THE INITIATORY PATH OF LIFE
When I left my parents home at 17 years of age for college, I was ready for all of life and I knew that I’d never have a television, because I was clear that I did not want to live my life through a fictitious screen. I told the children and teens I mentored, “Live your own adventure, don’t be entrapped in comfort on your couch watching someone else live there life.”
That’s exactly what we did. In the woods, we were not being informed by a societal or familial subliminal messaging, we were allowing the inherent nature of our being to connect with the soul of creation. We were connecting with the elements and the spirit that lives in all things, to bring us into a new way seeing and relating with all of life. Life changings incredible magic happened in those moments. It was hard, grueling, difficult, and unforgettable. We arose to the unknowns with fortitude, which were lessons that they took into their home, that was less than perfect, but changed them forever.
After a two week backpacking trip in Wyoming, one of my most challenging, unfit and cautious high school students, whom I’ll call Mr. Macintosh, because he spent most all of his personal time of computers; he told me, “This was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, yet I can’t imagine my life without this experience. I’m forever changed.”
Little did I know back then, but what I put all of those kids through was an Initiation.
What is An Initiation?
An initiation is an experience that is intimately tied with change that births you into a new way of relating, seeing and being in the world. Initiations challenge the present existence and the way in which one meets their initiation, determines his/her experience. The purpose and process of the initiation occurs so that an old form falls away and a new way of relating to the world around the initiate emerges, bringing benefit and balance to the initiate and to the community.
Initiations have always been a part of the shamanic and siddha’s evolutionary path. I remember hearing a story of a Siberian Shaman, where her teacher took her to a rock and told her to learn how to walk through the rock, and to not return until she did. She said she sat there for days, frustrated. She went back to him and he told her to not return until she had done exactly what he had instructed her to do. She said that she had to go beyond her mind’s belief that is was impossible to do so. So she meditated and meditated, until finally she began to become one with the rock. She described the sounds of particles releasing and breaking apart. Her initiation forever changed her nature and perception of reality, bringing her into a more wise and powerful understanding of our human and divine experience.
Formal initiations have always been a part of indigenous cultures of the world and continue to be the hidden evolutionary path of the Shaman and Siddha (yogi), however life in general is a series of initiations, whether we meet them gracefully or not is the question.
Life Is A Series of Initiations, Big & Small
Birth, puberty, sex, marriage and death are all common and naturally occuring life initiations, how we arise to meet them and perceive them form the basis of our reality and how we move forward into life. However, life is full of initiations, big and small. The spiritual seeker and mystic would even relate to the idea that we go through an initiation in every moment and experience. We can find way to feel to wounded, guilty, grudging toward oneself or others in life’s numerous daily experiences or we can gather up the lessons from living life allowing it to inform us, change us into a more power filled, compassionate and integrated being than we were before.
One of my most transformational life initiations happened where I became seriously ill with an infection that western medicine could not tame. For over a month I had every antibiotic in the hospital. The pain was unbearable and not any narcotic or herb could take the pain away. The infection and pain was untouchable. It was clear, I had to feel it all.
Within all the overwhelming fear of the possibility of dying as a new mother, many lessons of the unseen greeted me. I traveled beyond my body, looking down at my sick body lying on the bed. I heard primordial sounds from beyond like that of clanging gongs, and etheric angelic voices. Life was taking on an entirely new meaning through my circumstance.
After a month of unbearable pain and exhaustion, the last and most potent IV antibiotic had been given. I was told, “If this doesn’t work, we don’t know what will”. Four days passed and nothing had changed. I still looked like a one eyed-ogre.
Looking back now I wonder why it took me so long, but I got down on my knees and pleaded to God, to Great Spirit, “If it is in your will for me to live, what am I to do with my life?” I immediately heard a voice, “Become a Spiritual Counselor and follow all paths that will lead you to Truth.” Within minutes, a capillary refill of an Ohm sign appeared on my left arm. Two hours later the infection and massive swelling was 50% gone. The next morning I looked normal and felt better than I had in over a month.
My life was changed. The nature of my reality changed. My relationship with the totality of life was far more expansive, and suddenly an auspicious path of learning, discovery and adventure opened up before me, yet I continued to be met with challenge after challenge, initiation after initiation on the daily. I could have withered up and threw my hands in the air, hiding at home, dependant on the decisions of those who were “qualified to make decisions for others”, but I choose to let all of life within the seen and unseen realms inform me, guide me into healing. My world had been transformed so profoundly. I had no doubt I was being guided by something bigger than my singularly. I knew that when it was my time to go, there was nothing anyone could do about it, for that bigger force, call it God, Great Spirit, Souce, had everything figured out. I just needed to learn how to listen and receive.
After many years of intimate study and discovery within myself through the principles and practices of Shamanism and the Yogic Path, I was called into the Indigenous ways of Initiation. I’ll never forget the incredible magic of each of those experiences. They changed my life forever, my courage, devotion and resilience was tested. I was guided into experiences that demanded ultimate surrender during difficult and uncomfortable situations in nature. And wow, what incredible magic happened. Those experiences carried me into an unshakable trust, into the unknowns of life’s experience, particularly then, chronic illness and all the numerous complications of Lyme Disease and antibiotic residues. I had to learn how to heal myself and truly listen, to follow the signs given to me within and without.
Has it been easy?
NO!!!
