Initiation in the Modern World
Genuine individuation eventually & inevitably carries you back to the arms from which you have individuated.
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This sentence entered my heart 7 years ago almost exactly. I had just met my teacher and was given instructions for releasing certain patterns from my family of origin that felt… scary & threatening. I couldn’t yet even cognitively conceive of a reality wherein releasing certain aspects of my family would result in actually feeling the most connected to them I ever had.
But this is what initiation asks of us, and what it always has.
Initiation is a process through which Life demands we become true. In our modern world, this often involves a death of something within. We are almost exclusively born into homogenized, colonizer cultures. Colonization is a whole essay in itself, but removing the sociopolitical implications, we can simplify the definition to any tendency to dominate/control the natural world, or the emergent present moment unfolding of life. The implications of being born into such cultures is that there are covert or overt expectations that we conform. This results in, amongst other things, a process of self-colonization, an inability to rest into the groundless present, and a neurological correlation between survival & sameness.
There’s an assumption within me and I believe many modern people who choose to accept the harrowing journey of initiation, that in indigenous cultures there was one key difference. Anthropologists the world over have studied tribal cultures and witnessed consistent support in being who and what you are. It seems there is a deep, somatic understanding that each individual is a unique part of a whole, and therefore the individual self is celebrated, uplifted, and sought from day one.
This is something we have largely lost. I don’t mean to say that modern loving parents don’t want their children to be themselves, in fact that is something I have always had the privilege of experiencing. It seems, however, we have lost connection to the primal felt sense of what I call the ‘we body,’ which is a term that points towards the body that exists when two or more beings, in this case people, are in relationship. The we body is deeply aware of itself as a whole, and just in the way that our individual bodies bloom with the intelligence of the supraconscious allowing us to breathe and digest our food, so too does the we body experience its individual parts as having an essential, interconnected role in the whole.
This intelligence in a friendship, a partnership, a tribe, or a collective results in a healthy and natural process of individuation. There is no fighting to be who you are, for what you are is essential. The tribe uplifts the process of your becoming because without you, a we are left lacking a nutrient required for our thriving.
In the modern world, homogenization goes deep. It is deeply humbling to commune with the level of blindness we opt into for a sense of survival and safety. Often I witness people waking up from dominant culture and falling under a new spell of homogenization in conscious culture. This is when my work comes in, but the specifics of that conversation are for another day.
Individuation demands we release the cords to the family of origin. Developmentally, we are unable to differentiate between our body and our mother’s until around 6 months old. Around this time, there is a shift in the infant’s awareness and the revelation of the individual body initiates a process of boundary, embrace, & exploration that ideally eventually results in the initiated self.
Today, we are largely without formal initiatory structure, and instead Life itself takes the shape of that which we need to self realize. To those who are awakening, this does not go unnoticed. All beauty and challenge are seen for what they are: the labor of The Mother attempting to support the second birth. Often, it is Saturn in his first return that allows the process to come full circle, but the mythosomatic movements of this great being will be saved for another day.
Initiation has never been guaranteed. In indigenous cultures the world over, there was a genuine possibility of death during the coming of age ceremonies. The opposite tragedy is all too possible in modern culture: the possibility that we will not successfully allow the false self to die & will spend the rest of our lives walking through the world a copy paste of a violent and inverted paradigm. It is less likely that the physical body will die, but unfortunately all too common that the individual is bereft of structure that can midwife them all the way through. This results in immense vulnerability to fall prey to our fears & to abandon the process of being born.
When partial initiation occurs, a dangerous being is born. Almost without exception, arrogance is a familiar signature in these bodies. Whether inflated or collapsed, the pedestal is present. These people are almost without exception placing themselves or others above and below. This results in violence toward the family of origin, whether through neglect or imposition, for their perception is distorted and often the family is seen as less evolved or aware. Simultaneously, there is a subordination of the self in relation to teachers or peers they look up to, resulting in an internal posture of collapse and violence toward the self.
Through incredible trial and error, we are beginning to see a glimmer of hope in our world as more and more people appear to become intimate with the anatomy of true initiation.
More and more, we are witnessing an uprising in our modern world of people who prioritize the complete process of individuation. Tenacious souls who have perhaps fallen off track part way through, witnessed their own violence, and committed to feeling through the dark until true second birth is taken. These are a wave of people rising from the ashes of a dying culture with strong spines and soft hearts.
A natural gesture of this arc is the homecoming. The circle path of initiation carries the initiate home to their parents, their siblings, the ones who brought them into life. This part of the arc can appear slow or sudden; whatever it is, it cannot be forced. Knowing this is the destination is futile if it is prematurely pressed. A true initiate will begin to experience a completion of the second birth when their gaze begins to turn toward home.
The one returning has become themself, and is deeply intimate with their own true anatomy. Eventually, they fully and completely return to their family of origin. Whether metaphorical or literal is irrelevant, somatically the homecoming occurs internally. The unhelpful patterns at home no longer occur as a threat, and they have become so naturally artful that they no longer occur as a threat, but a loving invitation, to their family. The bottom-up blossoming of their unique nature brings refuge and healing to unhealthy patterns in the family anatomy. Their mother and father are seen through new eyes, and known as the miraculous beings they are, no matter how flawed. Arrogance and collapse have both been devoured by the altar, and we meet our parents eye to eye, heart to heart, spine to spine.
It is from this posture that all true intimacy with other is born. The result is feeling more connected to your family than you could have imagined, or could be afforded when the umbilical cord was even partially still in tact. From this place, healthy relationship with the beloved as partner & as divine is also born, and we will explore this more deeply in another writing.
These people can easily recognize one another. They all, without exception, feel deeply connected to the natural world. They are somatically aware of the we body, are aware of where they can lead and where they must follow. Their definition of success is inextricably linked to the health of the natural world and our human kin. There is a visceral sense of meeting eye to eye, heart to heart, spine to spine. No one is above or below, but all are a part of circle. A part of the shared body. All are essential.
In this realm, all weapons have been laid down, for in its highest octave, only truth lives as love in flesh. Some of you have heard me speak deeply to this place, and perhaps I will expound upon it in an essay soon.
To become the Self occurs in many dimensions simultaneously, here we have spoken largely to the mammalian aspect of our nature. The process of releasing the cord to the human mother & father, resting into an erect spine, and coming home to their arms able to hold them in their later years of life. This holarchically mirrors the process of taking birth cosmologically: the becoming of the carnal divine.
Upon taking human birth, our nature is eclipsed. What we are is forgotten, buried beneath layers of subsequently denser elements & realms. This is both tragic and essential: without a deep forgetting of The Mother, it is impossible to be born as the Self.
Through the process of turning away from The Mother, we are able to meet our nature. It is the severing of the umbilical cord that turns our gaze slowly outward. This gesture gives way to the exploration of an infinite universe, and the possibility to meet our shared divine nature in every face and facet of the known and unknown world.
The contractions of life’s arc are Her contractions, as Her holy eternal body labors our births. She is fierce and Her stamina is unlike anything we can imagine, for it seems clear that genuine birth often takes thousands of years. In the end lies the true beginning: when we return to The Mother, eye to eye, heart to heart, spine to spine, we know ourselves to be Her. The carnal divine unfolds into the flesh of an unfathomably vast body. The seeming levels of awareness and awakening all appear clearly as one wildly intelligent we body, and the false appearance of above and below releases us from its violent grip.
We become, as She has always ached for us, Her. True birth is taken, and the holy divine further and more ecstaticall
y unfolds its body awake and aware.