Will you explain what you define as "Initiation" In this context as ive been around some people who were master masons and it seemed they were just looking for someone as fodder to climb over the top of and take advantage of or to themselves be the center of attention almost seeming as with a hey look at me "and bless their hearts" as for the grace of god go I, and i could be them so not in a judgement stance but from an i do not want to anything like them when i gro up .., please explain this in short phrases and with simple words SO I Can Understand your Response
Initiation in the literal sense is to go into. Thus one may initiate (start) a project.
Many groups have some sort of initiation ceremony that is intended to make a new member. Often the ceremony is just hazing, but it does provide some common experience for the group.
Humans, typically operating on physical and emotional levels with modest mental activity, when formed into long term groups, may form a group energy body. This is particularly the case with groups that undergo intense or dangerous activities or that are away from the greater community for long periods e.g military.
These groups, if reasonably harmonious, may have an esprit de corps or group intelligence that serves to motivate and coordinate the members. This allows decisions to be made without meetings, even not being able to discover the decision-maker yet every member knowing the decision. In these groups, often a few members will be more attuned to the group intelligence and while they appear to make decisions they are really verbalizing what the group intelligence wishes.
I used to live in a spiritual community and it typically took 40 weeks for a suitable new member to be admitted by the group spirit. I recall a blacksmith that was a bit into spiritual matters and I explained to him about the 40 weeks. And after 40 weeks he came to me and said that the acceptance occurred at midnight, 2 days short of 40 weeks and that he had been literally running ever since.
The group spirit provides energy to its members so that they do not have to operate on their batteries (personal will). Residents operating on Personal Will became exhausted after weeks or months and left after a while.
In that example there was no initiation ceremony as such but a progressive exposure to the group and the overlighting entity.
Various human groups use ceremonies for initiation. If properly structured and conducted the ceremonies create a greater resonance with higher forces and those higher forces may, if the candidate is suitable, provide refined substance for the light body of the candidate.
We had a lodge initiation a month ago and I asked the rather good candidate what her experience was and she said she felt bigger. And that was literally true. She had received several Lights from On High and her light body was bigger and stronger.
In her case she already had a significant inner planes sponsor, but if not, it is likely that she would have received a connection to an inner sponsor. Such a connection is the essence of spiritual initiation - being provisionally accepted for on-going contact with the aura of a greater being.
As aspiring humans learn to control their physical desires, emotions and thoughts, they become progressively less disturbing and more useful and therefore are delegated tasks and admitted more closely into the light body of the inner planes sponsor. And indeed may progress to a higher sponsor.
The first inner initiation requires control of physical desires and some other preconditions. When those preconditions are met, the candidate has an inner experience appearing as a dream, and perhaps not recalled for years, in which s/he is tested and if passing, receives additional light substance and inner connections to assist the new initiate to stabilize consciousness and maintain inner flows. A typical change in the human is the certain knowing that Life has meaning.
The second inner initiation requires control of the emotions plus other conditions including proportions of light body substance.
The third initiation requires control of the mental body, and this is regarded as the first major initiation, the human being ready to be a junior member of the inner planes group.
These 3 initiations are symbolized by the 3 initiations of Freemasonry.
At present it is very rare for an inner initiation to occur in a lodge ritual. I have seen perhaps two. But in future it is expected that the first inner initiation will become a more public event, for example in charismatic churches where the new member may declare for Christ.
The first initiation is prefaced by a test of skill or coordination. This is commonly remembered as a dream - in my case many years after the actual event. I recall being in a garden area with a group of superior humans. The garden was in two levels with a short connecting set of stairs. I was given the task of standing at the top and handing out something like a program to those descending into the lower garden.
It must have been 5 years or more before I even remembered the event - but the memory has never gone away.
That diagram has a few technical problems but the main proposition is correct: the archetypal human has a series of intelligent interfaces with many levels of existence. Individual humans may vary.
Quite a lot of the in-body chakras are not too active either. For example few humans have much heart chakra activity and that makes it easy to misidentify emotional energies as heart energies. Also perhaps half of the adult population have significant blockages in the throat chakra and this can be heard in the quality of voice.
A chakra just above the head is referred to in Masonry by a qabalistic name: the point within the circle. That is the point from which a Master Mason cannot err. I have however yet to see a Mason operating from that point.
Here is a test question that I often use to help someone identify if they are a genuine/inner first degree initiate.
The question is:
- do you believe that Life has a meaning, or - do you know that Life has meaning?
How do you define "meaning"? Personally, I find that life has purpose. By serving that purpose one finds, or creates, meaning. Perhaps we are in agreement. I am however cautious as I have met many people who believe that meaning can be sought and found outside oneself, and that has not been my experience.
I am not sure that defining (placing limits) on words is particularly useful as I keep finding deeper meanings to words.
>I find that life has purpose
That is a more than sufficient answer to the test question. It is possible to perceive the existence of meaning without any sense of its having direction or purpose.
I recall a fellow with whom I worked. I could see that he was coming up to the first initiation and one day saw him in the street and it was obvious that he had changed.
So I asked to the test question and he replied that he did not know that life had a meaning but had stopped hoping to be lucky, to get something undeserved.
I thought that was a perfectly good answer to the test question.
As a side comment on luck. I play social bridge and always get there early so that I can place the tables so that an opposing pair of seats is on a good energy flow - and I sit on that flow. The flows vary in place a bit from day to day. Always my partner and I have by far the best of the cards - sometimes embarrassingly so. My usual partner is fairly adventurous and he will play 75% of the contracts at that table while I will play perhaps 10%.
But after a break for tea the flow of cards usually changes - regardless of the time at which tea is taken.
I am not sure that defining (placing limits) on words is particularly useful as I keep finding deeper meanings to words.
I agree that defining words places limits on them. However, I think that understanding what limitations each person puts on their words is key to communication. This does not mean that we must agree on what a word means to have a conversation about it, or that we have reached the ultimate and perfect definition of a word, only that we have an understanding of what the word means to the other person.
Personally, the best definition I have of "word" comes from Mortimer Adler - "Words are symbols which point towards concepts arranged in patterns to communicate meaning".
The better I understand the concepts which a word represents to you, the better I can decipher the meaning of your word pattern. This is the process that I use to discover the "deeper meaning (of) words".
