Initiations

A Releasing Your Unlimited Creativity discussion topic

Copyright 2008 by K. Ferlic,   All Rights Reserved

Within the creativity perspective where we hold our creativity sacred, an initiation is some type and kind of action where the door is proverbially open. It is to open to another aspect of our creativity which we have never explored or use and/or it provides an opportunity to revisit and free aspects of our creativity which have been placed in the cage of our own making for whatever reason. Any initiation is really about getting us out of mind and past what we currently think and believe creating a doorway to take us into the unknown.

Traditionally, an initiation is an act of initiating to admit to membership in an organization, fraternity, cult, etc, usually with special rites, instructions, and/or ceremony, and the imparting of secret knowledge. The initiation is often a ritual usually designed by another, or others, to indoctrinate one into a different way of thinking and being.

In many initiations, what is performed is unknown to the one being initiated. This is especially true when secret knowledge of any form is imparted. Other than imparting secret knowledge, one of the reasons for the initiate not knowing what will be done before is to strengthen the awareness that the individual is moving from a past, and breaking with the past, to move into a new role and new life. In many ways the initiation is symbolic of a rebirth into a new form and new order whatever that new form and new order may be.

The elements of the initiation ritual are usually not something of which the individual is fully aware to create the element of surprise. The " not knowing" takes us out of mind and into the unknown while simultaneously allowing one to experience "not doing." Not doing is something that we do that is not characteristic of how our ego has defined who we are and what we do that allows us to expand ourselves beyond the limits and barriers as to how we have defined ourselves

There are two primary types of initiations. One is designed to indoctrinate us into a specific way of thinking and being characteristic of a tradition, religious or secular, or a social element or class. The second type of initiation is one designed specifically for us based on what we need to address to change to a different way of being in the world.

The ultimate goal of an initiation within the creativity perspective is to gets the individual out of mind and into the freedom of their creative spirit to know what the free unfoldment of their creative spirit feels like at each and every level of their being. It is to become aware of the feelings associated with the unfettered and free flow of our creative life energy. The experience of freedom helps to obtain the minimum set of experience for our mind to properly characterize what we feel or to understand what we need to do in a particular creative endeavor. To access the knowing of what we need to do in a creative endeavor we need to access a deep feeling. That is, the deep feeling associated with feeling the flow of energy which will give rise to what we desire to create and experience.

In opening to feeling most of us will find we have either raised the threshold on what we feel or we shut down aspects of our ability to feel and fear the pain of the past. We have raised the threshold of feeling because of the pain of life, the displeasures we face for whatever reason, and how we lost our ability to creatively play. This ability to feel needs to be reopened and it is not a place our mind is normally willing to go. To reopen ourselves to feeling, we need to pain of the past we still hold.

Hence, there is the need for some type and kind of initiation to do two things. One is to get the individual to step out of mind. It is to get the individual out of how and what they think and who they have identified themselves to be to be open to feeling. We cannot feel when our attention and awareness is focus in thinking especially when it is things related to how to avoid the pain of the past.

The other purpose is a stepping out of mind the individual moves into the realm of feeling. We need to open ourselves to feel for the intended purpose of discerning what we feel at each and every level of our being. We need to learn to discern what we feel and to come to learn it is safe to feel. Given the fact we each are unique and we each put our creative spirit in a cage of our own making, any proper initiation will address this uniqueness.

It needs to be remembered, from a creativity perspective, the error most individual make relative to any initiation they undergo and/or any associated ritual they create is that they believe the initiation or ritual will achieve what they desire. That is, the initiation is not the cause of what occurs. Rather it is the occasion for what occurs. In actually, the initiation prepares the way for an individual’s mind to step aside and allow Creation to determine what needs to be done to access and release an aspect of one’s creativity. The initiation and associated ritual open the door of mind. We must then follow what our intuitive guidance and body wisdom lead us to do if we hope to release our creativity. In essence, our choice to engage in the initiation is mind playing the role of consciousness in the creative process to become the cause to create a flow of energy which then unfold into the desired experience. The initiation within the creativity perspective is the occasion for mind to become the cause - if it so chooses.

The power of the initiation is in the fact that if what we believe we experience is real, a simulation can be, and is just as effective at provided the experience we need to have to open ourselves to feeling. We do not directly have to face the pain of the past to release our creative spirit from the cage of our own making. A proper initiation and/or ritual can free us from many aspects of the past including some, of not all, of the pain of the past.

The initiation should take us outside of our unique thinking and judging mind and what it knows. The initiation is to interrupt our current patterns of thinking and believing to break the current pattern of how we think things should be or need to be. If the individual knows the initiation is a simulation and/or what to expect the individual will not get the effects of a real experience. If the individual thinks it real, a simulation can provide an experience of the equivalent of being real without the consequences. In this regard, the initiation provides a way to create an experience which we think is real and allow us to access something that was otherwise unaccessible. If the candidate is faced without expectations and told these actions will take them out of mind, the candidate will experience being taken out of mind. Once the candidate has an experience of being out of mind, it does not matter how they got there for the feeling they have has imprinted the memory.

Most initiations look to destroy our existing identity, the ego identity we have created based on the experiences we have had to know that which we perceive as ourselves to be does not die.

The intention of the initiation is to transform the ego or at least create the seeds for that transformation that will grow over time. The initiation is to "draw a line in the sand" so to speak upon which stepping over we step out of our past into a new world. If properly done, once initiated, we cannot go back to the way we were or the world in which we lived. Once we know we are not confined by our ego and what we think and believes our world becomes different.

Related topics
Role of initiation in reestablishing feeling
Metatheater
Ritual

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