Initiation is the process of ceasing to be a passive subject of reality and of becoming a conscious creator within that reality.
It is the hard path. The path less taken. The rewarding path. The often fatal path. The free path.
Here’s how to self-will that process in five steps.
Get and stay healthy. Exercise. Eat right. This is the step that so many skip, and which comes back to haunt them later. The body and mind are inseparable; don’t make the mistake of dividing them.
The body is the cursor of your existence, the tip of the iceberg, and the easiest part to change. Positive changes made to the body have a compound effect on the rest of life. Start here. If you can change your physicality, you’ll have a surplus of energy to use in the rest of your life and automatically open new doors. You’ll be a more positive person. People will respond to you differently. This is true, lasting consciousness alteration.
Energy work, breath work and other modalities for changing the body can be excellent here but nothing short-cuts the basic, common-sense steps of exercise and diet. Yoga can be excellent for some, though not enough for others.
Start an insight-based meditation practice. The varieties are endless, but simple is often best. Learn how to sit still. Learn how to breathe deeply and naturally. Sit and watch your thoughts without judgement or clinging. Let them pass through and waft away without grabbing for them. Start at ten minutes a day. Aim for an hour a day if you can. Half an hour is fine. But do it every day, like brushing your teeth. There is no single practice which will improve your life and outlook more.
Who you are and what the world is are a series of carefully crafted and nested stories that were created long before you were born, will likely long outlive you, and which you will be a subject of as long as you don’t consciously examine them. With the strong foundation you’ve built from exercise (self-directed change) and meditation, start looking at your life objectively. Ask yourself where you’re complicit in other people’s stories. If you like them, stay in those stories. If you don’t, don’t. You’re not bound to any of it, though remember that if you want to get rid of the bad aspects of something you’ll probably have to lose the good aspects, too.
The story of who you are, were, will be: you don’t have to accept any of this. If you want, bypass selective editing and let the whole thing go. All of it. Stay on the blank page as long as you want; then write a new story if you like. Just remember that you’ll have to write in roles for other people that they like if you want others to play along.
The more that you meditate, the more you let go of external determination, the more that you will keep coming back to yourself—your own simple presence, being, breath. Note that this would be why we started with step one.
But also note that “externally imposed” doesn’t necessarily mean “bad.” You may, in fact, already be living in the Best of All Possible Worlds. Your aim should simply be to bring every facet of your life into explicitly conscious awareness. More awareness = more freedom to choose what happens next.
True initiation happens when you stop giving your power away to others—gods, masters, saviors, messiahs, groups, relationships, addictions, corporate ideas, media figures, mythologies, stories, ideologies—and give it back to yourself. There’s a reason why you probably haven’t been doing that: It’s terrifying. It means taking responsibility for your own life and systems of meaning in the face of meaninglessness—but them’s the breaks. It’s called growing up. Put yourself on the spot.
Now take another look at the people around you, remembering that you are no different than anybody else. In fact, you are less than them in some ways now: you’ve shed some illusions and possibly some of the support that came along with them. If you want to leave your cave, you’ve got to deal with the woods.
The people around you are the same consciousness, the same will-to-power that you are. They’re unconsciously moving within largely inherited behaviors and stories that they have consciously chosen because those keep them safe. Let go of that stuff, and you won’t be safe—and people may well respond to you as something that is Not Safe. But you will be (more) free. Free to move as you will, join up with new stories as you will, create new stories as you will—with no guarantees. Leave the others be. Do not attempt to drag them with you. Do not attempt to divest them of their illusions, unless they ask. Respect them and the lives they are choosing to live with the same consciousness you are. Or they will make your life, quite literally, a living hell.
The more self-determined you become, the more and stranger opportunities you will be given to take new paths. You can stay in the self-gratification loop, which is fine, or you can take a look at the world-as-it-is and ask yourself one simple question: How can I help?
It’s probably not how you think you can. Or maybe it’s exactly how you think you can. But, put simply, you can take off your fetters and kind of hang around loitering, or you can use your new freedom to walk to the place you know your efforts will assist other beings the most. Ask yourself “With the talents and tools I have, what is the optimal life I can lead to assist the greatest number of people?” Or, if you’re more fatalistic, “What is the life I was meant to live?”
Good luck. The Final Secret of the Illuminati is this: Show up. There’s no shortage of need for free pairs of hands to chop wood and carry water.
