existence lives, before one of life’s great physical and mental transitions from young person to adult.
Often when youthfulness terminates we begin (or continue) awe-reducing to stave off death by disconnecting from the body, when in reality there is no better opportunity for understanding the greatness of Time and our existence than through the experience of our aging bodies. It’s our only chance to perceive it all, at least in the here and now. (In your essay I enjoyed the correlation to math and indeterminacy for the ritualized. I’ve thought something similar but hadn’t considered it through the lens of ritual: humans inhabiting bodies are limited but also equivalent to infinity as their own versions of expanding and decaying cellular universes floating in flesh. To align with your isomorphism thought, I agree the infinite resonates with the personal, in the scale invariance of existence.)
But, specific circumstances depending, youth in general are standing on the other scale from adults; they haven’t yet tipped the balance to necessarily fear their bodies or death. As a young person myself, I didn’t know I had a body. I was taught life was to be lived in the brain, that this famous gray matter fear factory would keep me safe, and if I was numb to my body and hid it away out of sight and mind, then I might have a chance at survival. Above all I was never to put my body in a risky situation, and the determination of risk was so broad it entailed boring, common things. I learned my body was a risk unto itself and to my brain, in a constant near-death state, only ever narrowly avoiding the worst case scenario. So my brain severed all ties with my body until mid-adult life but until then I experienced no awe, only aversion.
So based on the three criteria outlined, I’m wondering if ritual might be a conduit to better maintain the bodily connection we are all born with, that each of us experiences purely in amnion on the edge of existence and non-existence. After reading ‘The NYC "Riot" As Spontaneous Ritual’, I started imagining the amplitude of the rituals that could be collectively normalized and experienced by young people, all the incredible greatness of initiation that I never experienced, and what that would entail and feel like. But then I wondered, yes there should be big, essential rituals/rites, but what if there are a lot of really small ones too?
People describe the impact of out-of-body experiences, and this is at first what I imagined ritual as a resonant experience would feel like: the heroes journey to adulthood, staring death in the face or even just the death of innocence, the terror of complete solitude as a young person, anything that would create an altered state of consciousness and usher in a new world view. But considering our established bodily infinities, I’d like to acknowledge the transformative power of in-body experiences as well. A middle ground that is neither big nor small, dangerous or safe, and takes on only the meaning we assign to it. Exercises in self-understanding.
Small practices that bring us back into body, even mundane ones like conscious breathing or stretching, may help open the door to awe. As a recovering bodiless person, going on small journeys, daily micro-monomyths if you will, has helped keep the inspiration and opportunity of uncertainty near, opening me up to possibilities and challenges that I was previously too fearful to undertake. Of course I’m concerned this doesn’t translate well to the power of what young people need to propel and compel them at such a profound and pivotal stage of life, but I wonder. Can small conscious practices be part of it, or does it have to come from something big and utterly transformative, something inherently not in a person’s control? Since we are already transforming a little everyday, in ways aging adults would love to ignore and deny, but the young may still embrace?
The small practice of consciously returning to body, dare I call it ritual, may be of value to young people who might more easily access the possibilities and uncertainties in indeterminacy, awe, and transcendence than adults, or at least be more aware of their filters and gauges. But in order to do this they have to be aware of their bodies, to trust themselves and their whole mind-body-being. Not to equate ritual to the banal, inherently they are not the same, but perhaps we should call into question what is considered miraculous or mundane on a more consistent basis. Of course definitions and qualifications will be reframed throughout the course of life, but where mundaneness and miraculousness intersect, where the respective sides of duality meet is a good space to pause, be conscious in our bodies, and see what happens. I wonder if the possibilities for growth in this space are captivating enough to practice throughout life, especially in youth. Maybe I need to become ritualized as a version of my younger self in my middle aged body to find out.
Lineage
When time comes for lowered eyes to rise, everyone gathers.
Ancestors drift in on sea glass rafts, young boys pause in the spearing of lizards,
grandfathers emerge from their pale rooms.
Stories unfold through the hands of women,
press into small rounds of mirrored glass,
and pass into those not yet touched by sunlight.
Visions gathered like violets from the fire,
are woven into reams of cool white cloth.
There will be a dress for every daughter.
What I’ve seen and experienced is a lot of people (of all ages, including young people) having initiatory / rites of passage experiences on psychedelics. They often struggle to contextualize and integrate the experience. The result can be very disorienting.
The thing about cultures who practice legitimate rites of passages is there’s a lot of support and understanding leading up to and after the initiation.
Initiations challenge one’s identity, they help old ways of being come undone and make space for connecting with a more authentic sense of self. But if one isn’t prepared, the coming apart of an old sense of self and be terrifying.
Trauma is inherently initiatory, so long as it’s processed / integrated. Otherwise it’s just traumatic. Hoping we can create better understanding and support structures to not just facilitate ritual initiation but also help those who have not yet integrated the spontaneous initiations that inevitably happen.
They have this ‘Divine Liturgy’ down at the church on Sundays does a symbolic ritual representing the gruesome death of a man every week! Apparently he let himself be the scapegoat, so we could get off scot free! They drink the blood!!
