Initiation by Malidoma Somé

From my mentor and friend, Malidoma Somé.

“The world is in an initiatory intensive at this time. And as with any initiation, the fear of the unknown is more deadly than what is known. At times like this, we must invoke our medicines, our collective gifts and imaginations to stomp the spread of fear and insecurity, and to read into the crisis that is plaguing the world from the perspective of our human genius and its capacity to respond to our turmoil wisely. We humans have asked for this initiatory moment for exactly this reason. We were otherwise too comfortable in our defiance of the obvious: the call to heal in the face of the redundancies we had sunken into.

At his time dear Ones, we need to distance ourselves from the fear that is spreading and get closer to Nature and our Ancestors. Nature carries the magic we need to ascend to the light of our collective immunity. As the mirror of our true selves, Nature wants us to immerse ourselves into Her so we can remember that we are not the puppets of fear. If we do, we will see how this pandemic is a call to a self-check and an invitation to reclaim a larger power we are entitled to. We are also invited to remember that our healing is with our Ancestors. These forebears are reminding us that the medicine we brought to this planet is yet to be unleashed fully. Let us engage them with the stories of our current journey. Let us show them that as co-creators, we stand together while we walk through this initiation. Let’s not sag into the easy recess of panic. It’s a deja-vu that makes us predictable to the agents of manipulation and robs us of the grace of our sacred selves. If we do not trust our medicine, if we have faith from our Ancestors and believe in the magic of Mother Nature, now is a good time for all that to show.

When things fall apart and the center of our being cannot hold, we must seek shelter at the shrine of the ancestors and reach out to the magic of Nature where Wedemes await us. Initiation is a threshold to the magic of the radical transformation; there is something else in us that needs to die so that a larger self can be born. Should we prefer the old dysfunction in the face of what is offered to us? Now, more than ever, we must speak loud to the Ancestors, we must feel the Earth beneath our feet and we must capture the smell of Nature as we commit to a larger life and re-subscribe to the medicine in each other. We are that close to a glorious homecoming.”