Initiations ~ Gateways of Expansion

A gateway opens. On the other side, is everything you are meant to become. Do you choose to walk through the threshold? Remembering the vital lifeblood of sacred initiations within an evolving life.

You are walking along a meadow covered in wildflowers of the most vibrant rainbow colours. The grass grows tall, up higher than your knees. And as you take each step, you hear the grass crunch and move beneath you, the winged ones are flying all around you. Buzzing from flower to flower, covered in a sweet coating of pollen. You too find yourself intoxicated by the fragrant aroma of the flower nation. The warm wind that blows carries the scent into you, filling you with a wondrous sense of calm. Off in the distance, you notice an archway. Large stones make up its borders, the moss covering them gives the impression that they have been there for a very long time. Through it you see the world as it is before you, the meadow extending out along rolling hills. Yet as you gaze more intently, you notice an odd, intriguing shimmer moving through the world beyond the gateway. As though rainbows are living within each gust of wind and blade of grass. The flowers look to be in colours you have never seen before. Ever so slightly you hear something like an echo in the distance, beyond the stone arch. A soft song that sings for you to hear. An angelic voice over the sound of thunder clapping, and wind blowing. The music of buzzing bees and grass swishing in the breeze. All of it reaches your ears in an etheric and otherworldly tone. Your being begins to tingle in anticipation and longing. Something calls you from the other side. As though an ancient and well-known hand is reaching out to clasp yours.

A gateway opens. It is a portal into a new way of being. All that lays before its boundaries are the past, the life experienced up until this point. All that you have become, that reaches you in this moment. Beyond this gateway, lives a new way. An unmarked trail. An unheard song that ushers in expansion. Sacred growth. This is what initiations invoke. Do you choose to walk through the threshold and emerge on the other side, transformed? Something that is sourly lacking in this day and age is the ritual of initiation. That of a child becoming a man or a woman. The woman becoming the mother. The two becoming one in holy union. The witnessing of death. These ceremonies were deeply woven into life for a long time, in all parts of the world. For they simply were an inseparable element of the human experience. We love to ritualize things. Make a show. Turn the mundane into the sacred. And through those acts, weave magic. Celebrate something holy. Initiations offer guidance into an otherwise unknown trail, for they are led by those who have already walked through the fires and emerged on the other side. Those beings guide the next generation with wisdom, for them to emerge on the other side holding the keys needed to navigate those paths. To fully step into their new stage of transformation. Initiations are generational wisdom. A ritual that infuses meaning and magic into seemingly mundane events. And reminds us that they are important. Reminds us that their roots were always of magical and meaningful origins. It is only in an age of reductionism that its meaning has been lost. They are new levels of our growth. Initiations and ceremony mark the significance of life events. They begin to weave story into them. They are in honour and witness to the ways we change. Nourishing heartfelt expansion of being. Nourishing community gathering and communal wealth. The wisdom shared, received and passed down. The guidance that is needed with each new chapter that unfolds. It is the knowledge of the elders that is shared with the youth. Initiations and ceremony are the lifeblood of a heart-centered community. Steeped in tradition and faith.

Without ritual initiation, youth grow up lacking in the wisdom needed to emerge into new stages of life centred in their truth and guided by their elders. Now we are living in a world where so many young people are without meaning. Without faith. Without spirit. They have been left unguided by their elders, or guided in trauma and fear. Where there once was sacred spaces that held a person through big life changes and transitions, now we flow through it all aimlessly and without guidance. Where there still remains some semblance of ritual initiations, like the traditions of a marriage ceremony, they are invoked without truly knowing their meaning. They are the fossilized remains of a once living ritual filled with intention. ~ Bringing them back to life means weaving them with awareness and intention once again. Being present in what they invoke, and choosing it because it is true for you. ~ It has led to people not knowing exactly what that new place in their life truly needs. It has left people energetically stuck in old stages even though physically they have moved on. Those who enter into a marriage without the advice and guidance of elders may miss the knowledge of how to continue to nurture love or show up for each other. Those who become parents without the support of a community may feel isolated in a time that calls for family. My heart witnesses the grief of many that feel lost upon their path and aimless in their purpose.

In the traditions of modernism, we have been left lacking in these spaces, and it shows. This serves then as an invitation to nurture initiations for ourselves once again. In whatever ways feel true for us. To come back into love, into true wisdom and community-centred growth. Sometimes, our families and community are unable to reach us in the ways that we are desiring now, in calling back initiations centred in heartfulness. Parents and relatives that are living with their own lack of guided initiation may not be able to support you in the ways needed. Perhaps there is grief here as well. Of the lineage you carry that has gone generations without wise elders and loving community, that leads to lost souls. You are the point in the timeline where all that may change. Cultivating these sacred spaces again infused with truth, meaning, faith, brings such deep nourishment and love to the entirety of your lineage. Extending back to all those before, and forward to all those after. It is a reclamation of something sacred, that once was lost, and is found again. Brought back to the heart. The ancestors sing with gratitude and the spirits rejoice.

Here we are reminded how these old ways hold such deep meaning and importance within life. The traditions that were seen to serve a vital purpose. That purpose was left, neglected, and forgotten. Deemed irrelevant. Unimportant in an evolving society. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. The truth is that these traditions, their essences, were cultivated and created over generations and generations because they were found to be nourishing to the initiate and all those who stand in witness and guidance. They are vital even to the processes of our evolution. It was found that without it, something remained unfulfilled. With it, youth grew up centred in their purpose and wise in their roles within the community. What was missing was this ceremony of spirit and celebration of meaning. Initiations brought together the whole in support of the one. Continuing to feed wisdom into the ecosystem. For all to be supported in finding their own way.

Cultivating ceremony and initiation in our lives now doesn’t need to be anything complicated. Sometimes this looks like holding ourselves in these spaces when we must. Seeking out the initiations that we feel are important for us to move through. It may be as simple as a prayer spoken over a lit candle or a symbolic bathing in a wild river that ushers in a rebirth into a new stage of life. It may be opening up dialogue between family and community about their experiences through different stages of life. Listening to this wisdom that is shared, exchanged, and remembered. It may be calling in the community you do have that may truly hold you in this space, to witness and celebrate you symbolically stepping into a new stage of life. Even if it is a handful of closest relatives. We must not forget the importance of these sacred ceremonies and spaces. We may allow them to evolve with us, and the changing times. And hold the essence of what they invoke. The medicine of spirit. The energetic alignments and adjustments to physical experience. Working within both realms brings deeper harmony and richer meaning. In love and ceremony for all.