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Creating Bridges: The Spiritual & Philosophical |
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The Crisis of Initiation
Shifting from the Piscean
to the Aquarian Age
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by Jacquelyn Small
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The shift of Ages, which happens every 2,023 years -- currently from the Piscean to the Aquarian Age -- will necessarily cause initiation processes to be of a higher order, one requiring a more responsible human guidance. During an Age shift, the one Soul of Humanity takes a leap in consciousness, known as a Solar Initiation, and many of us will undergo the Second Initiation, referred to in the Western Hermetic Tradition as the "Baptism by Fire." Carl Jung said we can never separate from our archetypal roots any more than we can separate from the organs of our bodies; our psyches are a part of this one Soul. As Humanity takes another step upward upon the evolutionary ladder, we'll all pass through "a burning ground" where all within us not based in reality and love will fall away. Some do this consciously, some unconsciously. But all are affected. And for Humanity as a whole, the tendency toward war and destruction by fire will increase. -- which we see happening all around us today.
During the Piscean Age, material reality has been seen as "cause" rather than as "effect," with most people still unable to comprehend the true Causal Reality that resides beyond and actually creates the physical plane. Consequently, this Solar Initiation and Baptism by Fire is a crisis in belief concerning what these disasters we're currently experiencing truly mean. The symbolic realities are crying out for us to take note of the lessons we are to learn, so we can all move forward in love and truth, which is our rightful destiny.
So let's look for a moment at this shift from the Piscean to the Aquarian Age and see what it can tell us. The Piscean Age was ruled by the 6th Ray of Creation, according to Theosophical teachings, taught most explicitly in the books by Alice Bailey and the Tibetan Master Djwhal Khul, known as "the Messenger of the Masters." Each of the 7 Rays of Creation unfolds a new petal of God's flower when its time is ripe, and a new quality for Humanity to embody is born. The 6th Ray carried the quality of Devotion. During its reign we were to learn how to properly utilize devotional energy and worship the Divine. Never were we to worship one on the same level as we are, as this is a misuse of this cosmic power. Used accurately, devotion is a very positive quality. Used wrongly, it becomes codependence, emotional reactiveness, and at its worst, fanaticism and self-immolation. Humanity is now leaving this Age of blind procedure where we believed only concrete physical reality was real -- and where the tendency is to live for material possessions and comfort and work only for material enterprises ruled.
During the Piscean Age, we've used our minds. But only the concrete mind has been validated by scientists - physical facts and brain power. The solar plexus center dominated our lives, where desire for material well-being is felt as a need. Ego gratification, territorial possessions, and planned governmental and economic decisions able to control and motivate us, have ruled our psyches. We looked outwardly for order, direction, and for our sense of identity, making outer experts and the power of money and prestige our gods.
The major difficulty today is the inability for the average citizen to think for oneself - therefore at the mercy of those who sway them emotionally or through temptations or self-interest. Still trapped in 6th Ray energy, these powerful urges will now turn on us and cause us to create chaos all around us. Consider how the 9/11 devastation was engineered by men who were fanatically following orders they had not even read themselves until after having boarded the planes, and who sacrificed themselves through acts of depraved self-immolation. When a Ray starts to die out, holding on to its qualities creates harsh negative results.
Shifting now to the Aquarian Age, ruled by the 7th Ray of Creation, there is a totally opposite cosmic influence now driving us: we are to let go of our attachment to gurus and outer influences, and turn inward, called to recognize and birth the genius within ourselves. In this Age, for the Initiate, knowledge-based wisdom is superseded by intuitive wisdom…which is inclusive participation in the creative activity of Divinity. Our three higher cognitions open and will be honored, even by science -- the creative imagination, inspiration and intuition. The 7th Ray teaches us that, as daughters and sons of God, the true authority lives within each of us, and that the expression of our own talents is the most sacred act we can employ. The 7th Ray brings forth a new order in the human kingdom, one where each individual walks the earth as a true Self, a representative of God-in-form. This is the Ray of Self-empowerment as it extracts the life force from within each individual, separates "the wheat from the chaff", and organizes it into its most refined and proper use. Used wrongly, its dark side would be egoism, isolation, and black magic.
Can you imagine what our world would be like if each one of us learned to live as the truly authentic Self that God envisions us to be? Such spiritual gifts would abound! And all jealousy, possessiveness, competitiveness, and feelings of isolation or need for war would dissipate in the face of each person's realization of one's own divine uniqueness….Plato's Ideal, Spinoza's essence. This shift, then, from 6th to 7th Ray energy enables Humanity to take its Solar Initiation which will blossom the human kingdom into conscious beings on planet Earth.
