Initiation: Module Zero

Intention

Intention and Awareness

This journey you have chosen for yourself will entail a deepening of your awareness of what may currently be outside of your knowing. Your intentionality around this work will be the filter for the experience. With support and through a deep personal journey you will have an opportunity to expand your consciousness, release what no longer serves, and make room for what is being born in you.

The modules are meant to support your work, and are based in rite of passage and myth-ritual theory, indigenous knowledge systems, and eidetic imagery practices. Some components may be more useful to you than others. All of the practices and ritual actions provide an opportunity to disturb the status quo and generate an ordeal in order to promote transformative change. For this reason, it is important that you attempt each practice at least once. Even if a practice creates resistance or unpleasant emotions, the practice is in effect still supporting your journey for change.

While these preparatory sessions incorporate many of the experiential practices and processes that I use with my counseling clients, this training is not meant to function as therapy or counseling. The goals of this personal work are to 1) expand the foundations of support for those seeking life altering change and transition and 2) provide opportunities to expand consciousness and generate transformation. Within the context of these goals and the support, there is a mutuality between you and the support systems, a reciprocity, as well as a healing opportunity. You may ask for or seek support, and those who support you may also reach out to see how they can show up for you. We are, after all, interdependent with all other living beings.

Module Zero is an introduction and overview for our work together in the area of change, transition, grief, loss, and a desire to address our longing. Module Zero offers our minds a foundation and entrance into the territory of uncertainty and the rite of passage container. With permission to consider the discomfort of change, this module presents structural maps of the transition process and the potent liminal state where transformation is possible. These maps do not reflect the uniqueness of the territory for your journey. The particulars of your experience are always an original and organic unfolding, and we will walk that territory together.

Additionally, this initiation you have chosen is a journey of grief and loss. We must grieve the parts of ourselves and our experiences that we are releasing and that are no longer serving us. We must express and release the loss to make room for what is being born in us. Honoring what has hurt or harmed us also provides a way through the wound itself toward transformation. It is here, inside our discomfort and woundedness, where we find the gems of who we are becoming.

GRIEF within Initiation

Exploring grief, our normal response to loss, is an important aspect of this initiatory experience. Tending our losses through grieving allows us to begin to carve out space for the change we desire. We cannot fully leap into the next iteration of ourselves without addressing the parts that no longer serve our current state or expanding state of consciousness.

It is normal to feel conflicting emotions with regard to a loss or change, even when it is change we long for, instigate, or create. We may well feel relief that our loved one is no longer suffering, and we may feel tremendous sorrow because they are no longer here. We may feel excitement for a new job or relocation opportunity, and simultaneously feel sorrow as we leave a familiar community. Many who suffer the symptoms of PTSD or addiction long to find relief from the unimaginable pain and forge new ways of being in the world that are more in balance. Yet, relinquishing the familiar patterns of behavior and symptoms can still feel like a loss of what we intimately know. Grief and loss are an opportunity to reconsider our identity as we feel the discomfort of the disruption of what we recognized as normal or expected.

Emotions are not logical, and they are real. Allowing for the various emotions to arise is an important aspect of learning and noticing. Emotions are our body’s intelligence and way of communicating important information.

Each person responds to a particular loss or change uniquely. Even if family members share the loss of the same loved one, each person in the family had a unique relationship with the person who died. Your journey of transformation will be entirely unique. Each person will experience grief within the context of their unique relationships with other people, environments, events, and circumstances. There is no right or wrong way to grieve or move through change. Having companionship and support makes that journey bearable and potentially transformational.

Both for the supporter and the supported, we honor each other with our commitment to honesty, confidentiality, and non-judgment. We will not ask of you what we are not willing to do ourselves. We walk in vulnerability with you, willing and able to hold space and witness your work. We will show up from our heart center to support your journey.

The Truth Is…

After a great change or loss, we often find that others do not know what to say, say nothing, or say unhelpful things. Most of us have not been given the tools and information about grief, loss, and change to know how to adequately support others or ourselves. Our cultural conditioning does not always make room for the difficult emotions.
**What is false about grief/change—**It is not true that time heals all wounds. Replacing the loss, grieving alone, being strong for others, and burying our feelings will NOT make the pain go away.
**The truth about grief is—**Our feelings are normal and natural. We may have been socialized to believe that these conflicting and complicated feelings are not normal. There may not have been anyone to receive our expressions of grief. Grievers are NOT broken. We are hurting. We can let go of the pain by feeling it and moving through it with support and companionship.
**Losses may include** Death, divorce or end of a relationship, loss of a career, loss of social structures, loss of community, loss of trust, loss of faith, loss of safety, or loss of health.
Deciding to address the dark emotions that arise during times of change, externally imposed or self-imposed, is an act of radical self-compassion and an opportunity for healing.

Stepping Into the Liminal

Grief, loss, change, and transitions are by their very nature liminal states. The liminal or in-between states of change and transition are places of paradox, where seemingly incongruent events or emotions co-exist. The liminal state is characterized by uncertainty, disorientation, and a state or place where discomfort is common. The image of a dark, womb-like environment may be the best analogy for what a liminal state holds in terms of potentiality. The tangle ball is part of the chaos and destruction we experience in liminal states. We must allow for destruction and chaos so that a re-ordering and birth can occur.

