So Much Of What We Experience in Life Is Initiation
Initiation as Life Experience
You have to go through the experience, because you can't go around it.
Liminiality
A moment when you're no longer feeling at home. - Victor Turner
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Liminality is the space between. It is a threshold movement that happens in the space between where things once worked, but no longer do -- and before change occurs. Liminality is the call of initiation.
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Think of it as standing in a hallway, and there is a door before you. You can not walk through this door until you complete the initiation.
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There is a door behind you, but you cannot go back through it -- because that isn't you either. You can not go back. You'll stagnate back there, in that spot.
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You are in in the space between.
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What will you choose to do?
Initiation as Something Deep and Meaningful
The Only Way Forward is Through.
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Initiations are never finished
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What is an initiation? A beginning.
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Initiations are deep, they are not points of education. These are not entry points, rather they are points in life that evoke change within us.
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Initiations change us, and without change -- one can not be prepared to navigate life.
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To Ritual, or Not To Ritual?
Favir Ritual in the space of a Big Deal.
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Ritual as a choice. Going to doctor, therapist, do something that will help.
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Let it speak to your heart and soul.
​Quasi religious experience, come from the religious traditions. Can be rituals with depth so you know, but can be light life experiences-- so you may not realize at the time.
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An argument for ritual is that ritual is a tangible experience where you know you have navigated the challenge or the initiation. ​
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Rituals are important to the psyche so that you know something important is going on. Rituals need to be real, and not so symbolic that the meaning is lost.
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In ordinary action speaks to how you are getting on with life, ritual speaks to the deepest part of the soul, that's why it's a ritual.
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Initiation and Personal Growth
Getting Older Doesn't give you wisdom - Thomas Moore
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The challenge, please do not reduce these initiations into ordinary life experiences. Meet them creative or not -- as the experience of depth that they truly are.
Initiation Requires a Leap of Faith
Getting Older Doesn't give you wisdom - Thomas Moore
​Turn the fear of What if I fail into the question -- what can I do to fly?
Iniation takes courage
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There is risk
The Call to Initiation is Often to do Something Difficult
Getting Older Doesn't give you wisdom - Thomas Moore
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You Can Do Hard Things.
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Iniation takes courage
​not always going to be in a better place..
There is risk
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one aspect of initiation is to approach this thing as one of the challenges of life
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thinking "it's only me"
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The point is we are changed by the experience
Examples of Life's Initiations
There are so many points and periods in life where we go through initiations:​​
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Illness
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Birth
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Marriage
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Menarche
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Menopause
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Divorce/Breakup
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Estrangement
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Midlife
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Death
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Accident
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New Jobs
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Loss of Some Kind
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