The Way of Initiation – The Development of Energetic Awareness

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1. Home
2. Books
3. UniMed Publishing
4. The Way of Initiation

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The Way of Initiation – The Development of Energetic Awareness

It could be said that we are always initiating ourselves but that it is often by way of a striving, a drive or desire/need to be more and/or to improve ourselves. But is this true initiation? This book examines what initiation means and offers keys for us to truly develop and unfold.

Is initiation about striving to be better?

It seems that by virtue of the fact of our human existence we are forevermore striving towards higher achievements, a greater status, more knowledge and bettering ourselves in some way; beginning as children, we go from primary school to high school and then into a professional context or on to university.

Then, in our professional lives, we start as a beginner, junior, assistant or apprentice and then move into senior roles that carry more responsibility and offer a broader scope of duties. A mountaineer goes from one mountain to a higher mountain to possibly climbing Mt Everest – a marker, an achievement, a status changer, a feat accomplished that vanquishes a mark or platform we want to surpass.

But the question is:
does all this really make us ‘better’ human beings?

• Is one person more initiated because they have climbed Mt Everest or is initiation actually something completely different?
• Could it possibly be said that we innately know that we are more than meets the eye and forever strive to get there, in one way or another?
• Could it also be said that the sheer fact of striving forevermore (and driving ourselves really hard in many instances) indicates that we are not finding what we are really looking for?
• Why do we keep striving and why do we try so many different avenues?
• In other words, does the very fact of striving itself give something away?

What if initiation means something different?

What if initiation means true growth or development of us as inner beings – the discovery, development and unfolding of who we already are, as opposed to achieving something or bringing something external in to make us more or better? Could it be said that the yearning is actually in-built but that it relates to us being more true to our essence, as opposed to ‘getting better' at something or ‘acquiring more skills’ or ‘climbing a ladder’?

Is there something else at play that surpasses the forever-striving for more and the eventual normalcy of the university degree, the promotion, the next box ticked, the next must-read-before-you-die book, must-do activity, the share portfolio and the most fashionable clothes, latest gadget or place to be?

What if initiation is not about striving to be more intelligent, more skilled, more capable, more anything – at all?

The Way of Initiation proposes and lays out a different way to initiate that is entirely based on what is always with us and at our disposal – our body and our state of being. It lays out keys for us to develop ourselves, as beings – not by achievements, but by development and unfolding of who we already are.

But what does this mean for us on a practical level, and what would it look like at home and in the workplace?

Without in any way renouncing daily life, work, family, economic reality and material necessities, The Way of Initiation takes the reader through the stages of a different kind of initiation, an initiation that is never reliant on external factors (e.g. more money, better job, nicer colleagues, better boss etc), but solely dependent on the operator and main character that we know well – the human being who has started taking energetic responsibility and who therefore begins initiating him or herself. It soon becomes very clear that initiation is not something that can be bought, downloaded off the internet or bestowed upon us from the outside, but something that innately comes from within each of us.

Initiation is an internal and very personal process

It begins with first waking up to the fact that energy precedes everything we do, say or think. Following on from there, energetic awareness (which is the awareness of what is really going on, or reading between the lines of life, so to speak), is an ability we all had as children – we knew life on a much vaster level of feelings before it was hemmed in and crowded out by the mind and its incessant concerns about the past or future, its preoccupation with anything and everything. And all this occurring at the expense of the physical body we live in that only knows and can truly only ever live in the present and from one moment to the next.

Therefore, true initiation as presented in The Way of Initiation, is a process of rediscovering, reclaiming and using our forgotten and seemingly quarantined awareness and presence; it is about getting real and applying some very basic and no-nonsense pointers to a daily lived reality that on the whole and for many of us, does not consistently provide for what we are really and deeply yearning.

In essence, initiation is here laid out as the process of becoming more of who we truly already are.

Filed under

Awareness,  University,  Essence