Rituals – Directing Your Orchestra

The human is a bit like an orchestra. There are many parts, each playing its own score. Your brain needs its food and plays its musical score. Your stomach wants its food and plays a different musical score. Your emotions have multiple voices like the orchestra has oboes, clarinets, trumpets and trombones. But that is not all. You have a body, a mind, and a soul. You have desires, hopes and needs. Then it gets even more compound, you have multiple roles: you are a parent, a spouse; you have your professional roles and community roles and many more.

You are the totality of all the parts and roles. Your orchestra is made up of all these parts and the tune that they each play. If each part plays without listening to other parts the result is a total cacophony. That is why your orchestra has an orchestrator. That’s the job of your soul. But it’s not enough to have an orchestrator. The orchestrator needs a musical score. Part of the score is given at the start, before birth, such as: survive and thrive. Your soul will do whatever it needs to keep you alive and to thrive. The other part of the score is not given at birth. It is not automatic. That part of the score is up to you and your choices. You write this score with your choices. You instruct your soul with your awareness and your consciousness.

What do rituals have to do with this? Rituals are how you bring to focus and attention your choices. They are a way to practice your desired musical score. Rituals are your way of telling your orchestrator, the soul, how and what you want it to conduct the orchestra to play.

© Aviv Shahar