Defining the Work

Rite of passage is a framework for transformative work. For those seeking to invite an ordeal or move through circumstances of loss/change, a rite of passage process can be a profound act of self-care. It is a process of separating from the old way of being, moving through an in-between or liminal state, and then integrating to a new way of being. Ritual actions during this process provide agency and participation in our own healing.

A Collective Imagination Problem

Our modern cultural paradigm often does not accommodate or tolerate discomfort and uncertainty long enough to allow new potentials to emerge. We dip our toe in the waters of the liminal destruction, and externalize the cause of the pain. The pain of change without necessary support can be overwhelming. Without the support or tolerance for remaining in uncertainty, we bypass the liminal state of change never truly arriving in a new place. We blame and shame to avoid the discombobulating and disorienting liminal territory. We often do not have sufficient capacity or support to tolerate discomfort and remain in the destruction of the liminal state long enough to endure the paradoxes of liminality, engage imaginative ritual, and meet myth and a new way of being.

A Womb of Support

With support, we can sustain the discomfort of the uncertainty of the liminal state. There are often conflicting emotions of an intense nature that arise during liminal states. The support agreement flows both ways. The initiate, the person seeking transformation, is able to request support; and the supporter also reaches out to check in with the initiate who is moving through various aspects of their journey. The more emotionally honest the exchange is between participant and supporter, the more powerful the relationship becomes. The supporter works from a place of empathy, feeling with the participant both the feelings related to destruction and death as well as those emerging moments of creation and rebirth. Mirroring observations and gentle inquiry reveal stepping stones for the initiate who walks an uncharted path.
There will be opportunities, unique to each transformational journey, to engage in ritual acts that invite imagination into the creation of new possibilities. Ritual involves an intentional act or action in the midst of transformation, a death and rebirth process, offered with the intention of making contact with the mythic, divine, or spirit realm. Ritual acts might include a series of actions, incantations, gestures, story, songs, or dance performed in a sacred or designated place.

Reflection

Journal

Obtain a journal or notebook for this work. Use it to make notes, write down questions or concerns, and record your responses to homework and practices between in-person sessions. Do not be surprised if you are writing down more questions than statements. Holding a question, or expanding the question is the beginning of expanding your awareness.

Begin with your statement or statements of intention. What brought you to this threshold place? What do you desire? What are your concerns and fears?

What behaviors do you observe in yourself that avoid difficult emotions or feelings? What kind of self-talk happens when you experience avoiding difficult emotions? What self-talk happens when you feel dark emotions? Where do these emotions sit in your body?

When you notice a pattern of behavior or symptoms, or when something interesting occurs, ask yourself: who, what, when, where, how as you reflect upon the moment at hand. Allow yourself to wonder and remain curious without fixing or solving the question or circumstance.

Return to the question of your intention. Allow these statements for a desired outcome to take many shapes and forms. A pattern or distillation will occur over the next several weeks. Your intention will become more clear or perhaps less specific. Keep this idea of intention in mind, allowing it to organically unfold through inquiry and reflection.

Reviewing our longing and woundedness & HONORING AND VALUING OUR Experiences

Loss History Questionnaires: There are many types of loss, injury, trauma, and pain over a lifetime. Many of us have not fully tended the losses we have experienced. These losses, if untended, can accumulate and impact our physical and mental wellbeing. More often, we partition off a part of ourselves during trauma events. This is an act of self-love and self-preservation. However, these parts will eventually call to us later through symptoms that erupt post-trauma. Tending, listening, and engaging these parts allow them to reintegrate into the wholeness of who we are. Being willing to look into these shadow parts, opening our awareness to what may not be clearly visible, is the first step.

Take a moment to assess your own loss history using this questionnaire.

Video: Boundless mobile project

Please watch the first video on the Boundless Mobile Project.

Practices

Supported Circle Breath

Place one hand on your chest or heart and the other on your abdomen while doing this exercise.

Preparing the body

For this exercise, find a comfortable place to lie down on your back. You may want a pillow under your head and a blanket or cover.

Practice each exercise at least once a day if possible. If you can, practice the breathing in the morning upon waking and before sleep. More practice throughout your day, particularly in moments of emotional balance, will allow you to feel into a state of emotional regulation. It will help you to later use these practices during states of overwhelm, upset, or anxiety.

Ritual Action

CREATE AN ALTAR OR INTENTIONAL SPACE

Pick a particular location inside your home or outside near your home where you can easily spend time uninterrupted. Make a commitment to do your training work and practices in this particular space most of the time. It is not necessary to always be in this exact location, so please be compassionate and flexible with yourself as you do this work. However, the time you spend in a particular space will deepen the ritual space with your energy and intention. You may want to talk to the other members of your household about the space you choose so that there is an understanding about its purpose and sacredness. You may include whatever precious items you would like in this space (stones, candle, or other meaningful objects). The arrangement of this space or altar is not stagnant, and is meant to change through your process. You may decide to add items to your altar along the way that reflect what is unfolding. If it feels comfortable to you, take a photo of your altar to share it with your supporter/facilitator via text or email.