Initiation Muscles
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Just trying to get some viewpoints on this. Is an initiation and/or attunement like a muscle - use it or lose it? After going through a degree attunement, can you get "out of tune" to the point where you would have to undergo the attunement again? Or is it a permanent "opening" of something that can't be lost?
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93,
Interesting question. Seems to me the answer is "A little bit of both." On the one hand, an initiation or attunement sets up a certain karmic momentum that will never be fully reversed or stalled, however negligent we may be of the related symbols or practices. On the other hand, the intensity and pace of the inner change associated with the degree in question will be directly related to our success in staying "immersed" in the symbols and practices of the degree. After all, these are the tools by which our unconscious mind is conditioned and made receptive to the desired energies.
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David
@DJHOHL said
"Just trying to get some viewpoints on this. Is an initiation and/or attunement like a muscle - use it or lose it? After going through a degree attunement, can you get "out of tune" to the point where you would have to undergo the attunement again? Or is it a permanent "opening" of something that can't be lost?"
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I agree completely with David's answer.
We have some Third Order transmissions that describe that in more elaborate technical detail, but it boils down to exactly what he said.
In particular, when someone severs the connection with the Order in which they took that ceremonial step, that terminates the ongoing flow of the current feeding it. That particular link dries up. Whatever is permanently changed in the person (and the changes integrated) remains with them, of course, and whatever momentum is there will continue until it runs its course - but there is no ongoing or new impetus or energization through the original pathways after (say) a resignation.
Another instruction - inherited from prior incarnations of the Order, and which has always seemed accurate in practice, puts it pretty bluntly:
"If an individual is expelled or leaves the Order in the Lesser Mysteries, the Link will automatically seal itself off, as it cannot be sustained without impetus from the Light of the Greater Mysteries of the Second Order, no matter how much study, meditation, or practice is done."
Notice that this doesn't say that their work is over etc. - it is only referring to what is received from a specific channel. It's not too different from, say, a romantic relationship, I think - While deeply connected, one is undergoing a continual alchemy, there is an essentially uninterrupted "energy flow" that is stirring change, inviting change, etc. - When one severs that relationship, one may have been changed permanently in some ways, and one will have memories of what occurred in the relationship, but the particular magical process of interpersonal alchemy just won't be there anymore. In time (often not all that much time!) one simply forgets, or stops putting attention on it and goes on with life.
Etc. I know you can take my hen scratchings and run with it on your own.
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NOTE TO DAVID - Please make sure your email address is up to date on your forum profile. (Changing it will require a reauthentication process IIRC.) As domain admin, I just got a bounce-back email from the notice sent to you - it was undeliverable because it went to your old address.
If you need me to change this administratively, I can do that when I get to work later. (Heading out the door soon.)