Freewill Astrology for This Week

I haven't looked at this site in a long time, but this coming week's horoscope seems particularly apt:

Sagittarius: During his time in hiding, the Biblical prophet Elijah was kept alive by ravens who brought him food. John the Baptist survived on nothing but honey and locusts when he was roaming the wilderness. And I'm sure that some unexpected source of comfort and sustenance will likewise turn up during your wanderings, Sagittarius. It may not be what you're used to. You might even have to cultivate a taste for nourishment that seems foreign. But stick with it. You could learn to love it, and in the process become less dependent on stuff you thought you couldn't do without.

Dreamtime

"Native Americans, Aboriginal Australians, Taoists, Zen Buddhists, Tantric meditators, and mystics everywhere do not think of the Dreaming world as an 'un'-conscious. For these peoples, the sentient Dreaming world is the basic reality. Though marginalized and invisible to mainstream cultures today, Dreamtime has been the essential reality for people from the beginning of time."

-Arnold Mindell

Initiation and Pain

Initiations -- both the planned and the unexpected -- have been an interest of mine for many years. Every so often I'll make lists of major transition points in my life, looking at which are simply that -- transitions -- and which qualify as initiations.

One of the most important qualities which sets initiations apart from other milestone events is that of transformation. After going through an initation you are not who you were before, and there is no going back to your pre-initiatory state. You have changed.

Today, for the first time, I started wondering about the pain that so frequently accompanies initiation, at least in my personal experience. I'm reluctant to say that all initiations must include an element of pain, but when I reflect back on my own iniatory experiences the ones that were most significant and the most profound were the ones that hurt -- or at least were deeply challenging.

It's too late in the evening now for me to come up with a personal conclusion, but I wanted to pose the question here and find out what my friends think.