How did we become who we are? To initiate and to be
initiated are ancient and sacred tasks.
We can all learn to honor this Law…by including knowledge gleaned from
other cultures…
Cynthia F. Davidson, from the Wisdom Wheel Initiation card (see www.thewisdomwheel.com to order cards, posters or stones)
As you spend the next ten days with this 15th Law, reflect upon Initiation rites and rituals you have participated in. Baptisms, weddings, coming of age ceremonies, first day of school, first day on a new job, boot camp... Many of us have been initiated in cross-cultural activities, like sweat lodges and vision quests, which come from aboriginal traditions but are meaningful to us all because of their universal significance, as they return us to Nature which we all share.
Today vision quests are included in Outward Bound programs for executives and wilderness camping sojourns are used to initiate troubled teens into more adult attitudes and capabilities.
Take time to initiate something this week. It could be physical - like starting an exercise regime - or emotional - like seizing the initiative to improve a relationship - intellectual like beginning to explore a new language or culture - or undergoing a spiritual Initiation of some kind, perhaps even visiting a house of worship from a Faith tradition you are totally unfamiliar with. What prevents us from enjoying more Initiations all our lives? And from offering them to others? Over a lifetime, we have many passages worth marking with special forms of appreciation.
For the next 10 days seize the initiative to explore all kinds of Initiations. See a movie or television show or documentary about other cultures Initiations like the Australian 'walk about.'
Bring up the subject of Initiation as often as you can. Seek out someone of the opposite sex who has an Initiation story to share. Tell them about one of yours too.
Here's some more wisdom about the Law of Initiation.
Initiation
is a process of excessive hard work, a graded series of liberation allowing the
initiate greater freedom to proceed further on the Way, learning to work behind
the scenes, unrecognized, unknown, unclaimed and receiving no rewards and
sacrificing the individual identity ...
Margo
Kirtikir, Ph.D. author of Cosmic & Universal Laws
The mark
of an initiate is his lack of interest in himself and his personal fate… The
path of Initiation includes long periods of search, detachment, pain and of
revelations producing tension, fusion and energy projection. The initiated
enters into the light, which penetrates his nature according to his development
at any one point.
Margo
Kirtikir, Ph.D. author of Cosmic & Universal Laws
...we are truly initiated by what we cannot control....
Albert Einstein
Initiation is learning mastery… In the first initiation you prove
you're a master over physical things. The second initiation shows can master
your emotions and glamour. In the third you master the world of the mind and
illusion. There are seven altogether...The true glory of accomplishment is in
initiation, not imitation.
JJ Dewey
The Law
of Initiative; All action occurs as a direct result and in direct proportion to
the initiative of each soul. Initiation cannot be given nor forced on anyone.
The energy initiative brings about evolution, it is through the initiative of
the particular soul that the soul evolves.
Margo
Kirtikir, Ph.D. author of Cosmic & Universal Laws
Bereavement is the deepest initiation into the mysteries of human
life, an initiation more searching and profound than even happy love.
Dean Inge (1860-1954) Dean
of St Paul's, London
I began to sense how the subtle inner processes of these esoteric ‘Initiations’
were affecting a person's psyche…much of what we experience as an emotional
crisis, is in actuality an evolutionary challenge to awaken. And this challenge
of awakening requires us to make new choices for our psychological and
spiritual evolution… most people feel very relieved when they realize that
their personal emotional challenges are, in reality, linked to a larger, more
impersonal challenge of awakening.
Neil Cohen, www.integrativeawakening.com
Because we had no tools for reprogramming our egos, and healing
our emotional wounds (culturally approved grieving, training and initiation rites,
healthy role models, etc.), we keep reacting to the damaging programming of our
childhoods, and cannot get our adult needs met... the emotional, mental, spiritual,
or physical needs. Codependence allows us to survive physically, but causes us
to feel empty and dead inside...codependence...causes us to wound ourselves.
Robert Burney, author of Codependence: The Dance of
Wounded Souls
When Initiation is in place, the old men help the boys
move from the mother's world to the father's world...Initiation asks the son to move his love energy
away from the attractive mother to the relatively unattractive serpent
father... he learns to look at the death side of things.
Robert Bly, American author, and
men's movement leader, books include Iron John
...her dying society had
no tradition by which to teach her the one lesson she did not know by instinct.
R.P. Blackmur, writing about Emily Dickinson, over 100 years after
her birth
Initiates have no desire to be rich because their aim is not to
settle down in the world nor to rule over it. An Initiate wants, above all, to
become a luminous beacon, a shining light and, consequently, he has no wish to
encumber himself with things that would prevent him from devoting himself to
this divine task. An Initiate wants to be free and detached in order to work on
himself and others; it is because he refuses to burden himself that he is able
to make continual progress and go from strength to strength until he becomes
truly formidable. He doesn't need to worry about protecting his money from
thieves, or from falling prices on the stock exchange.
Entering
the spiritual path is just like shooting an arrow at a point one cannot see, so
that one does not know what the arrow is going to hit; one only knows one's own
action, and one does not see the point aimed at. This is why the path of
initiation is difficult for a worldly man….
Ghazali,
a great Sufi writer of ancient Persia
All
initiations actually fall back upon the greatest symbol of all; spiritually
dying and coming back to life.
Robert
Ellwood, The Cross & the Grail
Certain forms, such as the labyrinth,
represent explicitly the experience of initiation; entry into the abyss of the
mysteries, and the pilgrimage of the spirit.
Joan
Halifax
The path of initiation is not a path of study. I have seen people
who have not only read fifty volumes, but have written fifty volumes and
published them, and are not yet fit for initiation. It is not an act of the brain,
it is a process of spiritual melting, going from that hard, metal aspect to the
form of liquid; the ice turning into water.
...(the initiate) begins to think differently, feel differently,
see and act differently; his whole condition begins to change. One might say of
him that from that moment he begins to live. It may come as a vision, as a
dream, as a phenomenon -- in any of these forms; one cannot determine the
manner in which it will manifest.
What is it that the initiator teaches the initiated one? He tells the initiated one the truth of his own being. He does not tell him something new or something different. He tells him something which his soul already knows but which his mind has forgotten.
There are
different kinds of initiation… One is natural initiation..an unfoldment…without
cause or reason…Sometimes initiation comes after great illness, pain, or
suffering. It comes as an opening up of the horizon, as a flash of light, and
in a moment the world seems transformed. It is not that the world has changed;
it is that that person has become tuned to a different pitch. He begins to
think differently, feel differently, see and act differently; his whole
condition begins to change. One might say that from that moment he begins to
live.
A true initiation never ends…. Beyond
a certain point, the whole universe becomes a continuous process of initiation.
Robert Anton Wilson
In another 10 days, I'll initiate you in the knowledge of the 16th Law
of the Shadow until then enjoy all the things Initiation has to teach you.
