Janet Bray Attwood - Your Hidden Riches: Unleashing the Power of Ritual to Create a Life of Meaning and Purpose

UNLEASHING the POWER of RITUAL
to CREATE a LIFE
of MEANING and PURPOSE

Janet Bray Attwood
and Chris Attwood

with Sylva Dvorak, Ph.D.

PART ONE
Rituals and Your Ideal Life

PART TWO
Rituals to Meet Your Needs

PART THREE
Your Greatest Riches

W eJanet and Chrisspend our days doing the most exciting work imaginable: showing people they possess a unique Life Design that runs through every part of their life. When this design is uncovered, things that seem random and accidental, or the product of bad luck and misfortune, suddenly make sense. This also applies to you. Instead of being the victim of circumstance, tossed around by forces you cant control, you can discover how fulfilling life is meant to be. Your Life Design makes everything click into place. Suddenly you are at the center of purpose and meaning. You matter in the most precious way possible.

This book will take you many steps deeper into your unique Life Design. It will help you reveal your hidden riches: the untapped potential that is disguised by the haphazard way most people live. Our approach is rooted in the most ancient traditions of our world, based on daily ceremonies, celebrations, and practices for deepening heart and mindin short, a host of rituals that give your days shape and meaning. A lifetime is nothing but a series of days, and when you can uplift each one, you can discover heights you never thought possible.

But why rituals? The very word may bring up bad memories of empty rituals, like Thanksgiving dinner with family members who dont really want to be there, or saying grace as fast as possible to get down to the business of eating. Rituals imply formality, like a Japanese tea ceremony. Beautiful, but not suitable for the fast pace of modern life.

Contrast those moments with a formal wedding, at which ritual, ceremony, and celebration lay the foundation for an unforgettable experience. Janet recalls the day she married Chris in a small chapel: I watched from the back of the hall as all our friends assembled in a mood of happy expectation. My six bridesmaids walked down the aisle, along with twelve little flower girls. Chris had to rush to get there on time, but there he stood, still slightly red and winded, waiting for his bride.

It would be my turn in a minute, and suddenly I realized that I wasnt myself, not the self who had been frantically organizing this event and trying to make sure every detail was perfect. Im a confident person who is used to performing in public. But I was trembling, on the verge of tears. There was something so profound in the atmosphere. It went beyond the joy of the ceremony. I almost felt like I was outside my bodyand then I realized why. I was experiencing a sacrament. Organized religion hadnt been a part of my life for a long time, but at that moment, I peered into a kind of spiritual mystery: how the assembly of people gathered to join two souls creates a sacred space.

Ive never forgotten that little epiphany, and now, years later, I believe that creating a sacred space, not just in a chapel but in your own being, is one of lifes most precious attainments.

Our intent is to help you unfold the richness of ritual that Janet glimpsed that day. We ask you to set aside your preconceptions. In reality, rituals have deep meaning that has been largely story about one womans experience of uncovering a layer of the mind she never dreamed existed. But first, a bit more about why this book is called Your Hidden Riches .

Your hidden potential is woven into the secret patterning of your life. The answers to your deepest questions and most cherished hopes arent somewhere outside you. Life is the answer to life. You must connect with that part of you where these answers, your riches, lie.

What keeps people from finding their hidden riches? Weve thought long and hard about that, and here is our conclusion. One of the happiest parts of anyones life is connected to one of the saddest. The happy part is the dream you have of how your life is going to turn out. Beginning as children, we all assemble bits and pieces of an ideal picture, which is based on getting what we really want. To a six-year-old, what you really want is mostly within reach, because there is food and protection provided by your parents, friends and games, with lots of time to play. But if we fast-forward thirty years, often the dream has crumbled, and is now associated with sadness instead of hope.

Are you getting what you really want? Are you happy, fulfilled, and living life as youd like it? If so, you have achieved something rare: You have found your Life Design, probably through much trial and error. Your destiny is being lived through work, relationships, and recreation. What could be more ideal? Life isnt really like a box of chocolates, despite what Forrest Gumps mother told him. Its rather like an enormous jigsaw puzzle that promises a beautiful finished picture, only the top of the box is blank. You are expected to assemble the pieces with no model to follow. To make the puzzle even harder, new pieces arrive every day.

Its actually quite amazing how well most people put together hidden places where forgotten dreams have died.

In the United States, people hold on to an image of total freedom, the open road, and rebels without a cause. Living this way has become a goal for many young people the world over. Reality isnt like that. Beyond adolescent fantasies and romantic daydreams, real joy comes from knowing that youve built the best life possible, using your intelligence, creativity, and every fiber of your being.

As youll soon read, rituals can be applied to small, everyday actions in order to make daily life rich and rewarding. Rituals can also be formal ceremonies that transform, connecting you to deep meaning in every aspect of your life, and may even change your entire lifes direction. (Weve gathered a rich collection of both everyday and ceremonial rituals to support your exploration of this remarkable world at www.thehiddenriches.com.)

So how are your hidden riches revealed? First, by knowing that they exist. Second, by bringing your mind to a deeper level of attention. Third, by channeling your life energy in new directions. Well show you how to do all three, using rituals as the key, since they provide a natural route to a deeper reality, one that already exists within you. Attention is really the main focus, because all day, every day, you place your attention on one thing after another. If your attention is distracted, overwhelmed, stressed, and worried, then your daily life is being pulled this way and that by outside influences. For many people, just getting through the day is a form of barely organized chaos.