"The moment of true initiation. It seems that, as the great masters teach us, it is not a moment of "great enlightenment." It is not someone who comes to "show us reality." It is not a "seeing all the world as a oneness." It is seeing the self as a liar and a feeder on others. It is measuring the self with TRUTH. It is seeing that the predator has been feeding on the self, that the self has been feeding on others and propagating the infection on to all those who one claims to love and wish to help.
Initiation is not a glorious inpouring of life and love and tears for the beauty and oneness of the world.
It is sheer terror.
It is a descent into Hell. It is the Shamanic descent into the underworld to do battle with demons. It is the dismemberment of the body, the flaying of the flesh from the bones, and the subsequent rebuilding of the self on a different foundation - a foundation of spiritual verity.
And if I could convey to you that Hell, that sensation, that solitary test in which the soul is weighed, BY THE SELF, finally and completely and seen for what it has truly done, you would see how little truth there is because of all the beliefs of the Matrix that have been inculcated and promulgate and tended so carefully by our emotions and by the deceptions of the predator within who convinces us that we are "good" and "pure" and there is "oneness."
Indeed, one sees that there is "oneness," but one sees that the aspect of God that is experienced at this level is the black, sucking, feeding maw of STS (Service to Self). One sees how little true Love is actually manifested at this level of being. One sees that all of our illusions about "goodness" and truth and beauty are LIES. They are masks for more feeding.
And that is so horrifying an initiation that few survive.
That is "paying everything."
Now, re-read what Gurdjieff had to say about the matter; how he pointed out that a person has to "pay in advance," that the key is to accept the idea that one is not what one thinks, that there is a different reality from which our own is projected, and that developing this idea in the realm of pure thought, and then using it as the platform by which one can observe and analyze, is the key to being able to see for a moment, and then again. One must be able to see the interactions of the Petty Tyrants in our lives, the Predators who prey on us in the Theological Reality. And then, one must be willing to act. It is only after action that the true nature of the Predator reveals itself just as the Vampire reacts with violence to being exposed by the presence of a mirror. Because, it must be kept always in mind that there ARE predators who are predators by choice - even if that choice is made at some level, in some part of themselves that is not available to even their own conscious awareness. They, too, are part of the Matrix, and they wouldn't be able to play their roles if they were not consciously convinced that they are right, that they are "good," that they are righteous and long-suffering."
- Laura Knight-Jadczyk, The Wave 5&6
