Yes, fun is a purpose and has a value. The pain is on you : )

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May your awareness be perfection

This is a great question and really made me think about the value of ceremonies. I like the idea of using ceremonies as a way of involving our whole being, as opposed to staying in our head all the time, as gluadys pointed out. And I like what others said as well - my general feeling is that ceremonies or rituals are most helpful when they express truth/love, and least helpful when they're obligatory and have no meaning for us personally.

I have a dear friend that is an elder in her tribe. She is also a very good Shaman. At a conference we were attending, I asked her this question that had been bugging me awhile: When does tradition become tradition for the native people? I was thinking that Horses are not native to North America, but they have become very ‘traditional’ now. Her response was “When you do it twice…” and I laughed very loudly. She went on with a story that went something like this:

“There is a tradition of cutting off the end of the ham-bone and offering it to the ancestors. My mother did it. Her Mother before her, and her mother before her. It was a great tradition. No one realized that my great-great-grandmother had a very small cooking pot, and she cut the end off the ham so she could put the lid on. Tradition”

And yet the ritual of cutting off the end of the ham-bone has meaning. Anything done with Ritual and/or Ceremony can be done without Ritual and/or Ceremony. That does not make the Ceremony worthless. To the contrary, Ritual is very useful in helping individuals and groups to focus. How many people can do a 45 minute service in their head? Ceremony also brings comfort, and sometimes comfort is very very valuable. There are many beliefs where the ceremony makes things much stronger. The act of preparing and planning for the ritual may take hours, days or weeks, and the focusing on a specific goal, is very powerful. Fasting is a very common ritual.

I personally use ceremony/ritual as needed. Sometimes I just feel like I need to do things a certain way for added emphasis. Then there are times where it’s all a mental dialog. It just depends on the moment and how I’m feeling at the time. I never feel obligated to do any particular ceremony, and I never do anything out of rote, not anymore.

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I am what I have always have been and will be, I just remember better at times. Thank you for helping me remember, I will return the favor!