As you may already know, I’ve been sharing quite a bit about the 7 Stages of Ascension with you recently and today I wanted to share a video with you which talks about stage 1, which I hope that you’ll find immensely useful and informative.
I talk a lot about the different stages of Ascension, because firstly, I don’t believe we have enough CLEAR information about the ascension process which can lead to a lot of fear and confusion (which was certainly the case for me in the past), and secondly, because whether people consciously realise it or not, as a planet, we are ALL going through the ascension process.
Today I want to share with you about stage one or initiation number one, which is all about the initiation of the physical plane of existence.
And by this, I mean not just your physical body, but also the material or physical world as well.
What I want to clarify is that while I am presenting the 7 stages in a linear way, it’s really a vastly multidimensional process. The Soul can ‘pick us up’ and if it decides to, then we can fully ascend in a blink of an eye! But for the vast majority of us (unless someone is a very, very highly evolved being that has chosen a rare evolutionary life path where they are born into an already ascended state) most of us start off with the first initiation when we are born which is all about mastery of the physical realm.
Key themes
This first initiation is very much centred around the root chakra, and you may already know that the root chakra is associated with themes such as money, sex, survival, also health and fitness, those are the key themes.
What is happening with this first stage or first initiation (and we all go through this initiation, it’s with us right from birth) is that the Divine is really looking to understand and experience itself as a unique expression of All That Is as a physical being, with a physical body, in the physical realm.
When we are first born, we’re still very connected to spirit - our soul hasn’t fully incarnated into our body yet. The soul is wanting to understand itself physically, so that it can know itself spiritually. And what happens is we set up evolutionary steps or ‘initiations’ for ourselves in order to do that.
Examples of the first initiation
Now there are a few different streams that this will generally fall into for the first initiation. The first is, you might have somebody from a young age who is very drawn to let’s say fitness - and we can see there’s a lot of people, particularly younger people in our society today, who are very very obsessed in terms of their physical body. They’re going to the gym all the time, it’s all about fitness, and that’s where the main focus is. So it can play out in that stream, those people who are in that place of really obsessing about their body and have a massive focus on the body, that’s the first of the 7 stages.
Or it could play out that maybe from a fairly young age, perhaps from your teenage years, you are drawn to the healing arts in some way. Now that could be through becoming a doctor or through the medical professions, becoming a nurse perhaps. Or it could be more of the alternative healing arts - studying to be an herbalist for example, or you could be very drawn to becoming a reiki practitioner even. That’s another way that it can play out.
Another way that it can play out (and this was my experience) because it’s all about the physical body, you have a group of people who are focused on looking after that body, and you have another group - and a lot of Starseeds fall into this category - which neglect the body. Or avoid the physical realm, because that is what’s creating the neglect of the physical body, avoidance of the physical.
You then have souls that are experiencing things like addiction, escapism in all forms - for me, from a young age, my first addiction was reading books. I was absolutely obsessed, I was reading all the time, and it was because I could escape physical reality, I didn’t have to be embodied or feel like I was trapped in the physical - I could go off in my head, I could be in the book, I could be in this fantasy. It’s a way of disassociating from the physical plane - and that’s what all addiction is about.
And for those of you that know my journey, you know that there was a lot of that playing out for me - wanting to avoid, wanting to escape the physical from a very early age. I was not happy in my body, and just generally not happy with the world, with the way that it was set up. Not feeling that connected to it or wanting to be a part of it or understanding it - which a lot of Starseeds and high frequency souls experience. This is because where your consciousness is not seeded on the earth plane, it’s originally seeded somewhere else, where that is the case a lot of us can experience it as quite a shock when we do incarnate. We’re in these physical bodies, everything is really slow and the world is a crazy place! So it can set up these avoidance patterns, which it certainly did with me.
“Addiction is a way of disassociating from the physical plane - that’s what all addiction is about.”
It started off with books for me, then from my teenage years there came a lot of experimentation with drugs, a lot of alcohol, and then through some difficult processes which occurred around 18 for me, my parents got divorced at that time which I found very difficult to handle - and it removed any safety that I was feeling.
