Battery levels & presence
A fellow introvert introduced me to a fabulous phrase – of feeling over-peopled. It perfectly describes the tipping point when sociable me needs to pause and re-charge. It reminds me to keep track of my energy levels, and what I might need to enable that battery re-charging.
My work often involves offering presence to individuals and groups. Thus, consistently managing my energy levels, re-charging and being able to offer the best version of myself, rather than the frazzled version of me, is imperative. And turning inward, and focusing on me, reminds me that I am at my happiest when my energy levels are plentiful, I feel fully refreshed, and I can be fully real with myself and others. If my personal batteries are depleted, then I’m starting my days with an energy deficit. Left unchecked, this can easily become burnout.
Photo by PSRVSKY PI
Honouring Ritual
I returned to Hong Kong, as part of the Autumn Festival’s rituals honouring my paternal ancestors on sacred ground. It has been a while since I was able to participate, and this return was humbling. This was a powerful reminder of the role of ritual in daily life.
Photo by Nathan Tran
Purification
The cleansing of the site, sweeping away leaves and detritus, serves both a practical step to ensure the site doesn’t become over-grown, and also a ritual element to clear away what might distract or obstruct. Energetically, it is also to clear the energies to neutral.
Personally, as a five-time mosquito snack, after battling through the spiny undergrowth to get to the site, I was grateful to have a space that was mostly mozzie-free!
Photo by Alina Vilchenko
Offerings
Traditionally, we make offerings of food, drink and grave-gifts to honour our ancestors. Modern grave-gifts are more paper than wooden or physical objects – I have seen paper Ferrari replicas which have been impressive!
We first offer money, placing paper money (alas, not valid in the material world!) at cardinal points around the site, weighted with rocks before my favourite part, scattering money around the site, in a show of abundance.
The food offerings are then placed in front of the main focus of the site, usually fruit including apples, bananas and oranges, and in my family, roast belly pork, freshly sourced from the market. Roast belly pork has multiple uses – as a tasty part of a meal, to flavour morning congee, rice porridge, or to form soup stock. Prayers are offered over the food, and blessings of the ancestors are sought. As practical folk, my family have always collected the food home.
Drinks are offered in red cups and trays. Often this is tea and alcohol, but as my family often laughs, which of our ancestors didn’t occasionally enjoy a sip of good rice wine. The drinks are poured into the cups, and each of us takes turns in offering the drink by pouring it in front of the main focus points. (And these, we refrain from drinking ourselves!).
Photo by Dmitry Zvolskiy
Sanctuary
My grandmothers always lit incense daily to honour their ancestors, at the small family altars in their homes. To this day, if you visit traditional Hong Kong villages, you’ll see gates, doorways and walls with incense holders embedded in the walls, with fresh incense sticks still present.
At the site, we first light candles in pairs, one for each ancestor in each location. And then, bundles of incense sticks are lit from the candles, and again placed in paired bundles for each ancestor. The lighting is traditionally done from the oldest generation down to the most recent. We usually bow and wave the incense bundles three times before placing them. It is also a moment where the most senior family member will invoke a blessing for those present and absent, to the ancestors. For me, it is also a silent communion and connection to those who came before me.
Photo by Ruly Nurul Ihsan
Celebration
Careful watch is made to ensure the candles and incense are burning out before we collect our detritus and leave. Some old school families might also admit to manually lighting old-fashioned firecrackers held in their hand and throwing them around/over the site, to celebrate the ancestors and make sure they hear and receive our offerings. Apparently, this is loud and deafening, and also highly dangerous, so not recommended these days!
Afterwards, the family, and other extended family members gather for a celebratory meal, in a family communion honouring plentiful food and connections.
Photo by RDNE Stock project
Compassionate Rituals
There is something about the deliberate marking of ritual that reminds me to invoke the sacred in daily life.
And the four stages of ritual are still relevant to daily life:
- Purification
- Offerings
- Sanctuary
- Celebration
1. Purification
In daily life, we absorb a lot: electronic noise, pollution, and worse, the last bastion of quiet on the Underground has been withdrawn as Wi-Fi has been made widespread. Enduring other people’s loud conversations on speakerphone is a personal pet peeve. I remain grateful for sound-insulating headphones! I like the idea of treating my home as a personal space, separate and removed from the outside peopley hurly-burly.
