The Burning Bowl ritual is a year-end release work which is very appropriate in preparation for a new beginning and for bringing new good into your life. Rituals make things real for us, and the burning bowl sends a clear message to our subconscious minds (where the “hidden” patterns of thought operate to create or attract experiences into our lives) that we are truly serious about the new decisions we are setting out to make.
Rituals, in general, are important in our lives because they give us occasion to slow down for a few moments, and they provide the opportunity to reflect, to assess where we have been and where we are going. Rituals are a way of honoring our journey.
Just as we must clear out closets and drawers to make space for new items which come into our lives as we receive Christmas presents, so too must we make internal space available for the spiritual gifts of the season. Christ is born anew in you, and so today you get a chance to clear out everything unworthy of the expression of God that you are so as to create a place within you that there might be room in the Inn, so to speak.
The best place to begin the releasing process is with forgiveness. If there is anyone you feel strong negative emotions toward, put their initials at the top of a blank sheet of paper. Jot down anyone and everyone who is problematic in your life, anyone you feel resentment toward or anger about. Remember that you release these emotions to free yourself of them because having resentments toward another is like taking poison and expecting someone else to die. The major relationships in your life might be OK just now, but scan your awareness for anyone, even a minor character in your life, who interferes with your peace of mind and sense of being a loving person.
Sometimes our irritations are not about the person as a whole, but just a particular situation where he or she “has let us down” by not being considerate, accountable, sensitive to your needs, or whatever it might be – perhaps by infringing on your boundaries or even not measuring up to your standards or the expectations you had of them. It might be someone irritating at work or maybe just an annoying acquaintance that seems to be unavoidably present in your life.
Don’t feel totally free from the need to forgive, however, even though you can’t think of a particular individual. If you don’t feel strong repelling emotions toward an individual, you might find that you do have such emotion toward a group of people – racial or religious bigotry, for example, or clerks or food service people who are not service oriented, government employees, the IRS, lawyers, salesmen, telemarketers, the medical establishment, politicians, in-laws, the conspicuously wealthy, people receiving public assistance, slow drivers, nosy neighbors, etc.
If you can’t relate to any of that, ask yourself what situations come up in your life which really irritate you. Fill in the blank: “Don’t you hate it when X happens.” For example, you have scheduled an appointment with someone and you are in that person’s office when the phone rings. You have to sit there and listen to a one-sided conversation for five minutes. In another example, you go to your doctor’s office for an appointment and still have to wait 1 and ½ hours before you get to see the doctor. You make an appointment to get your car repaired, and it takes them 4 days instead of 1 to get the job done. You are in the only open checkout line, buying something that you need badly and you are in a hurry, of course, then the cashier calls for a price check for the slow person in front of you. What if the scanner scans the item for regular price when there was a sign that said it was on sale for much less? In short, what are the typical situations which you feel resentment or upset toward?
Try to get clear in your mind precisely what it is that frustrates or irritates you about the person, group of people, or situations which push your buttons. What is it that you feel when you interact with this person or group, or how do you feel when you encounter this situation? Get clear in your mind and state clearly on paper the exact cause of the irritation. That cause will be the feelings which stir your emotion. Jot down what your feelings are as clearly as you can. If you are unsure of what you feel, just note the situation for the time being.
Be aware that behind feelings is a belief that is a part of an old pattern of thinking. Typical patterns, which you can think of as scripts, revolve around issues of trust. For example, the fear of being taken advantage of, the fear of being discounted, the idea that if you want something done right you have to do it yourself, the fear of abandonment – behind every experience is one of these old beliefs in operation, even though at the conscious level your spiritually-aware rational mind recognizes the pattern of belief as untrue. At the conscious level you know that, but someplace inside and old part of you has not received the message yet.
Now focus on your heart and ask what that person or group has come into your life to show you or to teach you. Know that behind appearances is a message with a true blessing – one, when understood, enables you to perceive a false belief so that you can release it. This feeling is there to develop a soul quality in some way. Whatever negative emotion you feel signals a false belief, and that belief which is undoubtedly beneath the surface of your awareness is blocking the full experience of abundance in your life. Remember that every experience in life is an experience which resonates with meaning – the Universe is always trying to communicate with us, so just be willing to release this pattern of thought and experience today. Write it down. God within you will provide the insights you need as you decide it is time for you to release this excess baggage. As you see your forgiveness paper go up in smoke in a little while, know that it is being dissolved through this prayer ritual and everything that needs to take place for your new freedom unfolds easily, in divine order.
Charles Fillmore, the cofounder of Unity Church, said that we should each spend a half an hour daily forgiving everything and everyone who came into our life that day who was capable of evoking negative emotions. To forgive is to give truth for error. The truth is that everything happens in our lives so as to bless us. Once we integrate this paradigm shift into our consciousness we see that we “own” the experience by right of consciousness – it is our experience, and so it is our blessing. Make sure you forgive yourself for unworthy thoughts and behaviors as you do your forgiveness work, otherwise the residue of guilt will draw punishment. Just know that, like everyone else, you have done the best you can and that now, as God in you works to create more awareness and you become more practiced in the exercise of your spiritual understanding, you are destined to do better.
The rest of this exercise in unburdening ourselves tends to lighten because we tend not to feel so unworthy about other areas where release is in order. So let’s have fun doing our house-cleaning as Spirit guides us in sweeping over our souls. Please don’t use this as an opportunity to beat yourself up for your perceived defects – that is a major old pattern to release. During the time we focus on what we no longer need, remember that defects are merely calls for adjustment – we have all that we need to perfect every defect. That’s why defects draw our attention.
