Ritualing goes back to the beginning of time. It is the original tool for survival. It transforms the landscape. It transforms the community. It transforms the self.
When things fall apart, there is a moment of crisis, and in that moment, a solution must be found. Even when the forces which hold molecules together disappear, as when a snowflake melts, the individual molecules – even the individual atoms, are lost and must seek out the Way to endure. The water of a melting snowflake will evaporate into the air, pour down as rain, trickle into streams and find their way to oceans. That is survival.
It is also a ritual, and that is why the journey of a snowflake appeals to us. We can imagine ourselves within it, project ourselves there, experiencing its journey. We can experience our own lives as a series of rituals, make ourselves at one with the snowflake – survival!
Our lives are filled with survival, and our ritualing is consciousness. In survival, our consciousness is not rooted at the center of our brains, our bodies, or any individual landscape, but in ecosystems. The consciousness within us, like the qualia within snowflakes, resonates with ecosystems.
That is one of the miracles of the human consciousness: We can, at one and the same time, balance ourselves at the center of our own landscape and project ourselves far beyond, where lie the real treasures of qualia. In doing so, the harmony – the power of ecosystems flow back into us. This is how we ritual consciously!