When we begin a movement well, the follow through, or middle and end of the movement phrase is harmonized and integrated through the body.
This is also true for the experience of initiation into different phases of life, including adolescence, adulthood, finding one's calling, motherhood, elderhood, and even death.
When we mark these rites of passage well, we understand psychically what is being asked of us, and we rise to meet the sacred occasion.
The great storyteller Martin Shaw speaks of the process of initiation in phases. The initiation begins when we walk into the forest of our subconscious, the mythology of our own being, and meet ourselves there in this threshold space. This is the beginning, and the middle.
After we grapple with our own demons, we have the ability to emerge victorious. We have met the greater self, experienced the landscape of our own inner story, and are ready for the next phase of human development. We are ready to exit the forest and make the journey back to the village.
Shaw speaks of this as the process of Return, the last aspect of initiation, which is of immense importance. This end process gives us the ability to integrate and honor the experience through community.
But what happens when we attempt the return to a village and a culture that cannot support our integration, because these rites of passage are ignored or devalued?
What happens when initiatory rites are stripped of meaning entirely, and become shadows of previous initiatory ritual experience?
This is what we have today.
A failure in what Martin Shaw calls the Return, the movement back from the forest of the psyche into the village.
We exist within a culture where our mythologies have been forgotten. There is a mythic void where we no longer tell stories that sustain the psychic and spiritual life of human beings.
A new mythology is waiting to be born through these ashes.
We are being asked to recreate the myths through which we live, recast our ancestral songs, and integrate into a greater sense of wholeness and purpose through these initiations, in community.
Or, we risk losing the profound ecstasy that is felt through the mystery of being alive.