The REIKIDOGS Blog

Ritual is an act of devotion, an  invitation to the universe to activate our healing. Usually associated with religious and spiritual traditions and rituals empower us as we release and renew. Rituals help us navigate through life and boost our healimn with spiritual collaboration.  When we seek Divine  help, we purify through ritual.  Rituals often use objects of nature to link us to the natural world; one of the most familiar is ritualistic incense. In the Catholic Church the priest waves it toward the congregation for purification them. In Judaism as the Sabbath officially ends with the Havdallah ritual, which includes lighting an incense imbued with cloves which congregants inhale, a metaphor for retaiing  the sweetness of the Sabbath during the mundane week. Indigenous Americans smudge, whisking a burning cedar and sage wand over the body with the smoke.. The element integral to many purification rituals is water, a conductor and...

The popular distinction between prayer and meditation is that  prayer is talking to God and meditation is listening to God,  that universal force that perpetuates life.  We know that in real world communication models, both skills are necessary.for progress in relationships.  While we are encouraged  by our traditional religious traditions to pray, in the West we place little if any emphasis has been placed on meditation and usually look to Eastern customs when we seeking a deeper dialogue with the Eternal.   However, if we look more closely we will find examples in Western religion and in the culturally transmitted  stories that parallel those beliefs, fairy tales.  From Rapunzel locked in the tower and Sleeping Beauty separated from the world by thorny bushes during her long sleep to the created fairy tale-like fiction of Dorothy Gale in the Wizard of Oz, we see not only the receptivity to spirit through meditation, but the female  c...