Lesson 3: Gateways of Initiation

"With menarche, you meet your wisdom
With monthly bleeding, you practice your wisdom
And at menopause, you become your wisdom."

North American Indian saying. 
 

During our lives as women, we go through an epic journey.

A journey of progressive initiations into our true selves.

An inner journey rather than an outward one.

Maybe when you think about initiations you imagine brutal, extreme endurance tests such as those boys would classically go through in tribal societies to become men.  Where you go out into the wild and fast, fight off bears and wolves and come back alive, triumphantly now a man.

No.

As women, we don't need to do that.

It's all in here. 

We are blessed to be initiated in a natural process that comes from within ourselves and does not need to be sought on the outside ... an initiation that emerges from our lived experience in a female body with its immense capacity for creation, gestation and transformation.

The menstruality journey begins at menarche, our first bleed, and continues until and beyond menopause, when we stop cycling.  

And then with each menstrual month, we experience another 'mini-initiation', where we are reminded of another aspect of who we truly are. More on that in Week 3! 

But what is initiation?

It's a journey to psychological and spiritual maturity.

It's a death and rebirth process where we die to the old self we were and come into the bigger Self, the one that's aligned with our Soul, our inner being that's beyond the roles and relationships we play out in our day-to-day life. 

There are peak moments of initiation during this overall life-long journey. 

In this meditation, I invite you to explore these moments through the imaginal realm. You will need to have a Soundcloud account (free to sign up) to access it. In this meditation, you will have an opportunity to get an embodied sense of what each initiation feels like, and to take time to journal or draw on your experience afterwards.