Reflect, Remember, Recognize, and Realize
The four Rs making inner work feel more like ritual than routine
December 23, 2023. Feet in the sand, coffee in hand, I was grounding myself after a Saturday kundalini yoga practice. My body walked out of that room as it usually does.
Like, yes, I am indeed a spiritual being having a human experience.
Let’s reorient to earth, now.
I’d just pulled into my hands an open clam shell. The shape perfectly matched an engraving atop a table I’d shared the day before with a dude on a date.
Two triangles meeting at one point. Infinity sign vibes.
I let it drop and kept walking. That guy was fine. Funny. Not my forever.
A few steps and a ping: Maybe the shell wasn’t for him. Maybe it was for me.
I retraced my path, rediscovered the mollusk’s abandoned home, and felt its smooth ridges in my fingers, thinking about the day before.
Something else curious had happened.
Walking out the back of our meeting spot, I noticed a delivery truck branded Root Down Farm. “Holy shit,” I thought on the spot. “I’ve been there.” And it’s not like I frequent farms often. Our parting was wonky. I was distracted by the energy firing, internally making these connections.
On November 5, 2023, I’d gone feather foraging at Root Down, a 40-minute drive from my place up the coastal California Highway 1. Inland just enough to still smell the ocean, but with sprawling open space that felt a world away from the sea.
Used in healing circles to cleanse and clear energy, my therapist had earlier suggested I explore feather medicine. When I get in my head, she might beautifully guide me to ritual or play where I feel connected to truth and free from the untrustworthy spiraling.
I was coming off one year post my world changing and navigating challenging frequencies.
Feathers sounded fun.
I contemplated buying some, ethically harvested. Then thought, “How cool would it be if I ethically harvested them myself?”
“The owner met me at the entrance,” I journaled, “walked me to the field, told me some rules about locking fences behind me and taking care around the electric ones—and let me loose. Talk about feeling like a kid again. On an unknown adventure. A treasure hunt. Every feather I spotted, a magical surprise. Even more surprising, spotting the flock of six wild turkeys freely roaming the property. She’d said the wild turkey feathers were beautiful, if I could find them.”
The poultry, raised to soon grace Thanksgiving tables, were gone, having left the plainest feathers behind.
I’d discovered loads of the striped wild ones and had been waiting weeks for the perfect piece, meant to adorn an eventual prayer fan.
This shell was it.
Radical self lovin’
On the beach, I’d felt gratitude at this realization that the shell might be for me. It demonstrated a win. That I wasn’t so blindly focused on “other,” at my own expense.
Then remembered a recent breakthrough around an intention I’d been holding since this self-discovery journey began: to feel radical self-love.
December 15, 2023. “He said there’s an openness there, to explore, in the same way, when or even if the time is right,” I wrote, as I processed what felt like rejection to my proposed connection. A “maybe,” that felt like a “no” in that moment.
“I went to bed in tears, wishing to be held, to be loved,” my entry continued. “Then wondered if I could hold and love myself. If I could give myself what I desire. And so, I did. I soaked in the feeling. Let it sink and settle into my skin. I cried, but this time more of the tears were in gratitude for the shift. From sadness to joy. And a realization that I created that feeling.”
In what probably were mere moments, all the self-love things I’d been prioritizing flashed in my mind: therapy, meditation, surfing, travel, yoga, dance, bodywork, solo dinner dates, sunset walks on the beach.
All that inner work led me to that exact point a few weeks earlier where his “no” became my “yes,” and on some level, my self-love intention was made real. No longer words on paper hanging from the mirror I looked into every morning. It was something I felt in the body staring back at me. In my bones.
That’s when the crispest whisper returned with a message louder than the crashing waves by my side.
It told of my process, made clear in four simple words: reflect, remember, recognize, and realize.
And of course, it came as alliteration, so I was sure to pay attention.
> The ritual: Have you been stuck holding an intention for what seems like forever? Or is there an intention begging to be seen? Keep it in mind as you continue reading. We’ll come back to it at the end.
The four Rs
On this path of getting to know myself deeply, I’d occasionally pause and wonder, “What, in, the, actual, fuck, am, I, doing.”
All these patterns I was creating awareness around and working on. Traumas I was uncovering and tending to. Dance on Mondays, centering prayer on Tuesdays, therapy on Wednesdays. My week was full, and at times this work felt like a second job. Like routine.
When the four Rs came through, it became instantly clear that this wasn’t routine at all.
This was ritual.
“Rituals offer a sense of grounded-ness and familiarity,” Sophie Miller shared in Gaia. “Rituals, unlike habits, require us to become aware and attuned to specific moments in time, whether it be preparing the physical body for the day ahead or welcoming the dawn of a new season.”
