First seclusion, then the next stage of a rite of passage is limination. Going to the edge.  These days many people make a career of that but there is no reason. It is sort of rebellion but without a clue. They go to the edge because they don’t like the center. Naturally it’s crazy, but they don’t have anywhere else to go. They just get stuck on that edge, made fringe, disenfranchised, and nothing changes. Yet some say the old traditions and rites were pointless, that they kept people stuck.

Maybe they don’t know how to get to the center? This is true, they don’t. To our ancestors things were pretty immediate. There wasn’t all the drama of social confusion, infighting, tension.  They couldn’t really afford it. They were by no means stupid. They knew very clearly where they were going, and it was into the world. We live mostly in our heads these days, in a realm of ideas, social norms, to do lists, and ambitions linked to a monetary system that mostly ignores physical realities.  We deride the old ways. Our ancestors were supposedly stuck, and didn’t know as much as we do now. In my opinion this is nonsense.

What about the rites of science and empirical method? They keep to these and any new idea must undergo that process of passage.  Usually meaning the person who has it (first separation) has to look at things from a personal point of view. It’s why it’s their idea. Then limination, they have to accept it isn’t traditional. It’s different and they are proposing change. Like in the old rite of the hunt at first there was story telling, then indirect confrontation.

Your own personal edge? Yes, actually there are personal rites of passage as well. They have gone by many modern names; paradigm shifts, dark night of the soul. Oh, it gets down right flowery and it gets lost. People get so caught up in the philosophy of it they forget that there was a very real force that brought them there. Even now in this age of science and technology, guess what? You’re still human, and we are naturally occurring creatures.

Ok, when you get to that edge most people turn back. They believe the consensus hype that here be dragons. They believe the devil they know and that the promise “abandon all hope, ye who enter here” is true and nothing changes. People say they know hell on earth, but they fear the hell they don’t know.

“We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential. Hence the fact that many inventions had their birth as toys.” – Eric Hoffer. Play.  As for myself I really like to play, and this is why I know so much about all this esoteric metaphysical spiritual stuff. Who knows? It might be my autism, but I just couldn’t take all this very seriously.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~