Salt has been used in many cultures to purify. I particularly like the Japanese custom of placing piles of rock salt either side of entrances and doorways to mark a cleansing barrier between hearth and exterior. These days, I use more practical jam jars with lids to contain the pink Himalayan rock slate that I refresh as needed.
I usually shower once I get home, literally washing off the day as I return home. On particularly intense days, if an Epsom salt bath and soak isn’t practical, I squeeze shower gel into a bowl with rock salt and use it as a shower scrub to cleanse. The change from outdoor clothes into clothes I wear at home is a relief, and a reminder that I am home. (And if you wear outdoor shoes indoors, remember you carry that external energy into the rest of your home too!).
If incense isn’t your thing (and certainly, I find it overwhelming indoors!), you might find dried sage bundles more to your preference. Light the tip of the bundle until it burns steadily and then crush out the lit leaves so there is a steady smoulder and wave the bundles around the room or yourself to smudge and cleanse.
This step allows me to take stock of my energy levels, and what might need to be processed that I may need to pay attention to, and if I’ve been able to leave my day behind. This may be the most important moment of my day – when I acknowledge to myself what I might to adjust in the forthcoming days so that I can offer myself ordinary compassionate ritual to take care of me, rather than running on empty. If I need to cancel, postpone, reschedule or rest, then this is the deciding moment that I take note of, and act on as appropriate.
If you take a moment to conduct an energy check, what might you want to release or lay down before you re-engage at home tonight?
Photo by Yaroslav Shuraev
2. Offerings
You may occasionally see me wave my hands over my food or hold my drink in both hands before I taste or sip. This is my moment to invoke blessings for the food and drink that I consume. Some may still say Grace before a meal, I simply whisper a deep thank you. It’s a small step that takes seconds and makes me smile before I take in my nourishment.
If like me, you have great appreciation for the miracle of the coffee bean, imagine the scent of the freshly milled beans wafting across the room, the warmth of the cup in your hand, and that moment of ahhhh before you take that first sip…you are already appreciating Earth’s daily offerings for you.
Is there something that might represent an offering for you?
3. Sanctuary
I adore candles, and it is too my chagrin that I generally forget to light candles in the evening. There is something about the flickering of the candlelight in the dark that connects me to the generations of humanity who are relied on fire and candlelight to illuminate the dark.
What I am more reliable with, is practice. I prepare for my daily meditation practice with asana, physical yoga postures to prepare to sit, and pranayama, breath and energy practices to flow into the meditative state. It’s one of my non-negotiables unless I’m genuinely too unwell to focus (reference not paying enough attention to my energy levels in advance), in which case I focus on simpler nourishing and supportive practices. Why do I meditate? Simply, I feel more grounded, clearer and more connected to myself when I am rooted in practice.
Do I find it easy? Absolutely not. Trust me, I still have midnight chats with myself when I’m tired and need to sleep and STILL haven’t practised…and often these chats include my reminding me of how much better I feel after practice!
What small action could you take to invoke sanctuary for yourself today?
Photo by Mikael Blomkvist
4. Celebration
Gratitude is often overlooked. How often do we give ourselves credit for making healthy decisions for ourselves? We are brilliant at torturing ourselves when we make mistakes or don’t quite blitz our to-do list. We are less skilled at taking that moment to appreciate ourselves for living well. This might scale from WELL DONE for NOT scoffing all of the dark chocolate coated ginger snaps in one go, to GO ME! I meditated before 10pm today! Lately it’s been I did GOOD – I did not leave the wet clothes in the washing machine overnight…
Our survival brains are wired to prioritise negative thoughts over positive thoughts. Grumpy and alive, is better than happy fool walking off into the forest late at night, I guess?
Gratitude invokes brain neuroplasticity and helps to reprogram our negative tendencies, to allow our soul’s innate capacity for joy to become more present.
What three things do you feel grateful for today?
Ordinary Compassionate Rituals
Language is funny isn’t it? What I call my ordinary compassionate rituals; you might call daily self-care. You might call me crazy for taking off my shoes at the door, going barefoot or in slippers indoors, and raise your eyebrows at evening showers with indoor clothes…it’s ok, I’m flexible. I even shower in the morning sometimes!
The steps are not the point. What matters is the energetic intention, and mindful moments to honour space and energy.
Photo by Daniel Eliashevsky
What mindful pause might you invoke today to honour your environment, your people and your own battery?
May you find ways to honour ritual in ordinary life, so remind you of the richness of the sacred in the daily ordinary.
Main – Photo by https://kaboompics.com/
About the Author: Winnie Man
