It means to cross a line where one hopes to gain reassurance from others to the side where one has been wrecked out of one's wounds -- which is to say, one has lost hope and gone beyond one's previous psychological neediness.
Losing hope may be essential to the shamanistic project. It facilitates the "dangerous crossing" from one side of reality to its opposite side. On the one side is the community and its reassuring sameness. It promises you a certain amount of recognition and psychological support. The unknown beckons on the opposite bank. By means of self-reliance one crosses, on trembling feet.
An initiate of knowledge is one who has succeeded in crossing that tender wire that moves from "community" to "self". Community can facilitate this move quite dramatically, by making you lose all hope in it. It's less appealing make the crossing whilst the community still appears to offer warmth and support. Once one realizes that these are promises that can never become realities, a gradual and painful move toward the self can commence.
An initiate of knowledge is one whose knowledge comes from the inside. This sounds simpler than it is, because most people would not trust themselves sufficiently to become their own guide and commanding officer. It takes a lot of understanding of one's own perceptions to be able to judge whether those perceptions are trustworthy of not. Trial and error will also help. The crossing is difficult.
The opposite side to where the community holds its vigils is the ledge on which one may rest, called self-knowledge. Once one has integrated the knowledge acquired through the difficult crossing, one can call oneself almost an initiate of knowledge. Assuredly, one will appear like a skeleton to others, and too fraught, and hardly a possessor of knowledge at all.
Still, one must rest and get accustomed to the new vision, from the other side of the chasm. There's no going back, well not exactly. One may cross back again, but will not be the same. The community will no longer recognize one of its own. The dependency signs are simply absent. In the past, one craved to be "taken seriously". The group once understood this as a sign that you were one of them. Now, they're not sure what to make of you. A desire to be taken seriously is, of course, a sign of willingness to submit to others and their views and perceptions. But you're no longer submissive exactly.
Perhaps you are expecting to be submitted to? Some may imagine so, but there is no evidence of this either. One does not take seriously enough the needs of the community to give them some standard of idol to revere. Something in the dynamics of reality has changed forever.
If one takes the needs of community less seriously, it is because one has less need of the community oneself. It has become possible to be self-reliant. From experience it is also apparent that one does not make the first step towards self-reliance without a sense of the gravity and terror of this moment. For the first time, one has become one's approving or disapproving double. In place of the community and it's judgments are one's own. Are you the judge and avenger of your own morality? Even if you imagine that no double of you is really warranted during a tenuous crossing, one springs forth in any case.
When you are still crossing: you are condemning and vilifying you like crazy.
But then there is a fire to warm you, which you've made yourself , and your are at the other end of the difficult crossing. You've now have your respect by combating and deflecting or addressing all the issues you've developed as a point of attack against yourself. You felt like you were falling to pieces from the savagery of your assaults. Your inner organs have been violently extracted, washed and replaced. You take care to count them all. It seems that none are missing -- you have made it, in one piece.
You're no longer down on yourself, but you wonder what the hell you've been through. Such a simple crossing, looked so easy from the other side, turned out to be almost the death of you. Those you had thought to be your friends turned out to be your most intense enemies, whilst those not like you now seem to be akin in spirit.
Something else has changed too. You no longer seem to take yourself so seriously. Before, you took all matters relating to you so gravely because you were unsure of yourself. Now you've made your way to yourself. You need no longer be insecure. Mischief and irony,along with calm tranquility, tend to prevail in your nature. Your morality, having been tamed, now approves of everything you do. If others think that taming was easy, they must attempt to cross in the same way, to find their way to themselves, if they can do it.
Or maybe it is better not to try it and just rest where you know you are secure.
Losing hope may be essential to the shamanistic project. It facilitates the "dangerous crossing" from one side of reality to its opposite side. On the one side is the community and its reassuring sameness. It promises you a certain amount of recognition and psychological support. The unknown beckons on the opposite bank. By means of self-reliance one crosses, on trembling feet.
An initiate of knowledge is one who has succeeded in crossing that tender wire that moves from "community" to "self". Community can facilitate this move quite dramatically, by making you lose all hope in it. It's less appealing make the crossing whilst the community still appears to offer warmth and support. Once one realizes that these are promises that can never become realities, a gradual and painful move toward the self can commence.
An initiate of knowledge is one whose knowledge comes from the inside. This sounds simpler than it is, because most people would not trust themselves sufficiently to become their own guide and commanding officer. It takes a lot of understanding of one's own perceptions to be able to judge whether those perceptions are trustworthy of not. Trial and error will also help. The crossing is difficult.
The opposite side to where the community holds its vigils is the ledge on which one may rest, called self-knowledge. Once one has integrated the knowledge acquired through the difficult crossing, one can call oneself almost an initiate of knowledge. Assuredly, one will appear like a skeleton to others, and too fraught, and hardly a possessor of knowledge at all.
Still, one must rest and get accustomed to the new vision, from the other side of the chasm. There's no going back, well not exactly. One may cross back again, but will not be the same. The community will no longer recognize one of its own. The dependency signs are simply absent. In the past, one craved to be "taken seriously". The group once understood this as a sign that you were one of them. Now, they're not sure what to make of you. A desire to be taken seriously is, of course, a sign of willingness to submit to others and their views and perceptions. But you're no longer submissive exactly.
Perhaps you are expecting to be submitted to? Some may imagine so, but there is no evidence of this either. One does not take seriously enough the needs of the community to give them some standard of idol to revere. Something in the dynamics of reality has changed forever.
If one takes the needs of community less seriously, it is because one has less need of the community oneself. It has become possible to be self-reliant. From experience it is also apparent that one does not make the first step towards self-reliance without a sense of the gravity and terror of this moment. For the first time, one has become one's approving or disapproving double. In place of the community and it's judgments are one's own. Are you the judge and avenger of your own morality? Even if you imagine that no double of you is really warranted during a tenuous crossing, one springs forth in any case.
When you are still crossing: you are condemning and vilifying you like crazy.
But then there is a fire to warm you, which you've made yourself , and your are at the other end of the difficult crossing. You've now have your respect by combating and deflecting or addressing all the issues you've developed as a point of attack against yourself. You felt like you were falling to pieces from the savagery of your assaults. Your inner organs have been violently extracted, washed and replaced. You take care to count them all. It seems that none are missing -- you have made it, in one piece.
You're no longer down on yourself, but you wonder what the hell you've been through. Such a simple crossing, looked so easy from the other side, turned out to be almost the death of you. Those you had thought to be your friends turned out to be your most intense enemies, whilst those not like you now seem to be akin in spirit.
Something else has changed too. You no longer seem to take yourself so seriously. Before, you took all matters relating to you so gravely because you were unsure of yourself. Now you've made your way to yourself. You need no longer be insecure. Mischief and irony,along with calm tranquility, tend to prevail in your nature. Your morality, having been tamed, now approves of everything you do. If others think that taming was easy, they must attempt to cross in the same way, to find their way to themselves, if they can do it.
Or maybe it is better not to try it and just rest where you know you are secure.
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