Update NYT - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/08/nyregion/kai-cenat-union-square-nyc-riot.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
How New York Lost and Regained Control of Union Square
Question. How can you (we) offer thoughts on the absence of Ritual and Rite of Passage that could directly expand the Times subjective news and interpretation of this event?
Thanks for the thought provocation as always! Really enjoy your writing.
This essay made me think about the mind-body connection, or lack thereof, and how ritual can be a conduit to establish deeper connection with the body and therefore existence at large. While the disconnection from body is practical (as I believe you’ve discussed before, the corporeal filtering that happens every second to reduce awe no doubt helps us function), as adults, our built-in reducers may also inhibit the conscious acceptance of our physical selves as infinite vessels because we’re aware of our constant degradation. But when do we start noticing this? For adults it can be hard to accept we will soon become reorganized particulates in the mysterious swirl of the infinite. Why attempt connection with the body, a thing in such constant and eroding flux? Why not start building the blockade as soon as possible to shore up the failing dam? I believe this awe-reduction creep is passed on to youth from the important adults in their lives, at least this was true for me.
That youth create scapegoat rituals and rites of passage unconsciously, to me signals a primal yearning to return to the body, where the uncertainty of existence lives, before one of life’s great physical and mental transitions from young person to adult.
Often when youthfulness terminates we begin (or continue) awe-reducing to stave off death by disconnecting from the body, when in reality there is no better opportunity for understanding the greatness of Time and our existence than through the experience of our aging bodies. It’s our only chance to perceive it all, at least in the here and now. (In your essay I enjoyed the correlation to math and indeterminacy for the ritualized. I’ve thought something similar but hadn’t considered it through the lens of ritual: humans inhabiting bodies are limited but also equivalent to infinity as their own versions of expanding and decaying cellular universes floating in flesh. To align with your isomorphism thought, I agree the infinite resonates with the personal, in the scale invariance of existence.)
But, specific circumstances depending, youth in general are standing on the other scale from adults; they haven’t yet tipped the balance to necessarily fear their bodies or death. As a young person myself, I didn’t know I had a body. I was taught life was to be lived in the brain, that this famous gray matter fear factory would keep me safe, and if I was numb to my body and hid it away out of sight and mind, then I might have a chance at survival. Above all I was never to put my body in a risky situation, and the determination of risk was so broad it entailed boring, common things. I learned my body was a risk unto itself and to my brain, in a constant near-death state, only ever narrowly avoiding the worst case scenario. So my brain severed all ties with my body until mid-adult life but until then I experienced no awe, only aversion.
So based on the three criteria outlined, I’m wondering if ritual might be a conduit to better maintain the bodily connection we are all born with, that each of us experiences purely in amnion on the edge of existence and non-existence. After reading ‘The NYC "Riot" As Spontaneous Ritual’, I started imagining the amplitude of the rituals that could be collectively normalized and experienced by young people, all the incredible greatness of initiation that I never experienced, and what that would entail and feel like. But then I wondered, yes there should be big, essential rituals/rites, but what if there are a lot of really small ones too?
People describe the impact of out-of-body experiences, and this is at first what I imagined ritual as a resonant experience would feel like: the heroes journey to adulthood, staring death in the face or even just the death of innocence, the terror of complete solitude as a young person, anything that would create an altered state of consciousness and usher in a new world view. But considering our established bodily infinities, I’d like to acknowledge the transformative power of in-body experiences as well. A middle ground that is neither big nor small, dangerous or safe, and takes on only the meaning we assign to it. Exercises in self-understanding.
Small practices that bring us back into body, even mundane ones like conscious breathing or stretching, may help open the door to awe. As a recovering bodiless person, going on small journeys, daily micro-monomyths if you will, has helped keep the inspiration and opportunity of uncertainty near, opening me up to possibilities and challenges that I was previously too fearful to undertake. Of course I’m concerned this doesn’t translate well to the power of what young people need to propel and compel them at such a profound and pivotal stage of life, but I wonder. Can small conscious practices be part of it, or does it have to come from something big and utterly transformative, something inherently not in a person’s control? Since we are already transforming a little everyday, in ways aging adults would love to ignore and deny, but the young may still embrace?
The small practice of consciously returning to body, dare I call it ritual, may be of value to young people who might more easily access the possibilities and uncertainties in indeterminacy, awe, and transcendence than adults, or at least be more aware of their filters and gauges. But in order to do this they have to be aware of their bodies, to trust themselves and their whole mind-body-being. Not to equate ritual to the banal, inherently they are not the same, but perhaps we should call into question what is considered miraculous or mundane on a more consistent basis. Of course definitions and qualifications will be reframed throughout the course of life, but where mundaneness and miraculousness intersect, where the respective sides of duality meet is a good space to pause, be conscious in our bodies, and see what happens. I wonder if the possibilities for growth in this space are captivating enough to practice throughout life, especially in youth. Maybe I need to become ritualized as a version of my younger self in my middle aged body to find out.