Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Initiation Medicine


Every hour new information emerges regarding the coronavirus and ways we are being asked to take responsibility during this time of crisis. People are being required to take precautions for the greater good, hoping to stop the spread of this virus. This is new territory...no one living has ever experienced anything like this and the pandemic is global. This crisis is real and I would never want to make light of the danger that is affecting many households as the virus spreads and we see the expanding affect on our economy.

What if we choose to see this current crisis as an initiation? What if we shift our perspective from fear to seeing this as a sacred journey? 

Initiation is a rite of passage marking entrance or acceptance into a new life. It can signify a transformation in which the initiate is 'reborn' into a new role. It requires surrendering to transformation and acceptance of the death and rebirth process of the soul's evolution. Initiation is a sacred journey and it creates change.

Change: alteration, transformation, metamorphous, transfiguration, alchemy

Butterflies are powerful representations of this sacred initiatory journey of change. Many cultures associate the butterfly with our souls. A shamanic perspective is that it symbolizes completed transformation due the the alchemical process it must go through from egg to larva to pupa to adult. The caterpillar's old body dies inside the chrysalis and a new body with beautiful wings appears after a couple of weeks. The adult butterfly represents transformation and hope.

I recently read an article written by Jonathan Hada Edwards and Julia Hartsell -- "What if the Virus is the Medicine?" 
Imagine what happens when an entire society finds itself in the midst of a critical initiation. Except you don’t have to imagine: it’s already happening, or starting to. It looks like chaos, a meltdown. We’re in a moment of collective, global-level crisis and uncertainty that has little precedent in living memory. The economic machine--the source of our financial needs and also a system that profits from disease, divorce, crime and tragedy--is faced with a dramatic slow-down. We are all facing the cessation of non-essential activities. There is opportunity here, if we claim it...
This is an opportunity to loosen our grip on old and familiar ways. Those ways worked for as long as they did, and they got us here, for better and for worse. They seem unlikely to carry us much further. What if we’re instead being asked to feel our way forward, from the heart, without benefit of certainty--which, when concentrated, quickly becomes toxic? No one has all the answers in this or any other time. Right now the questions may be more valuable.

What if we honor this time with sacred respect?

What if we take the time to listen for the boundaries and limits of our Earth mother?

What is truly important?

How can we receive the bitter medicine of the moment deep into our cells and let it align us with latent possibility?

How can we, with the support of the unseen, serve as midwives to all that is dying here and all that is being born? 
Let us slow down and listen to the inner invitation to BE change. 

May we discover what it means to be fully present in the moment and to appreciate our families and loved ones. 

May we recognize Mother Earth asking us to pay attention and to honor the natural world. 

May we be caretakers of our beautiful planet and choose to enter the initiatory process of coming into balance within and without. 

May we seek the wisdom of the ancestors and "remember" ways of living in harmony. 

May we become part of the solution for all sentient beings and for our descendants. 

Blessings of peace, love and light be upon you,
Gogo Gretchen Crilly McKay