“Man is in need of a symbolical life–badly in need. We only live banal, ordinary, rational or irrational things–but we have no symbolic life. Where do we live symbolically? Nowhere except where we participate in the ritual of life.” – C. G. Jung
“We need ecstasy, which in its Greek sense (ek-stasis) means to be outside the ego. The ego is a prison, caught in time, space and rationality. We need to leave this mental prison behind from time to time, and on a regular basis. What can get us out? Poetry, love, sex, therapy, passion, nature, ritual, ceremony, music, empathy, compassion, and ‘feeling with’ the world. All of these things Jung calls ‘religion’. Religion is anything that provides escape from egocentricity, relief from the mundane, and as such he gives a Dionysian spin to religion, that seems almost contrary to what an archbishop, for instance, might mean by this term.” ― David Tacey
What role does ritual play in our search for meaning?
How can ritual break us out of the mundane?
How can we find those rituals of life that will fulfilll and sustain us?
