Initiation and Interpreting Spirals
Is the glass half full or half empty? More often i find myself asking is the spiral directing me upward or downward?
Culturally in the so-called “Western” world we understand spirals to be taking us down with them. They represent loss; when we’re spiraling we’re losing control of our situation, losing access to resources, or struggling to maintain our health whether mental, physical, spiritual, or any combination thereof.
This strong reinforcement, whether maliciously set in our culture or not, makes it difficult to imagine a spiral might take us upward. What if a spiral can lead us to some place new? Instead of losing what we value, what if we’ve found new values and are taking them upward with us? Moving up the spiral gains us a different perspective just as moving downward does.
An initiation is often a painful experience. Our understandings can be shaken, sometimes they may break. We’re given a wider view of what we thought was everything we knew without expecting it. Accepting this sudden change on its own is difficult; the mind tends to seek comfort in times of distress. More than accepting though is initiating oneself into that sudden change, or taking the reigns and guiding our selves into challenging or distressing emotions.
In moments of initiation i find myself imagining i’m standing in a large, near-empty space. Near empty because i imagine that my former understanding, once holistic and seemingly complete, is like a room where the walls have fallen away to reveal a yet bigger, empty room that surrounds it. That bigger room is a new wholeness that can be filled with whatever i desire. Moving from one whole to another is called gestalt, and seeing an overall bigger picture of the multiple wholes we carry is called umwelt. Initiation can be painful and challenging because when we expand our umwelt we have to accept that what we once thought of as our whole self is much bigger than we expected. i find myself asking “What am i supposed to do with all this space?”
The answer is always: something, anything, but don’t let it sit empty for too long.
In the past i’ve left that new, empty wholeness alone and suffered major consequences because of it. i would start drinking or doing drugs, escaping into fantasy through media, or staying busy with social events. Right now i find myself once more with an expanded umwelt. i recognize that old pattern of self-destruction and am avoiding repeating it as best i can. That’s a spiral upward; i’m taking old information, interpreting it with a new understanding, and seeing how i can alter the behavior instead of ignoring it.
Life tends to surprise us with changes we don’t know we need. i’ve been using the same approach i’ve built for myself for years. So far it has served me well. i’m proud of that. i created an understanding of reality on my own, a cosmology. Now i’m being pushed into changing it, to leave behind what no longer works for me. It’s exciting and frightening. If there’s one thing i’ve learned over the last 3 years it’s that impermanence and uncertainty are some of our greatest allies. i feel there is no better way to practice world building than to embrace both those concepts as completely as i can while i change my own reality once more. As i change myself, reality changes around me. That’s something we can all expand into if we take initiative.