INITIATION

Soul initiation refers to that extraordinary moment in life when we cross over from psychological adolescence to true adulthood, from our first adulthood to our second. At that moment, our everyday life becomes firmly rooted in the purposes of the soul. The embodiment of our soul powers becomes as high a priority in living as any other. But it’s not so much that we choose at that moment to make soul embodiment a top priority; it’s more as if the soul commands us to that task and we assent.
            In the Western culture, we need to be careful with the word initiation. Many people associate it with elitism, secret societies, flaky or nefarious cults, and oppressive, hierarchical organizations. For some people, the word evokes, on the one hand, a sense of their own inadequacy (if they have not undergone an initiatory experience and believe they ought to have) and, on the other, suspicions of arrogance or ego inflation on the part of those who participate in initiatory rites. Due to its considerable charge, it may be best to avoid public declarations of being initiated. Soul initiation is not something to be worn like a badge or status symbol; it is to be quietly embodied through a life of soulful service.
            Soul initiation transforms our lives by the power of the truth at the center of our soul image. Embracing the truth results in a radical simplification of our lives. Activities and relationships not supportive of our soul purpose begin to fall away. Our former agendas are discarded, half-completed projects abandoned. Many old problems are not solved but outgrown. Old ways of presenting and defending ourselves become less appealing, and less necessary.
            At soul initiation, our lives are changed forever, irreversibly.

-- Bill Plotkin, Soulcraft

JOYCE

It sounds schmaltzy to say, but fiction is much more to do with love than people admit or acknowledge. The novelist has to not only love his characters—which you do, without even thinking about it, just as you love your children. But also to love the reader, and that’s what I mean by the pleasure principle. The difference between a Nabokov, who in almost all his novels, nineteen novels, gives you his best chair and his best wine and his best conversation. Compare that to Joyce, who, when you arrive at his house, is nowhere to be found, and then you stumble upon him, making some disgusting drink of peat and dandelion in the kitchen. He doesn’t really care about you. Henry James ended up that way. They fall out of love with the reader. And the writing becomes a little distant.

-- Martin Amis

KAFKA

If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?
We need books to affect us like a disaster, to grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.

-- Franz Kafka


 LIMERICK

Her Majesty's subject McBean

Likes to frequent the naval latrine.

His splendid technique

Leaves the sailors quite weak,

But they all shout, "God save the Queen!"

-- author unknown