INITIATION : An Entry Into Something New

“Initiation is a moment of crisis wherein our awareness hovers upon the border line of revelation”

The word initiation signifies the beginning of something new; a starting point of some stage or other; an inauguration into a new field of activity; an induction into some skill; a baptism; or an admission into a higher state of being.

The mechanical stages of the evolutionary process are founded upon progressive steps of initiation. We are all familiar with the natural initiations that are evident in the individual life process, as for instance, the stages we experience when passing from babyhood to childhood to manhood/womanhood and to old age. At each stage we enter into a wider state of consciousness as we embrace the changes occurring in our being; self-awareness expands as we begin to perceive life from a more mature point of view particularly in our interactions with other people. I remember vividly how differently I felt at the age of sixteen; something had changed fundamentally in my being and I no longer felt like a child, yet I did nothing consciously to bring the change about. I recall also the complete shift in awareness after giving birth to my first child: it was as if I had finally come down to earth! As each decade came and passed one was aware of the subtle changes at each stage and of the necessary tensions they brought; I realised early that these changes are more easily accommodated if one moved gracefully with the ebb and flow of life, and that the tensions they brought were necessary for initiating the latent will to meet each challenge as it came.

These natural initiations come to all in the course of a lifetime, but there is another type of initiation to which every human being is invited when s/he is ready to embark on the path of return. In terms of consciousness they require sequential inner revelations of a different order and are essentially related to those realms that lie beyond the material world. As these initiations are embarked upon, they open the doors of consciousness to higher levels of thought and vision, demanding in the process, intelligent and conscious effort in an entirely new direction.

Initiation might be defined in two ways. It is first of all the entering into a new and wider dimensional world by the expansion of a man’s consciousness so that he can include and encompass that which he now excludes, and from which he normally separates himself in his thinking and acts. Secondly, it is the entering into man of those energies which are distinctive of the soul and of the soul alone – the forces of intelligent love and of true will. These are dynamic energies, and they actuate all who are liberated souls.