In my book, Answering Your Inner Calling, I share how my daughter’s illness was one of the hardest spiritual initiations for me. A spiritual initiation is any time that you have moved into a deeper, higher level of spiritual understanding. This isn’t about acquiring more knowledge. It’s rather an evolution that happens as you integrate your experiences–oftentimes challenging, and even heart wrenching ones– in a Soulful way.
Marlyse Carroll, author of the book, Am I Going Mad, The Unsettling Phenomena of Spiritual Evolution, describes spiritual initiations this way:
A spiritual initiation happens when we’re ready to take the next evolutionary step. It’s like a landmark or a tipping point on our life’s journey. In hindsight, it’s usually remembered as a light-bulb moment in which we changed our thinking, and therefore our life. Because whenever we change our thinking, our potential either expands or contracts.
When I was faced with my daughter’s terrifying, and unexpected, illness I had a very clear sense of the two choices that were before me. I could contract. Meaning that I could ignore my intuition, and fallen back on only consulting my intellect, letting my logical, egoic self lead the way. Or I could expand, meaning that throughout the incredible heart break, I could remain open and allow myself to be led from within.
I wish I could say that it was an easy choice. But the truth is that the pull to contract was immense. When faced with such fear and pain my default was still to pull back, to seek some comfort in logic and outside experts. In fact, at that time all of the “inner work” I talked about with my clients suddenly seemed ridiculous and useless. I can still remember how seriously I contemplated throwing out my meditation cushion, my angel cards, my spiritual books and crystals, everything that reminded me of all the “woo-woo” stuff that I feared wasn’t going to help my daughter get better.
But despite all of the fear I chose to go within, to allow my heart to stretch enough to hold all of the terror, and pain I was feeling. As I share in my book doing my inner work had a direct correlation to my daughter’s healing. Now three years later I can clearly see what a momentous choice–the choice to begin within–was. I didn’t call it an initiation at that time. I was too close to what was happening to have much sense of perspective.
But now I can see how choosing to expand was, in essence, saying yes to my Soul as it offered me this opportunity to move onto a next level of spiritual understanding. What this initiation taught me was that doing our inner work truly does affect our external reality. This was an understanding that I now felt in the depth of my being. It was an embodied understanding, and could never be gained by merely reading a book, or taking a training. This was a spiritual initiation.
And because of this experience I can now help my clients through their own initiations. Because, the truth is, we can not take others further than we have gone ourselves. When I coach my clients I often help them to recognize the various painful initiations they have already been through. For example, a devastating illness, divorce, the loss of a job, or the death of a loved one. These were instances when their heart was broken and they had the choice to either close up, or expand. To be clear, initiations don’t always have to be painful, but the painful ones are usually the ones we need help integrating, so these are often the ones that I focus on in my work with clients.
As my clients begin to recognize that these experiences, as painful as they were, also offer them an opportunity to evolve, to expand their heart, to be able to both give and receive more love, then the process of stepping into the next level of their life’s work flows much easier. This is because as my clients integrate their initiations their unique medicine (see my blog Sharing Your Soul Medicine) becomes more potent, meaning that their ability to heal, uplift, and serve expands. And so the Universe responds by leading them to those particular places and people that need the unique medicine only they can offer.
I have witnessed, this happen time and again, with the hundreds of clients I’ve coached. The work they do shifts to match the inner growth they’ve done. For example, one client who is a therapist started attracting more spiritually minded clients-exactly the type of clients she had been wanting but worried she couldn’t reach– and because of all the inner work she’d done she was ready to help them. Another client who had been trying for a long time to integrate more body work with her students was unexpectedly offered a position to do just that. A client who swore she’d never share her ability to do Reiki with others now volunteers doing Reiki and is starting her own Reiki business.
These were all clients who first had to go inward and process their own spiritual initiations. When they first started working with me each of them had fears about this inner journey. They worried that all of this inner work was waste of time. They wondered if instead they should be taking more training, going to networking events or updating resumes.
And of course, they worried about all the pain that digging up the past could bring up. But these were also women who had a great heart longing to follow their Soul, who feared above all else, not doing their life’s work. So inward my clients journeyed, and because of their courage they were led to a deeper, more embodied spiritual understanding, and this led them to help others in a more profound way.
This is how you step into the next evolution of your life’s work. You go inward. You integrate the initiations you’re going through which leads you to evolve. This spiritual growth increases your ability hold and share your Soul’s medicine. The Universe recognizes that you are now ready to serve in a more profound way and it leads you to the next chapter of your life’s work. It’s as simple and profound as that.
Follow Up:
We are all constantly going though spiritual initiations, and as I shared in this blog, it is when we allow ourselves to integrate them that we are taken to the next level of our life’s work. Below are some questions you can ask your Soul in regards to your own initiations (at the end of the short video below I lead you through a short inner journey with these same questions).
Don’t worry about receiving the answers right now, trust that your Soul will provide the answers at the right time and in the right way for you. I encourage you to create some sacred space by playing some relaxing music in the background, or lighting a candle, then bring the palms of your hands over your heart center and ask your Soul these questions:
- What initiations have I had in my life so far? What did they teach me?
- What initiations have I had this year? What have they taught me?
- What initiation am I going through now? What is it teaching me?