Draw a line under your forgiveness statements and begin writing your list of those things in your life which you are now willing to release. I’m going to talk all the way through this exercise while you are writing to help you think of things which you might otherwise leave out. Just keep writing, and don’t worry too much about the form. After all, this will all soon be burned.
Begin now by writing down whatever tops your list of most burdensome or worrisome things in your life today. Write them out and let these be at the top of your list. Remember it is the worry you are releasing or the burden. The thing itself is neutral until you put a judgment on it. After you have the ones that come to your mind most quickly, add any others that fit your experience from the suggestions I now make:
Enemy thinking – viewing other people as threats or obstacles, the idea of competition (there really isn’t any), aggressive thinking, arguing in your mind, responding in your thoughts to hurts or imagined hurts, swelling on being right at the cost of being happy, making the other person wrong so that you can make yourself right. Making God wrong so that your position is self-righteous.
Limitation thinking: using the “facts” to limit the possibilities in your life such as, “the economy is slow, there are no jobs out there”, “I am too old to get a job”, “there is no need for what I do”, “nobody values what I do enough for me to earn a comfortable income”, “I’ve been out of school too long to be a successful student”, “there’s no future in doing (fill in the blank)”, etc. “This is cold season. Every time I sneeze I realize that I am getting a cold. If my head gets stuffy, I will have cold symptoms for X number of days.”
You might also want to release habits such as smoking, excessive intake of coffee or colas, drinking too much alcohol or doing anything excessively (and obsessively). Whatever repeating patterns there are in your life which interfere with your joy, that get between you and fulfillment in your relationships, or which sabotage whatever you wish to achieve or be…what are the patterns that lead to your showing up in the world in a way not worthy of who you really are and who you are becoming? Perhaps you want to release commitment avoidance so that you can be a person who says “yes” to life. What patterns can you track which create the most negative thinking? Release these patterns, these addictions. You might also find that in some cases you avoid commitment, and in others you over-commit. Release the imbalance.
Look at the words you use. Some of them could be replaced easily and the release would create a tremendous difference in your perceptions. Eliminate the word “try” as in “I will try to do X”. There is no try. You either do something or you don’t. “Trying” prevents us from ever achieving our goals. “Try” is a word that signals commitment avoidance, lack of confidence, and it undermines our success. Another word to release is “need” as in, “I need to do X”. Use “choose” instead, because “choose” takes the activity from the realm of mandatory into the realm of choice, where it belongs. “Want” is another word to release. Remember that Conversations With God makes it clear that we cannot have what we “want”! As long as we want, we acknowledge lack. So instead of saying “I want X”, say “I choose X”.
Eliminate all but the most literal descriptions of how you feel or what you are experiencing – don’t use clichéd metaphors to describe your feelings. There are probably thousands of phrases which send a negative message to our subconscious minds: “This is just like pulling teeth”, “I don’t believe it.”
Eliminate fear statements: I can’t do X, because I am afraid that if I do X will happen. Certainly acknowledge your fear, but then take time to recognize it as a fear, a worry thought, and not a necessary outcome. Affirm the outcome that you choose rather than the outcome that you fear. Eliminate words like “unrealistic,” “ought,” “should,”; eliminate scripts like the one that says my duty is to please, or try hard; I must be strong; I must be perfect. Eliminate life scripts like “Life is hard,” “I have to do it myself,” “This is too good to be true,” etc. Release the “Until” script: When X happens, then I will be happy, or safe, or free (when my kids are grown, when I retire, when I have X number of dollars in the bank, when I get the promotion, when I finish school, when I meet my soul mate, then . . .) Claim whatever it is that you envision now. You don’t have to wait unless you think you have to wait, to experience joy, love, peace, abundance, fulfillment, etc. Eliminate “once and for all” thinking – in truth, nothing happens once and for all, and we simply discourage ourselves by thinking that it does. Let go of the need to control, to change others, to have definitive answers, release the fear of change, the sense of not being enough – not good enough, attractive enough, thin enough, smart enough, strong enough, rich enough, healthy enough, educated enough, loveable enough, talented enough; I’m not creative, I’m not organized.
Eliminate this morning the filter that prevents you from seeing the peace that is already there (or order, harmony, blessings joy, beauty, fulfillment). Eliminate the idea that joy comes from the outside rather than the inside. Eliminate the tendency to look exclusively outside yourself for healing, joy, fulfillment, love, etc.
Eliminate the tendency to measure your worth b y what you do; release the distrust you have for anything that can’t be proven or seen; let go of the need to be more, to do more than you can do; set free the compulsion to commit without thinking; and, conversely, to say no automatically; say goodbye to the need to believe that you are responsible for bringing happiness or safety to others – over care; false gods (giving something or some person or condition more power than you give to God). Release self-righteousness, guilt and self-condemnation.
Release what Caroline Myss calls wound-ology – the sense of being permanently warped by your past; the sense of being a victim in life. Release willfulness, discontent, resistance, depression, being against rather than for, the need to know before you can move forward; let go of being a truth seeker in favor of being a truth finder; release the idea that you are stuck.
Give up the idea that your life (or marriage, or church, or your job, or body, your income, etc.) is already as good as it can be. Release the current limits of your imagination. Release the idea that you can’t be who you are, that it is not safe to be fully yourself. Release the idea that what you don’t release today will never be released, release the idea that it will soon be too late to do what you have to do, that you are unlucky, that you are destined to failure, that you inherit limitations in health or appearance or opportunities.
Now take just a moment once again to center yourself within, and to confirm your conscious choice to release the patterns or judgments written on your list. Bless them for what they have taught you about yourself, for they have helped you clarify your values and priorities – and have helped you to better know who you really are and what you are becoming. And so, with a grateful heart, let us all now release that which no longer serves us well, and that which has outgrown its usefulness.