Has it been totally worth every initiation life has put me through and that I have chosen to willingly take?
YES!!!
Have those spirit led as well as planned initiatory experiences prepared me for the little and big unknowns of life?
HELL YES!!!
Is there more to come into peace with?
YES, every moment is an initiation, a choice between finding peace or attaching to a false security.
So you get the vaccine, what happens next when a new disease comes? Because they will. Will you get Another vaccine, and another? How many will it take to make you feel comfortable? Right now children are prescribed to receive 72 vaccines by the time they are 18 years old.
The Global Initiation
Presently we are experiencing a global initiation. Do you see it, do you feel it, do you sense it?
COVID19 is a powerful teacher. It is showing everyone their intimate fear of sickness, death and for many financial uncertainty. IF one is conscious, this global pandemic has infinite potential to show us that which we have created attachments to, as well as things we purposely avoid, in order to “feel safe”. These are all reactions that create a false sense of security. Any attachment or aversion we have, is not true freedom. Freedom can only come from understanding the true nature of our reality, and this occurs by learning how to peer into the subconscious aspects of our mind. This “virus/timeout” has it’s pros and cons of course, and we can meet it with creativity, consciousness and soulful growth, moving into higher perspective, or we can stay within the denser 3D realm of fear and false sense of security.
How are you handling it?
Many are falling into the trap of paranoia and unease, shutting themselves off from life. The repercussions of this will follow them into the multidimensional aspects of their being, until the lessons and wisdom teachings are embraced and loved into.
This time in history is the exit from a masculine dominated world, prior to that a female world where women were honored for their ability to see and intuit, and because of it, they had a lot of control. So the pendulum swung. Now the pendulum is trying to swing back into balance by entering an age that ask for us all to see, remember ourselves and work together in balance. We are within the clutch of a individual and collective death and rebirth, and we must individually become active participants in ushering in the paradigm of balance . We can choose to wake up to our attachments and aversions or stay passive hiding in a narrow corridor playing it safe. It’s each ones choice.
Life Is Meant to Be An Adventure
We can live one way or the other. We can live a life of adventure, of initiation after initiation into higher truths, or we can live our life built upon illusions that trick us into living from the small self that hides away from life, numb and fearful, and is easily manipulated and controlled.
Is that truly living life?
Life is full of unknowns. It’s meant to be an adventure. And an adventure is a discovery. Thus life is meant to be an adventure, a discovery, a reclamation of our ultimate beauty and joy, and that can’t be grasped or even comprehended when our focus is on protecting our self through the numerous control mechanisms we have personally created and that have been created for us by external forces of the 3d realm.
If we want to open to the grace of Divine Love, we must learn to FEEL, soften and be PRESENT to all of life, to the unknowns within the adventure of life. Our pleasure and pain must become one, knowing that we have no control over what happens within the external of life, but within we hold the key to opening a fantastic dance into ultimate freedom and wonderment.
What blocks us from this space of being?
It’s simple. CONTROL.
Human nature is to create control mechanisms. All that we grasp and hide from in order to feel comfortable and safe, are the systems we have set in place to control our outer world. Breaking down these perceptions, all these mechanisms we have created, takes a stillness and quietude to hear how to go about dismantling our false reality of safety so that we can live in our truth, our Divine Human Nature.
To get to this place, is a continual journey and surrender, growing our vibration of truth by steeping over and over into the frequency of love. We begin by inquiring, feeling, exploring our emotions, beliefs and perceptions of life. We can locate this by looking at our story and tracking into the body and subconscious mind. In these places of inquiry we surrender into a witnessing engagement of the origin stories of all we have cut ourselves off from fully feeling, because in that time and space we didn’t know how to cope. This can originate within the womb, time of birth, childhood-adulthood, tracing throughout our ancestral stories and moments of death. There are so many reasons we create attachments and aversions, and once you discover and de-armor yourself, you find a growing freedom and trust like never before. Like the ouroborus, we learn to eat the tail of past perceptions, our ego, that have kept us moving forward, trapped in time. We dissolve and surrender ourselves into the primordial flow of the moment into the Divine Frequency that has no agenda but to love into every moment.
That is what we do at Seeds of Satya. We learn to identify, see through the illusions, and powerfully come into our truth, to be fully present to all the magic of the seen and unseen. We do the soul, mind and body work that prepares you for the initiations of life and death, through unforgettable initiations that prove your ability to fully surrender and open to all of the beauty and mystery of life in trust, devotion and compassion. These experiences guide us and remind us that we are not in control of our outer circumstances, but we are in control of how we react, perceive and step forward into our reality.
TRUTH+LOVE+MAGIC,
Kari Rivers
"You are divine intelligence, a mystery begging to be known. Your perceived limitations and imbalances are a sign post into the places within your being that need to be unraveled and unsoiled, allowing your true essence and vibrancy to be reclaimed." -Kari
At Seeds of Satya, Kari guides her clients to plant seeds of truth which creates a deep trust in the seen and unseen realms within and all around. She is a Soul Catalyst that encourages an embodied curiosity to heal the shadow of our multidimensional selves, and step into the magic of every moment. Specializing in Depth Hypnosis, Spiritual Counseling, accelerated energy techniques, breathwork, meditation and Sacred Paths of Initiation. Kari hosts various events throughout the year virtually and in sacred earth sanctuaries in CO and NC.