Initiation
So what is an Initiation? I like to say it's how the soul goes to earth school, through grade upon grade of direct experience. Each initiation we take is an expansion of consciousness -- a means of opening the mind and heart to that which already is in reality, but now seen through a wider lens. No one passes through an initiatory crisis without something of wide usefulness and trained intelligent activity being an actual manifested result.
Initiation is the process wherein the spiritual being within your personality becomes aware of itself as the Soul, and you'll realize you have soul powers, soul relationships, and soul purpose. Initiation is but an expanding series of inclusive recognitions of that which already IS. Our ego brain thinks through cognition. Our soul "thinks" through re-cognition; it re-members.
Taking a metaphysical Initiation is always a crisis, because it requires a series of progressive renunciations. Sacrifice is seen and felt by the personality as giving up parts of its ego gratification. Sacrifice to the aspirant, or spiritual seeker, is felt differently: as conformity to the will of God. The spiritual will of the Initiate-in-training is the Divine Will. In other words, the aspirant is becoming identified with Purpose. Each time an Initiate moves forward, he or she penetrates more deeply into the heart of the Mysteries in company with those who share one's point in evolution, working toward a similar goal. And we realize we are not alone.
Initiation happens through the process of Revelation that Divinity is slowly dawning upon our human consciousness. All initiations prove themselves to be an aspect of "the one Great Revelation." All come from the Will-to-Good or the love nature of Deity. Relentlessly letting go of the lesser for the greater, the Way of Initiation is the Path of Liberation that eventually guides us Home.
Many of you are now undergoing the Second Initiation at the end of this Piscean Age, which is why so many attachment/addiction issues are "up" and why there are so many crimes of passion. The Second Initiation is known as a Baptism because it pertains to the emotional or astral body, which is "watery" in nature. This Initiation is associated with the waters of purification. Instability, storms, fog, tranquilities, pliability are characteristics of the astral plane. It reacts to every impulse, every magnetic "pull" coming from the material world - reflecting both the good and the bad. Reflect on your current life and all its trials and accelerations. Can't you relate?
Masses today are swept away by their emotional attachments and fanaticism, not by intelligent actions which can accept life as it is. Violent reactions create more and more glamour, delusion and vortexes of uncontrolled energies. The temptations that come from the emotional body produce suffering - which is an Atlantean carry-over. These are the energies that destroyed Atlantis. The solar plexus becomes the clearing house for all emotional reactions - so it is painful! Sacred Group work cannot proceed until the waters of emotion are tranquil and selfish intentions are superseded by selfless service. All must move into the heart.
This is a very difficult Initiation - an Initiation by Fire. The application of fire to water produces what? Steam. Fog. Miasmas - the glamours and the mists. The astral plane is the battleground between all pairs of opposites. Each polarity or opposition must be recognized before right choice can be made.
But freedom is the outcome.
Freedom is fashioned out of these new qualities: Detachment (physical) - Dispassion (emotional) - Discrimination (mental). The quality Voluntary Discipline is how we achieve all three. And all are preceded by Disillusionment, as a series of illusions will die. Food for thought.
A useful life of dedication will always be present as an observable fact after the Second Initiation. A sense of true humility will exist, plus a noticed realization of the divinity in all people, in all of creation.
Our Current Task
What is the task of the Second Degree Initiate in this dawning Aquarian Age? To what are we pledged at this stage of our development? We are charged now to emerge out of this present fog of human affairs. The fires of mind must now be reckoned with along with the waters of desire. In evolution we are in a higher place than ever before. So, what is the purpose of applying fire to water? Of causing this kind of pain, both individually and for Humanity as a whole? So we can release the past…which never dies without a fight! But past ways can no longer direct us. What lies ahead must now be our focus. The transfiguration of our human consciousness is the aim.
Old desires, astral energies and aspirations are still powerful forces within us. But now, with a new perspective we can turn toward our awaiting future. The Initiate is now negative toward glamour, delusion, misinterpretation and emotionalism. That which we now love and desire lives in a higher dimension, and is accessed through our yearning for it. We invoke it. You'll notice that you start to overcome selfish thinking and the group work of the new world servers becomes more important than the meeting of all your personal desires. Technically, the energies of the solar plexus are being transferred to the heart. The ego and the soul must marry. For the Second Degree Initiate failure is seen no longer as an objective fact, but its subjective, metaphysical aspects and meaning are revealed….all lessons in how the soul can be a better human.
