Close the Loop
Throughout my years in the festival production world, we often talked about "closing the loop."
Festival production is incredibly fast-paced, especially when you are on-site & attendees have arrived.
With constant in-the-moment changes, it's very easy to begin a project, idea, &/or conversation then 2 seconds later be on to something totally different.
Hence the reminder to self & each other to close the loop.
Which essentially means: Make sure you circle back to what you started.
It wasn't until I was in a 2020 ritual skills training with green witch, Robin Rose Bennett, that I connected the phrase – close the loop – to my personal ritual practice.
Robin’s teaching uncovered a question within me:
Where did I need to close the loop on my rituals, ceremonies, & spells?
Instantly, I thought of all of my vision boards.
In 2009 I started creating intuitive collages as divinatory tools. Each collage is crafted for a particular purpose, so this decades+ practice resulted in a hefty stack of papers.
Since I considered the collages as sacred items, I knew I needed to do something intentional with them, I just didn't know at the time the what or how.
Hearing Robin Rose Bennett discuss the importance of intentionally concluding our rituals & ceremonies, I gave myself permission to acknowledge the collages had each served their purpose.
In order for my ritual spellwork to be complete, I needed to intentionally dispose of the collages.
It was time to close the loop on my ritual.
***
When we realize that we have not closed our ritual loop, shame & guilt can sneak in.
Stories might pop into the head telling us that since we haven't completed our ritual intention we're stupid, lazy, selfish, & never going to amount to anything.
Harsh, right?
If we have yet to close our ritual loop, it doesn't mean we're bad or broken.
If we have noticed that we have yet to close our ritual loop, it does mean we've been brought back to our ritual.
This is a moment to celebrate.
Once we have noticed we have a ritual loop to close, we create a moment to disrupt the internalized shaming dialogue (which was never ours to begin with).
Then we get to welcome in curiosity.
When we welcome in curiosity, we can better identify what's actually going on.
When we get curious about what's actually going on, we then uncover our very next action & discover what choice needs to happen so we can close the ritual loop.
