As we confront the turbulence of rapid change, technological dehumanization, and cultural polarization, how do we reconnect to being and meaning? Best-selling author BRUCE FEILER returns us to ritual: world-wide, time-honored ways for people to come home to themselves, their communities, and the sacred. Ritual returns us to unity.
From a Jungian perspective, rituals use symbols to move and shape psychic energy for a group and its members. Energy expands as the unifying power of symbol is evoked and shared, an experience of extra-ordinary reality. Ritual mediates our relationship with the sacred, individually and together. It opens a door to the infinite and allows us to know we belong to something greater.
The universality of rituals to commemorate life events such as birth, marriage, and death also speaks to Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious. We are imbued with the importance of ritual as a means of coming into alignment with one another and the numinous.
Although many of the rituals that mark birth, puberty, marriage, and death have weakened or faded in modern life, a range of new rituals is emergent: gender reveals welcome new life; an “honor walk” through hospital corridors recognizes the import of organ donation. Some life events have less relevance, and new ones meet current needs.
Rituals mediate transition and transformation. They invite us to participate in the dance of the cosmos.
Our Guest
Bruce Feiler is one of America’s most thoughtful voices on contemporary life—he uses original research into life transitions, life rituals, and life stories to help people find meaning in times of change. He is the author of seven New York Times bestsellers, including Life is in the Transitions, The Secrets of Happy Families and The Council of Dads. His four TED Talks have been viewed more than five million times, and he is a fellow at the Stanford Computational Psychology and Well-Being Lab, which is writing an AI LLM based on his work.
Bruce’s latest book, A Time to Gather: How Ritual Created the World—and How It Can Save Us, describes his 50,000 mile journey to sixteen countries on six continents, chronicling the astonishing rise of reinvented life rituals. From the Vatican to Bali to Ireland, A Time to Gather is a both stirring adventure and a practical manual for restoring togetherness with gatherings you’ll love.
Here’s the Dream We Analyze
I was back in high school and an “American Carl Jung” was our guest speaker to our student body. Instead it was my sociology professor from college, but we all recognized him as Carl Jung. I was excited to hear him talk while all my peers weren’t so thrilled he came.
Then he started talking about all kinds of topics, and the roles were reversed and I lost interest while they were all loving it. Then he started talking about meditation and I became very interested, and at that point everyone else became bored.
After the lecture I was about to walk home when a girl from my high school who was perfectly cast by my subconscious approached me and said she never really liked me and always thought she was superior to me, but ever since I started ignoring people (especially women) she changed her thoughts on me and now began liking me.
I wrote down “I’m asexual, I don’t experience sexual attraction.” I thought about handing it to her but instead kept it to myself and walked away while making her feel awkward and confused.
Resources Discussed in this Episode
- Bruce Feiler, A Time to Gather: How Ritual Created the World—and How It Can Save Us
- David Foster Wallace, Commencement Address at Kenyon College, 2005 – read it in Mockingbird Magazine.
- Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage.
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