Tough to trace the origin, but I’ve heard this idea that the path of personal evolution, healing, and growth is not linear.
It’s more of a spiral that goes on for eternity, up to the heavens.
If the path to self-realization is cyclical, we revisit core themes over time. And at each crossroad, we have the opportunity to show up differently. A little wiser, more whole, than we did the previous loop, as we deepen our understanding of ourselves and elevate for the next go-round.
With the example of self-love as the intention at the core of my spiral, I instantly saw surrounding it the acts of reflecting, remembering, and recognizing as the work on repeat. Cycling through—maybe multiple times—if the opportunity to show self-love appeared and I repeated the self-loveless pattern.
There were plenty of those Groundhog Day-type moments.
Eventually, when the inflection point presented and I broke the pattern by showing up differently, I realized my intention and reached a renewed capacity of self-love. Able to continue the journey of reflecting, remembering, and recognizing at a level above.
Until I would realize and renew again.
Each of the four Rs contained within it actions that required intentionality and presence, just as Millar mentioned is required for ritual.
It goes something like this.
Reflect
Purpose: Document daily experiences.
Path: Solo.
Practice: This is the stream-of-consciousness, handwritten journaling practice. From the previous day, take care to note what caught your attention. This might be thoughts, feelings, reactions. New encounters, conversations, insightful realizations. Moments of clarity, sparks of inspiration, seemingly uneventful happenings. Synchronicities and dreams. Much of this will be populated by experiences emanating from the “Remember” and “Recognize” steps.
Remember
Purpose: Peel back layers of conditioning and remember who we were born to be.
Path: Solo and supported.
Practice: This is “the work.” Shadow work, dreamwork, bodywork, breathwork, energy work. Therapeutic sessions, prayer, meditation. Movement, creation, active imagination. Any of the doings that may help awaken your subconscious. Ideally, you are supported by a therapist, coach, or guide. Someone who can help you navigate the process of remembering and process what’s been remembered.
Recognize
Purpose: Practice presence.
Path: Solo.
Practice: This is cultivating hyper-awareness. Going about daily life, staying fully present to notice, everything. As objectively as possible, observe how you move about in the world and how the world moves about you. Registering all that you see and do, without judgment.
> Repeat. Throwing in that fifth R here, with the warmest encouragement to keep at the cycle above until a shift is experienced and embodied. Which will happen, at the exact time it’s meant to. And no sooner.
Realize
Purpose: To renew.
Path: Solo.
Practice: This is where your deeply held intention is realized. You will know when you’ve reached this point on the spiral, and your reflections will have documented your journey to get here. Take intentional time to pause and honor yourself for all the ritual work. To honor your faith in the process. Celebrate in a way that feels most nourishing, as you ready yourself to continue on.
> The ritual: Remember your intention? Time to work it. Find a notebook. Find 15 minutes at the start or end of each day to journal. Download the digital guide below with Four R Ritual prompts to get the pen moving. Call upon it often, until journaling through these lenses becomes second nature.
Sacrifice and service, giving and receiving
I chose to forage turkey feathers for a reason.
The bird made itself known at two points leading up to November.
The first, driving that same Highway 1, I watched a Tesla next to me obliterate a wild turkey attempting to cross. I was shocked, shaken, furious, and mortified, all at the same time.
The second, driving backroads in the Santa Cruz Mountains, I watched a wild turkey safely make its way from one side to the other. I was simultaneously humbled, grateful, elated, and curious.
The first caught my attention and the second kept it, until I found the shell that pulled all the pieces together.
With an emphasis on sacrifice and service, turkey teaches us to balance receiving with giving.
Receiving the four Rs has been such a gift.
It’s helped me get to know myself. Really, know, myself. And it continually uncovers newness at every step. Which makes each day feel a bit like a treasure hunt. Like waking up to forage for wild turkey feathers.
And I wonder if I received the four Rs so that I could share them with you.
So that it may help you connect more intimately with yourself, leading to forever new levels to realize.
Feather Foraging
Lone feather Falling from the sky Swaying side to side As she makes her way Down Slowly Held up by the wind Trusting the earth to catch her Softly Nestled among tall grass Dried from winter The same color as she Camouflaging her beauty But not enough to not be seen By the one looking Just For Her Sensing her soul Before spotting her stripes Soft, tender vane Holding it all together Like her own spine Keeping her upright She walks the open field Wings stretched out wide Gathering together the scattered bits So that once she has enough in hand She would be ready To fly
Four R Ritual Guide
May you make ritual of routine, dearest Everyday Alchemist. Until next time, would love to hear about your relationship with journaling. Do it and love it? Cringe at the thought of it?
💕💕💕
So relatable and insightful 💓
Thank you 🙏🏼
BTW, the artwork is incredible too!