Some folks (like me) experience an awakening that suddenly gives them special powers, intuitive abilities, and extra-ordinary perception (like, they get accidentally psychic!).
Here’s the rub… generally those extra special intuitive gifts and shamanic abilities are supposed to come LAST in the sequence of personal development. And when they come in early, before we are prepared to hold them, we can do DAMAGE to our relationships, business, and health with them.
Maybe you’ve noticed… you dive into business, for example, and you do all the right stuff… you’re utilizing the hacks for optimal performance, and you’re practicing the law of attraction, and you’re using your expanding intuition… but even though you go pretty far, you keep running against the same dang glass ceiling? Why? I’d say it’s because you are missing an Initiation that should have happened earlier in your life.
That’s why the FIRST ring of personal development is…
These are the points along your life’s timeline when you should have gone through a conscious rite of passage, supported and held by your family and community. You should have been released from carrying others’ traumas and expectations. You should have been honored and graced for holding your own power.
You should have started with the first five at least of the 7 Life Initiations.
… and then the elder initiations at 52-years-old (#6) and death (#7) (where you claim your wisdom leadership and your surrendered legacy).
We are meant to walk through these 7 Initiations like a progression time-wise, but fortunately, this is a RING… so you can go BACK in time, and re-do or heal these initiation points, shoring up your own personal foundation of confidence and integrity. Likewise, LIFE itself sometimes initiates us early – like a young person who comes close to death, receiving her Death Initiation far before she even reaches adulthood.
Those first five initiations get you to adulthood. They leave you feeling confident, connected, and full of clear purpose. If you miss one, you might not have your full resources about you to tackle your purpose in the world. You might not even know what that purpose is, or you might not feel up to the task. If you’ve got wobbles in your foundational confidence and ability to take action, then you may want to go back and address your 7 Initiations!
You’re not alone. Even my most wealthy and successful clients, and my most aware and enlightened students, get HUGE results from doing the 7 Initiations work. Some pay me 6 figures to walk them through personal retreats until they are all clear. Some join my Academy for just a few thousand to walk through them with me in our group. And others find that life is initiating them, and it just really helps to know about this concept, and to know the map!
In a culture where making money, creating things, and accomplishing stuff is held as more important than developing personal acceptance and power, most of us want to jump right away into the ring of Co-Creation. We want to create. And we want to feel supported by the universe in doing so. But even as we use the tools of co-creation – intention, affirmation, planning and implementing… we find that if we are missing the confidence, power, and belonging we missed out on through life initiations… we won’t get far in terms of deep fulfillment, even if we manage to make money and achieve tasks.
On the other hand, if we go back, heal the points of Initiation we hadn’t yet completed, then our ability to create – and to co-create with the highest creative power – opens up. Things get easier. Ideas flow effortlessly. Money and value follow through your channel as your genius flows through you. In order to flow well in Co-creation, we are called to align with our own natural cycles, feeding our holistic needs for the right things in the right order, including aspects like play and movement, and in a particular natural order that the creative timing cycle demands. Yes, there is a system for perfect timing. There is a system for activating your channel to create on demand. And this system is reflected in just about every ancient mystery school we’ve studied. For a modern time, we now have a simple map to follow that lays out this cyclical pattern, the pattern our bodies and minds are built to cycle through in order to stay in an optimum flow state in alignment with nature.
Thirdly, once we are in that co-creative flow most of the time, we have completed a round of the Ring of Co-Creation. And it’s time to move into the Ring of Transcendence.
Transcendence speaks to the aspects of life that are beyond explanation, measurement, and sometimes logic. The transcendent arts are the modern application of extra-sensory abilities like clairsentience, clairaudience, clairvoyance – the 6th sense, and the 7th… and the 8th….. The Ring of Transcendence builds up on our grounded foundation (our Initiations healed and addressed) and our responsible capabilities as co-creators (our ring of co-creation integrated). When we become “psychic” before we’re healed in the initiations, we tend to use our new abilities in ways that further the drama and trauma that we are patterned into because of the missing initiation. When we open to the mysteries of the universe before we’ve learned to co-create in the real world, we have a tendency to become distracted, ungrounded, and irresponsible as we get lost in the woo-woo mysteries.
This is the point. Even if we are opening as co-creators, building amazing businesses of contribution and highest intention, we likely need to go back to the Ring of Initiations to clear stuff in order to keep growing without drama or interruption. And even if we are accessing incredible mysteries and siddhis, if we haven’t yet completed healing the initiations, and also learning how to be responsible co-creators in the real world – where we learn to support ourselves, play in the current culture, and create what is real for real people – then we are not being responsible with our Transcendent gifts.
This is a map, then, of something that can truly feel like a 3-Ring Circus! It’s easy to get lost when you’re radically awakening!
But this is a map of personal development where we can track our development across the rings, sometimes bouncing to and fro in order to shore up the foundational initiations. Sometimes we have to go back before we can go forward.
And even if we complete all three rings, Life has a way of lifting us up to the next level, and starting us again with a new ring of learning and initiations. There is no completion, it seems. But there certainly is progress. And in a world where we need magical co-creators, innovating new solutions for important problems, informed and powered by the mystical as well as pragmatic realms, having a MAP is an important thing.
As for my own work using this map, I have my Channel Your Genius Academy which combines the work of learning to co-create your own perfect-fit business, with the regular clearings and initiations work that keeps you clear to find success doing so. As a mentor and facilitator, I lead retreats and programs, both individual and group programs, to hold space for the 7 Initiations work. Walking through the 7 Initiations in ritual space has given my clients extraordinary results, from an awakening of purpose, to the receiving of millions of dollars, to the awakening of confidence, grace, and personal power that just makes life better in all arenas. And for those advanced students who have already passed the Initiations, and learned to co-create – to manifest with intention – we dive into the Transcendent Arts, practices and experiences that go far beyond the ordinary – without the need for chemical enhancement. And with these Transcendent Arts, the realm of possibility expands to limitlessness.
If you’re curious about my Academy, you can check it out here. Enrollment will open again soon. If you’re interested, you can get on the waitlist to get priority access! i
Mellissa was a Stanford-educated business lawyer until her intuitive abilities awakened in the year 2000 with the birth of her daughter. Now she bridges the worlds of business strategy and intuitive intelligence. Creative designers, Fortune 500 executives, and thought leaders hire her to teach them how to Channel their Genius – to create on demand, to stay in their flow state, and to create lucrative businesses that follow their souls’ calling.