For thousands of years, initiatory practices and protocols have been a staple of many (perhaps even most) spiritual/esoteric communities. It’s been understood that — to both protect “secret” knowledge and to adequately prepare “new disciples” for success — an “initiate” must undergo a long series of trials and training before he/she is either granted access to higher wisdom or before he/she is simply able to access said wisdom.
Generally speaking, I’ve never been a proponent of these “initiatory” practices. I subscribe moreso to the idea of “direct path” teaching — the belief that everyone has direct access to spiritual wisdom regardless of the practices or protocols with which they engage.
That said, I think (at times) proponents of the direct path — myself included — have a tendency to throw the baby out with the bath water when it comes to protocol or practice-based methods of teaching spiritual development. And, so, I thought it might be helpful to some if we worked to establish a more progressive and developmental approach to our manifestation practices.
Note: I have spent the past handful of months considering how I can make the information I share more practical. If I’ve been quiet as of late, it’s because (at some point) it occurred to me that rephrasing and restating the same general principles and ideas using different metaphors and explanations is great, but that returns are diminishing; eventually, people need to be able to go out and do more than just read another bunch of essays or engage with a series of disparate exercises. Some of us need a clear structure in which we can house our practices so that we can make slow and steady progress (as opposed to hoping for flashes of major insight once we finally “understand” clearly).
Read on for the first installment in what’s going to be a full series of “protocols” you can engage with day-to-day (sometimes even hour-to-hour) in pursuit of further spiritual development. The philosophy behind everything we add to our practice (no matter how seemingly unrelated) will be explained below.