Rituals and Routines

Rituals and Routines


I have been working on reducing the rituals and mindless routines that were robbing me of my life. Even when we balance up our life in this area, these things seem to creep back into our lives almost unnoticed. Little things can have a big effect on our peace when they start to all add up. When a ritual or routine stops serving us as a peace promoting tool and we start serving it as its slave, this is the turning point to start asking questions. Checking voice mail or emails seems benign enough, but when it turns into a compulsion and I become a slave to it I can see something has to change if I wish to reclaim my life back. I see this with a lot of college kids whenever I drop my kid at school. Some kids seemed to be tethered to their cellphone like it was an umbilical cord. He tells me his roommate he dorms with keeps his cell on all night for fear he will miss a call - does not want to miss anything, even texts or junk mail. The computer eats up gobs of time. Very easy to succumb to computer addiction. After all, it is much more pleasurable dreaming and writing about life than doing the dirty work to repair an out of balance life. I now use a kitchen timer to limit my computer time.

When working at home I used to leave the TV on all day for company. The 'noise' even followed me in the car via radio or CD's. I was addicted to background noise and had a hard time getting to sleep at night as the days noise and commotion repeated in my brain all night. Have done well with cutting back on noise pollution, as I wrote earlier in my post on 'Voluntary Solitude' but noise, as well as complexities, needs to be guarded against as both work diligently to get back into my life if I am not watchful. I used to go to the PO Box daily then decided to try it 3 days a week on Tues, Thur and Sat. After testing some more, I found I could get by with a trip there on Sat and Wed only. I cut down on supermarket time as well, as I found myself wasting much time there almost daily, sometimes at multiple markets daily. I told family to clue me in ahead of time as I would not be shopping like a madman as I had previously done. If they neglected to inventory properly and something ran out, then do without it for a few days until other needed items made a trip to the store necessary. Now I make lists and plan for the shopping and combine trips instead of running all over without much thought.

My Buddhist practice of mindfulness of the present moment has helped me - mindfulness of my time, mindfulness of my energies and most of all mindfulness of my inner peace. When we are 'mindless' in our actions, routines fit the bill perfectly. For such habitual routines require little or no thought. I started with making a list of my rituals that needed scaling back and kept questioning everything and kept testing. How did I form a list to start questioning rituals and routines? By looking at what was chipping away at my peace and start work there. Of course, this assumes we have a handle on our inner peace and can see what is affecting it negatively or positively. A time diary of your day is helpful with developing clarity in this evaluation department. But remember, it is not just rituals and routines that end up robbing you of life - everything you own takes a little peace ~ peace of you as well. The bible reminds us of this "Test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil," (1 Thess. 5:21) Even if you are an atheist, this concept of testing can be of help to you. For with such tests, 'the proof of the pudding will be in the eating' and decisions on how to live will not be left only to your ego, but will be grounded in peace. I discussed this in my earlier post "Our Guiding Light - Prejudice or Truth?"

In 1996 when I joined the Voluntary Simplicity aka Simple Living movement and started removing unneeded complexities from my life, I could see some light at the end of the tunnel. When you make this turn in direction and start removing complexities instead of adding them, you will see for yourself how important 'direction' makes with living a life at peace. Life can go in three directions. Either our complexities and stress can be growing, be frozen at the current level or be declining. Since life give use much problems for free, the optimum direction is a lessening of complexities if you have a true desire for simplicity and serenity in your life. No need to help shovel problems on our backs when we get enough for free? Previously I was very sick with all the complexities I had heaped upon myself. Looking for simplicity in one's life is a welcome break for those addicted to complex living. We seldom question if more of a "good thing" is desirable for our supposed happiness in life. The important question, that a life of Voluntary Simplicity helps answer, is the question of what IS enough so we may be at peace right now in the present. And in doing so, we can let go of peace and life destroying rituals and possessions and replace them with a contented, satisfied and complete life in the present moment instead of a life that revolves around the next thing to be acquired in hopes of satisfying our insatiable appetites.