THE INITIATE'S PATH: The Nature and Meaning of Ordeal

As a healer and teacher who has witnessed great physical and emotional suffering, I was led early in my work to ask this question: Is ordeal essential to the transformative process?

As a teacher I have attended many whose lives have been threatened by a diagnosis of cancer, who have suddenly lost family, a career, a home, people who seem suddenly to be put in the fire. I have walked with students who have prayed, fasted, and asked for initiation into the Mysteries. They are dumbfounded to discover their lives undone, shocked that the very thing they could not, would not, imagine changing must now be sacrificed.

I do not for a moment believe we are “given” cancer or delivered a tragedy by some unseen orchestrating hand. However, I have learned that when we allow the possibility that the event that has befallen us could be used as an initiation, then profound healing and spiritual deepening are possible. Time and again I witness the unfolding of a map that heals the life, through exploring the territory of the illness itself.

Questions such as: What does it mean that this particular illness or event is upon me? What is it’s nature? It’s demands? It’s metaphor? Who am I now without this job? How has it defined me? Led my life?

Based on a life led in the presence and experience of ordeal, I believe ordeal is an essential element on the spiritual journey for these reasons:  Each life carries purpose and meaning. Our task is to yield to this larger call so that we may, each of us, become our authentic selves. In so doing we become a healing presence, a gift to the world. This call demands we walk an unpredictable, non-linear path. Several years ago an Anishnabe Medicine Elder placed his hand on my shouler and said, “ May you always stride uneven ground.” It made me tense. I like to know where I am about to set down my foot. We are creatures that take great comfort in structure and our ability to determine outcome. There is arrogance in this. Where is there room for Spirit, inspiration, poetry or Mystery when we insist it come to us in a certain way and then produce an acceptable result? We are terrified of the unknown,  Yet the Unknown is the very thing for which we ache.

An Initiation is a gate into direct relationship with what underlies the profundity of life. Ordeal prepares us. It demands humility, teaches us an immense tolerance for ambiguity. It is the maze we find ourselves caught in until we  gain the insight to bless the journey. The gift then is a vision out of which a new life, a life renewed, can be lived.