Just before this initiatory impulse strikes, we experience a loss of interest or fascination in certain taken-for-granted things, moods, or situations that used to "set us off," positively or negatively. The charge is gone. At first you don't trust this. You believe you've repressed your feelings and are only kidding yourself. Or you think you are depressed and rapidly becoming a candidate for Prozac!
But gradually you'll notice that you have a new perspective on things. And you'll start to notice a different kind of "pull." Since what now inspires or activates you lies in a higher dimension, your mind becomes responsive to ideas, intuitions and impulses coming from the Soul. We become transmitters of high intention for the Divine Plan,
Being prepared to step down cosmic energies for the masses - to be an instrument for the Planetary Logos to reach Humanity.
And you will never again feel the same. Your new attitude will start to show in your daily life by concrete observable actions. Others will notice a change in you. You are becoming an integral part of the conscious circle of Humanity. Few will lead the way; and the good new is: the masses will eventually follow. This is the faith we must keep alive as the bridge into our future. As Abraham Maslow, the father of self-actualization theory, once said to his room full of students: "If not you, then who?"
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Jacquelin Small,
Spiritualist, Clairvoyant Psychologist
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JACQUELYN SMALL, LMSW, is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Texas at Austin with degrees in human psychology and clinical social work. She is a licensed non-denominational minister and a licensed psychotherapist who works with both spiritual and psychological concerns.
Jacquelyn is a popular presenter and consultant in academic settings, new-thought churches and new paradigm conferences and mental health settings, known for her easy-going, self-disclosing, humorous style of intimate relating with her audiences.
She has a long history in addiction counselor training, consulting and counseling, and trains all kinds of health professionals in the emerging field of spiritual psychology. She is one of the teachers who has been selected by Unity Church for their national TV ministry. She served as the Director of Training for the Texas Commission on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse for nine years, and served on the adjunct faculty of the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Stanford, California for four years.
Jacquelyn has authored eight books about soul-based psychology and the process of personal transformation, some of which have become classics in the counseling and consciousness fields. She is represented by the Tom Grady Agency. She has many audio tapes as well through Eupsychia's publishing company, Eupsychian Press.
Her published books are:
* Becoming Naturally
Therapeutic (Bantam)
* Transformers, the
Artists of Self-Creation
(DeVorss & Co.)
* Awakening in Time
(Eupsychian Press)
* Embodying Spirit (HarperSanFrancisco
/Eupsychian)
* Rising to the Call with
co-author Mary Yovino (DeVorss & Co.)
* Becoming a Practical Mystic (Quest Books)
* Psyche's Seeds-The 12 Sacred Principles of Soul-Based Psychology (Tarcher/Putnam
/Penguin)
Jacquelyn is a regular columnist for Science of Mind Magazine and is featured often in other magazines. Among the many conferences and programs for which Jacquelyn has keynoted or presented programs, include:
* The Association for Humanistic Psychology
* Association for Transpersonal Psychology
* Omega Institute
including their Body &
Soul Conferences
* Tracor and Texaco, Inc.
* Church of Religious Science Annual
Conference
* Great Lakes Addiction Conference
* Whole Life Expo
* The College of William & Mary's Annual Addictions Conference
* Most major universities
in the United States
* U.S. Department of Heath, Education and Welfare
* Omega Institute's
Body & Soul Conferences
* New Age Magazine's Bahama Teaching Cruise
The ConferenceWorks!
She has been featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show, America's Talking, Wisdom Television and Radio, New Dimensions Radio, NPR's People's Pharmacy and a CNN's series on Alternative Healing and continues to make regular guest appearances for radio and television.
Jacquelyn Small serves on the Advisory Board of the International Psychosynthesis Association, the National Council on Codependence, and The Holistic Alliance of Professional Practitioners, Entrepreneurs and Networkers, Inc.
She is the Founding Director of Eupsychia (pronounced u-si'-ki-a) Institute which means "good psyche" or "well being" in Greek, a not-for-profit professional training and healing program in Soul-Based Psychology and Integrative Breathwork. With her staff of dedicated, experienced spiritual therapists, she conducts workshop intensives throughout North America on a regular basis.
Eupsychia Institute
PO Box 151960
Austin, TX 78715-1960
(800) 546-2795
Local (512) 327-2795
Fax (512) 327-6043
eupsychia1@aol.com
Contact Webmistress
www.eupsychia.com
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