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Here’s the dilemma:
people can’t initiate themselves. The only way I can reveal
myself to myself is if someone else is protecting, supporting,
and challenging me. The person who’s undergoing the
initiation has to feel safe enough to let go and challenged
enough not to stay still. When the function of the ego, which
is to protect the self, is taken over by others, we can go
into a deep descent and find elements of our own soul. If I
try to initiate myself, I’m either going to make the
temperature too hot, so to speak, or too cold. Initiation
needs caring others who know what temperature is right for me.
This is a real problem in a culture that thinks, I’m
going to do it all myself.
Something
else you need is nature. In traditional cultures initiations
don’t happen in the village. They happen in wilderness.
Initiation is going to bring out your nature, which is
connected to greater nature. But you also have to be connected
to a living, meaningful community. It all has to come
together. Mass culture often sets the individual against the
community, because the community doesn’t acknowledge the
uniqueness of each person’s soul. Instead of the community
versus the individual, the goal of initiation is to get
individuals involved in the community in a way that’s
meaningful to them and inspiring to others.
-- Michael Meade, interviewed in The
Sun
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