Articles

To keep a truth alive, we must feel an inner experience of it. And ritual celebrations are one way we can do this. They don’t, however, guarantee that a truth remains alive. For a ritual can become an empty gesture. When a tradition has become distorted, this means it is now a dead weight. It’s a meaningless carryover. This doesn’t necessarily mean it never had any deeper meaning. But in this moment, the true meaning has been lost.

One of the most important things for us to correct is the misunderstanding that we have the option to either take refuge from our problems—to run away from them—or make our way through them. In fact, we remain locked in the cycles of dying and being reborn, of struggling with pain and conflict—spiritually and psychologically as well as physically—exactly because we think we can make this choice.