The Initiation

Last night I was listening to Richard Rohr describe the 5 lessons of initiation:

1. Life is hard.
2. You are not that important.
3. Your life is not about you.
4. You are not in control.
5. You are going to die.

It had me reflect on the collective initiation we are all inside of right now, as well as major points of initiation in my own life.

There was coming out at 21, after a summer romance with a woman, shaking family ties as I'd know them. Or my first 3 month silent meditation retreat - 13 weeks with nothing to do but confront the state of my own mind. At 34, claiming the path of the erotic, when pressed to a crossroads between it and the mores of an established spiritual institution. Or most recently, the decision to leave the life I’d been immersed in for 12 years.

Each of these entailed a destabilization of my reality. The death of something that had once seemed enduring. A melting of my sense of control. The facing of essential fears. With the exception of the retreat, I wouldn’t have chosen any of these experiences in advance. But on the other side of every one of them, I was grateful for what they revealed, and the undeniable ground and love they established inside of me. Initiation is like that.

I’ve come to see that any moment of life can be taken as an initiation if we choose to encounter it that way. This moment included.

What initiations are you seeing at this time? What’s your initiation into? I'd love to hear yours. I'll share mine in the comments too. Contemplating this today...