Initiation

Explore this issue’s theme with a note from the Editor in Chief Ana-Maria Janes

Initiation.

Instinctively, you can sense it refers to entering something new. As Earthborn Magazine leaves the dreaming stage of winter and enters the mobilizing phase of spring, it seemed fit for Initiation to be the first theme.

When I think of initiation, I immediately feel into the collective currents and deeply relate to something you are moving through. We all sense the collapse of the old ways, the uncertainty of navigating the changing landscape, and are unsure of what lies beyond. It feels too big.

While the world changes, as individuals, we are experiencing our own unique brand of initiation. We have many of them in our lives. Some are big and obvious, while others are shifts in your mental, emotional, or psyche.

Other initiations are meant to bring us closer to touch our inner power and operate from our Original Self with conviction, courage, and purpose.

Changing our inner architecture is no easy feat, and my goal is to normalize this as a natural process of our psyche.

For that, we need new myths. New stories to match our current epoch, where we see ourselves in others. Each story extends a hand of courage to a reader who needs it to navigate their own initiation.

To help you deepen into what initiation means to you as you read Earthborn, I’d like to give you a model of the phases you might be called to explore. While many frameworks exist, I will share the one Mother Earth taught me through the cycle and rhythm of the seasons.

Autumn

In this phase of initiation, there is a sense that something is not quite right. What you’ve been doing is no longer working. There are ways of being you find scratching beneath our skin.

You push boulders uphill, not realizing that way of being needs to be let go of. They will never work for you the same again.

You experience the range of shades of loss and grief as, moment after moment; you realize you must leave something behind.

As you read through the poetry and essays, let’s acknowledge this disorienting phase for the potential blessing it can offer. Normalize the agony you move through as your outer or inner world is changing with or without your permission.

Winter

Next, you must accept the truth of what you are faced with and come to the realization that you must act differently. When we surrender into this knowing and dissolve into ourselves. This surrender takes faith. Get comfortable with this.

This is also the space between identities. Where you know what you left behind, but you are unsure of what is emerging. Do not villainize the “not knowing what to do next” stage. You are meant to rest and deeply listen here.

At some point, you have a spark that shows you the way forward. Often, it does not look as you had imagined it would. It’s stretchy. Nor can you see the full plan. Become comfortable taking your next step in this world rooted in this new conviction, yet navigating so many unknowns.

Spring

Even if you can no longer see every step ahead, each one you take will give you feedback. Positive or negative. Learn to feel into the courage required not knowing which way it will go. Learn to interpret your feedback as new information and adjust in real time.

Acknowledge how you hold your breath and still do the scary thing that gives you butterflies in your belly.

Acknowledge the successful step that opened new doors you could not have imagined through magical synchronicities you find unbelievable to explain.

Acknowledge the failure that gave you new tools for your path forward.

A new lens for moving in the world is needed. When you surrender into that, you begin to feel how the pieces fall into place and nothing is wasted.

Summer

This is where you land in your new identity and get into the swing of things. You are infused with life force and are living.

Acknowledge how you landed in your new state of being with all the twists and turns that gave life flavour.

Acknowledge the relief of this stage. The joy. The newfound knowings you gained.

Acknowledge what you accomplished.

This is the golden zone we all chase. But we cannot stay in bloom forever. Soon it will be time for Autumn and you must, with a full heart, feel the end approach so you can go through the cycle again.

Each stage is valuable should you choose to see it through new eyes. As you read the stories in this volume, may you rest in the knowing you are moving through one of the most natural cycles that exist.

Some parts may be more unpleasant than others. After all, who has not been conditioned to chase the heights of summer and avoid the depths of collapse in Autumn and Winter. We’ve never been taught how to navigate them, and of course they seem challenging until we get the hang of it.

My deepest wish is that you take a moment to notice in which stage you are currently in. Pause and consciously begin to work with this process instead of against it. For life is infinitely more beautiful on the other side of integrating this cycle.

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xo,

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