after the ceremony
Dear reader,
Recently I've been talking to several people who are in the midst of big life changes - quitting jobs, birthing babies, moving from coast to coast. Like I wrote about last week, ritual can be a helpful part of marking the transition from one phase of life to another. But what happens the day after a ritual? What can we do during our “normal” lives to support ourselves through major changes?
Personally, while it was incredible to spend time on a darkness retreat this summer, just as important was figuring out how to bring the insights from it back into my daily life. It can be thrilling to be in the ritual itself, to be sitting in the metaphorical ceremony, but that moment only lasts a finite time, and then we're back to regular life. Routine can be a key part of integrating ritual into day-to-day existence, of making the insights stick.
For a lot of my life, words like routine, schedule, and bedtime felt constricting and boring. There were already so many demands from the outside world, why would I tack on self-imposed to-dos to my list? But lately I've been starting to view routine as something that can serve a liberating function. Routine can be a way of defining what parts of your life are non-negotiable must-haves and freeing up time and energy for them.
I now think of routine as a way to incorporate micro-rituals into daily life and to put a boundary around what is truly important. Rather than being a drag, a bedtime can be an act of devotion to yourself and your creative dreams, a ritual to make sure you rise energized and ready to work on a project early the next morning. Making space to meditate daily can be a way of connecting to insights from a recent retreat, just as playing records every day can connect you to a dance floor epiphany or spending 10 minutes a day with nature can help you build a bridge to the psychedelic experience you had in the woods.
Especially during big changes, we have the opportunity to take stock of our lives and consciously create what we want to dedicate space and time to. I love the exercise of making an ideal schedule, of marking out exactly how you'd like the week of your fantasies to look, hour-by-hour, scheduling time for sleep, exercise, meals, fun, being with friends or significant others, and anything important to you. It can be especially helpful to do this while still on a retreat or when you're on the cusp on a life transformation to call in what you're ready to make space & time for in your life.
Then pay attention to your week goes. It's not at all about sticking to the schedule perfectly but about noticing how often you say “I don't have time” for the things you marked as important - what's filling your time instead? Notice if you're doom scrolling during time you said you wanted to be with at home relaxing with your cat. What's getting in the way of what you said you want to do?
From there you can decide what's the most important first thing to change in your routine. Maybe it's a set wake-up time, writing for 20 min a day, or calling a friend twice a week. Pick one change, linking it to a WHY (I want to call in feeling more rested, more creative, more connected, whatever) to transform it into something more meaningful than the act itself, and commit to it for 21 days. Right now I'm working on morning meditation to make more space for spirituality. I'm curious to hear what's in your routine and how you make it stick.
<3 Kalen Flynn, MD