(Source: ultraculture.org)
(Source: upworthy.com)
— Eckhart Tolle (via scarrollyouaway)
Those words inscribed on the ring[ THIS TOO SHALL PASS] are not telling you that you should not enjoy the good in your life, nor are they merely meant to provide some comfort in times of suffering. They have a deeper purpose: to make you aware of the fleetingness of every situation, which is due to the transience of all forms – good or bad. When you become aware of the transience of all forms, your attachment to them lessens, and you disidentify from them to some extent. Being detached does not mean that you cannot enjoy the good that the world has to offer. In fact, you enjoy it more. Once you see and accept the transience of all things and the inevitability of change, you can enjoy the pleasures of the world while they last without fear of loss or anxiety about the future. When you are detached, you gain a higher vantage point from which to view the events in your life instead of being trapped inside them. You become like an astronaut who sees the planet Earth surrounded by the vastness of space and realizes a paradoxical truth: The earth is precious and at the same time insignificant. The recognition that This, too will pass brings detachment and with detachment another dimension comes into your lie inner space. Through detachment, as well as nonjudgment and inner nonresistance, you gain access to that dimension.
When you are no longer totally identified with forms, consciousness – who you are becomes freed form its imprisonment in form. This freedom is the arising of inner space. It comes as a stillness, a subtle peace deep within you, even in the face of something seemingly bad. This, too, will pass. Suddenly, there is space around the event. There is also space around the emotional highs and lows, even around pain. And above all, there is space between your thoughts. And from that space emanates a peace that is not “of this world,” because this world is form, and the peace is space. This is the peace of God.
Now you can enjoy and honor the things of this world without giving them an importance and significance they don’t have. You can participate in the dance of creation and be active without attachment to outcome and without placing unreasonable demands upon the world: Fulfill me, make me happy, make me feel safe, tell me who I am. The world cannot give you those things, and when you no longer have such expectations, all selfcreated suffering comes to an end. All such suffering is due to an overvaluation of form and an unawareness of the dimension of inner space. When that dimension is present in your life, you can enjoy things, experiences, and the pleasures of the sense without losing yourself in them, without inner attachment to them, that is to say, without becoming addicted to the world.
”— Eckhart Tolle (via relivebeginagain)
Echolilia: A Father’s Photographic Conversation with His Autistic Son. Timothy Archibald uses his camera to find an emotional bridge to his son Photographs and text from the book Echolilia: Sometimes I Wonder
My eldest son was born in 2001. He was always a kid who went to the beat of his own drummer. When he was 5, we began making photographs collaboratively as a way to find some common ground and attempt to understand each other. Soon after we began the project, Elijah was diagnosed on the autistic spectrum. Though the diagnosis gave me the words and history to understand my son better, it didn’t take away the mystery and the need to try to find an emotional bridge to him.”Echolilia” is an alternate spelling of a more common term, “echolalia,” used in the autistic community to refer to the habit of verbal repetition and copying that is commonly found in autistic kids’ behavior. I liked the idea of it: photography is a form of copying. Kids are a form of repetition. And looking at my kid with photography allowed me to see myself anew
(via psyphi-noetics)
— Magick in Theory and Practice, “Introduction and Theorems”, III:9
— Ramana Maharshi (via ashramof1)
(via christ-consciousness)
— Ram Dass
— Eckhart Tolle (via cosmofilius)
(Source: yogachocolatelove, via paganbuddha)

Question: How can I judge myself less harshly and appreciate myself more?
Ram Dass: I think that part of it is observing oneself more impersonally. I often use this image, which I think I have used already, but let me say it again. That when you go out into the woods and you look at trees, you see all these different trees….
— Rumi
This bizarre looking thing is “Ata the humanoid”, a mummified corpse found in the Atacama Desert ten years ago. It’s strange appearance led to many calling it an “alien”, claiming it as proof that extraterrestrials have visited Earth.
Well, it’s finally been submitted to a battery of tests and the results show it to be fully human. DNA analysis has even managed to pinpoint the location and nationality of its mother. The results do suggest that it was once alive and human, not a hoax, and so asks more questions than they answer.
The bone analysis suggests that this is not a fetus, but a child between the ages of 6-8. The specimen has just ten ribs (as opposed to 12), is just six inches long and has severe facial deformities. These symptoms do not match up to any known genetic disorder and experts have no idea how such a severely deformed and tiny child could have lived to age six.
More info here.
(via IFLS)
of course its human its got human skeletal structure why do people think aliens would have human skeletons god
just…
just the weirdest fucking shit…
wow…
Could it be a genetic disorder that petered out a long time ago? can that happen? Like how they think red hair will vanish from the gene pool in a few millennia? (Ha, as if.)
I wonder if it could have been sculpted from human remains … ?
(via luminousinsect)