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Sample Emotional Clearing & Cleansing Ritual
Prepare
in advance: smooth white stones in a small basket
People are asked to remove
their shoes before entering the room.
Soft music (for instance,Gymnopedie No. 1 by Erik Satie) plays while people enter
and sit on chairs arranged in a circle. A small low table, on which the basket of stones sits, is in the center. (Music ends.)
Welcome
& Prayer
Welcome to you, welcome to the energies of love and healing that are already present in this room… We
are here to cleanse ourselves and walk free. We are here to acknowledge and turn over to the Holy Spirit the burdens we have
been carrying, burdens we don’t know how to ease. Collectively, in this room today, we will find the wisdom and the help we
need. Please join me in a brief prayer:
Dear God, Here we are. We have come together to be helped. For this brief time,
we surrender all control to you, and know that we are safe and we are loved. Amen
Introduction
Pain is
always trying to tell us something. Whether it’s physical pain or an aching of the heart, when we understand its message we
can begin to enact our healing. However, in so many cases, the message seems baffling and we don’t understand what’s being
asked of us. These are the kinds of burdens we are here to release today, in a spirit of openness and surrender. Volatile
emotions that bubble up uncontrollably, it seems, from inside us; sadness that covers us like a fog—we are here to surrender
these to Spirit, and then, step back, and wait. This is not a process of denial, of casting uncomfortable feelings out so
that they will never trouble us again. Not at all—we are asking to be shown the message they contain, asking to understand
the pearl inside our oyster. So this ceremony is only the beginning of a process which will lead us into the light.
(Pause.)
Surrender
Process
Please close your eyes….. Let us go around clockwise, and each speak out loud the name of a negative quality
or aspect we would like to be free of. Just the word, without explanations. We all have the explanations in our hearts and
minds, and we are the only ones who need to be burdened by that. I will start, by speaking the word, Anger. (People continue
clockwise, speaking words like depression, resentment, fear, worry, etc. Practitioner gently encourages everyone to speak
as many words as they need to. When everyone has finished, she allows a moment of silence and then says:)
Please join
me in a prayer to the Holy Spirit.
Beloved Holy Spirit, I speak for each of one of us when I say that you are the
source of all the wisdom and love within me. Thank you for all the blessings of my life. I know I have so much to be grateful
for. Yet these feelings weigh me down like stones, and struggling with them on my own availeth naught. Therefore, I offer
you my anger. I offer you my despondency and depression. (Practitioner continues naming all the negative emotions people mentioned.)
Release me from everything in my mind and heart that would keep me bound to limitation and suffering. I do not know the way
to healing and wholeness, but I trust that You do, and will lead me. Please direct my thoughts and guide my vision. Thank
you very much. Amen.
(Pause)
We have surrendered these dark energies to the Holy Spirit with the intention to be
open to Spirit’s working in our lives to show us what we need to know. We have offered the gift of our pain, and we affirm
our intention to listen for a leading, a word that suddenly blazes up in a conversation, a phone call offering an opportunity—there
is no telling how Spirit works but we have asked for help and help will be given.
Affirmation Process
(Practitioner
takes the basket of white stones off the table and holds it in her lap, while she says:)
Now I would like to offer
you a “replacement” for the dark and heavy emotions that have weighed on you like rocks and which you have surrendered in
this ceremony to the Holy Spirit.. I am holding a basket of smooth white stones. It is often very helpful, when getting rid
of a dark thing, to put a light thing in its place, even symbolically. So I want to ask you something. What are the positive
qualities you want more of in your life? When you appreciate something, you encourage it to grow. What do you want to appreciate
in yourself--Courage, a sense of humour, willingness to accept help? Patience, generosity, kindness?
Think for a minute,
if you could name one quality to put in the place of the darkness you offered to Spirit, what would it be? What can you celebrate
in yourself?
I’ll give you a moment…
(long pause……… Practitioner then stands, offers the basket of white stones to
one person after another) Please take a stone.
Now I would like you to close your eyes, and just hold your stone in the
warmth of your hand, getting used to how it feels…Warm that stone. Feel as if you are imbuing it with exactly that quality
you wish to nurture in yourself. Mentally name it your “courage” stone, your “patience” stone, and so on. Only you will know
what it represents. (Pause) When you leave here today, carry the stone with awareness, and when you get home, put the stone
in a place where your eye will fall upon it often. You are giving your self a tangible representation of a quality of being
you want to nurture in yourself.
(Pause)
Concluding Prayer
And now, please join hands with your
neighbors, and close your eyes…
We affirm, O Holy Spirit, Spirit of light, our intention to listen for Your voice in our
lives. We know that the longings of our hearts have been heard, and that we will be helped. We step back, and let You lead
the way. We know that all who are gathered here will be blessed. And so it is. Amen.
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