When I left Boulder, Colorado in April, I left behind an amazing intimate relationship, a great community, the experience of giving my gifts beyond my comfort zone and more validation from beautiful women than I had ever experienced.
I was afraid that returning home would trap me in the gravitational pull of my own culture and wipe out any developments I had made on my life journey in my stateside adventure.
For many months, I was doing well, but for the past several weeks, it is as if my consciousness is on a downhill trajectory. Combined with intense feelings of melancholy and emotional pain, I’ve been questioning if I’m in the right place. And I’ve been shaken to my core. Feeling afraid and like a young boy.
These are the times in our lives when it’s easy to start thinking that it’s possible to devolve, to somehow slide back down the mountain. These are the times that it’s easy to think that something is wrong, that God and the Universe are untrustable and that on some level I’m screwed.
Forgetting your Soul
Well, I’m going to die. That is clear. I might even experience lots of pain along the way. So in that sense, yes I’m screwed.
And yet for the person standing at the gates of initiation, facing the demons that protect the realms of our next incarnation from our entry, that is good news. For it gives us the necessary impetus to take the situation seriously and find the courage to see what is really going on. That is the only way that we will find our way across that burning threshold.
See, the only way a human Soul can “devolve” is to be forgotten, to become a stranger to itself by falling into the river Lethe (Greek mythological river of oblivion). In other words, to never move across that threshold.
Our consumerist culture has mastered that act of forgetting. The trance of instant gratification has committed genocide against the souls of the global population. For when this side of the burning threshold can be made pleasant by a thousand things, why would you want to cross and burn your very identity to ash?
Every human will in the course of their lives feel called to adventure. Every human will at some point feel the yearning to engage in the dance of life from a deeper inner truth than we have heretofore been privy to. But when people arrive at the place where I’m at right now, most seek refuge in addictions (like I still sometimes do).
It seems quite clear, however, that you cannot be taken by the siren song of consumerism and at the same time live a soulful life of meaning. It is impossible. So most people choose to forget. Most people choose to drown themselves in the river of oblivion, or as Henry David Thoreau put it:
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
Facing the demons within
Painful experiences like the one I’m going through are not wrong, they are not obstacles. On the contrary, they are the requisite fuel for the fires of transformation that will purge our old identity structures so that a truer and more soulful form of us can be birthed into this world.
And when this process of transformation happens to us, it can seem like we have been singled out for pain. That in our suffering, we are somehow special. I have felt that a lot lately. Yet, on closer examination, it seems that we are at the effect of a universal law: Whenever we commit ourselves, consciously or unconsciously, to living out our great work in the world, the demons that would prevent us from doing so will suddenly all come alive in our inner worlds. It has been designed that way. It is a gift to us. Only this way can we face our fears and find our peace with them.
In other words, committing to carrying out your great work in the world is not going to be an always-happy experience. Your identity will peel off layer by layer and you will be afraid. But at the same time, it’s going to carry a meaning of significance and soul-alignment that outweighs any frights that may appear along the way. And it is going to initiate you into a courage that average men will never know.
The price of being in true service
When I came back to Norway, I had big visions of transforming Norwegian sociey. And instead, Norway is kicking my ass. Similarly, as I’m entering the creative process of creating an archetypal immersion course based on my knowledge of the KWML archetypes, I question whether I’m worthy of giving that to you.
Such a situation could stop many people from moving ahead. It could stop me from moving ahead (it won’t). We would let that happen ignorant of how perfectly this has all been designed in support of our deepest gifts. We can not give our gifts from a place of arrogance, from a place of thinking we have all the answers. We must be humbled and awed to live our purpose fully.
So instead of fighting this process through addictions, depressions or emotional drama, we can choose to be with the pain, and allow it to bring us into the underworld, there to be reborn as true adults. And in the process, you may find, as have I, that support will magically arrive at your doorstep. This too is a gift to you. To let you know that even though you are going through hard times and may tell yourself terrible things, you are loved exactly as you are.
Authentic living is not an always-happy experience. God isn’t giving us brownie points for being with what’s so. And that doesn’t mean it’s anything but exactly right, exactly perfect.
To give our gifts and serve as guardians of this world, we are inevitably going to face terrible things. It’s unavoidable. And that’s why most don’t do it. They would rather be “quietly desperate” than terrified yet full of life and purpose on the frothy edges of the evolutionary process.
My vision with the “Reclaim your inner throne: An archetypal immersion experience”-course is to initiate you into these landscapes. I want to show you these thresholds and help you cross. So isn’t it more than a little obvious that I should be going through exactly that experience as I create the course for you? It’s going to be one hell of a ride. It’s for the brave amongst you. Cowards don’t do well with truth and initiation.
If you want to be one of the 10 men that get to go through the beta release of this course, as a band of brothers mapping out the territory where others will follow, facing your demons and giving your gifts, then contact me and let me know (several places have already been taken).
Blessings on your path, Brother.
In Service,
Eivind