I never had that experience when I was growing up of feeling safe in the physical world, which is why I wanted to escape it, but when my parents divorced, it was like that last rug being pulled out from underneath me, or at least that’s how I interpreted it. I was very, very emotionally sensitive, and a lot of Indigos, Starseeds and Empaths are the same. Particularly the New Humans - the Indigos, the Rainbows, the Crystals - a lot of us can’t detach from our emotions, we find it extremely difficult. And we come in extra sensitive. So when there’s something (like divorce) or it could be really any major event going on in your life - we can react to it very badly, as I did.
At that time there were lots of panic attacks happening for me, lots of mood problems, depression problems, particularly anxiety, and I started drinking as a way to be able to ground. I was going through that root chakra initiation, the physical initiation, and I didn’t feel grounded. My soul did not want to ground because it felt very unsafe inside my body inside the physical realm. And alcohol became a crutch for me for many years, as a way that I could function and deal with this heavily traumatic inner world that I was experiencing with my emotions.
This was my first initiation. I rock-bottomed quite dramatically at age 29 and I actually went into addiction recovery, into AA, and I really threw myself into the programme because I was desperate. Desperate to find some kind of happiness, because the only happiness I could find was when I was off my face, escaping from reality. And the thing about AA and all of the 12 step fellowship groups, is that there are a lot of very high frequency, highly sensitive, highly spiritual, empathic souls in those addiction recovery rooms. And it’s part of this first initiation.
We are choosing to experience the physical realm AND reconnect with our spirituality - because this whole Ascension process is a process of returning back to source, returning back to the oneness.
We come in, we have this separation drama that happens, we’re separated from spirit, from Source. Then we realise that we’re separate from our parents (because when we’re babies we don’t actually realise that we’re separate, it’s almost like we are still in the womb).
We develop this separation consciousness and that can lead us down some dark paths for some like it did for me, it led to addiction.
I still say to this day thank god for AA, because it saved my life. It was there for me at a time when I really, really needed it. And there are a lot of very high frequency, spiritual souls in AA who are choosing again this reality of reconnecting with Source through addiction. It’s like the baptism of fire initiation. You are walking through the fire to reconnect with your Higher Power, your Source. I would say that we are all remembering ourselves as God/Goddesses in bodies.
It’s interesting because whether you choose a more turbulent initiation for this first stage, or whether you are someone who chooses to really look after your health - you know the first two streams I described earlier, whether you’re choosing the healing arts or whether you’re really into fitness, really into diet. You still see some people who are very extreme - working out all the time, obsessed about their fitness, obsessed about their diet. There’s all this comparison and ‘what does my body look like’ and all of that stuff. Whether it’s that route or the addiction route, it’s all the same initiation.
And actually, neither is better than the other. Anything that is an extreme path, is going to bring about extreme results - positive and negative. So it’s that excessive focus on the body is ‘as bad’ if you like, as neglecting it. We’re looking for that middle path - any extremes can be equally damaging.
I think that’s interesting to observe, particularly when we’re looking at younger generations where it’s all about the body, how they look, what do their abs look like and how many muscles they have, as well as the plastic surgery, the big boobs and fish lips - all of this that we’re seeing it’s excessive focus on the body, and it’s part of this first initiation. And many people are getting stuck there - when you look around honestly, you can see this.
I will talk a little bit about how we transmute this and go to the next stage, but let’s have a look at some of the other pathways as well.
It could be anything around money - part of this first initiation as well is that we are learning to make money in society, we’re learning to activate that aspect of ourselves. But of course money as an initiation is vast in itself. Over-focus on making money for the sake of making money is going to make you soul sick.
The light of the Divine cannot ground into your root chakra, you cannot ground your soul light into the earth plane if you have an obsessive over-focus on making money for the sake of money. Which is actually coming from a lack place, a scarcity place. It’s fine to make money, but again we’re looking for that middle path - the extremes are where we all want to be mindful.
“Anything that is an extreme path, is going to bring about extreme results - positive and negative... We’re looking for that middle path - any extremes can be equally damaging.”
So it could be about money, it could be about sex as well, again with the first initiation being the initiation of the root chakra. Many of us, I think all of us create these initiations on our path around sex - again, looking at the extremes there, it could be an over-preoccupation with sex. And again, that can be an addictive quality, because you’re wanting to escape your reality. It’s a preoccupation and addiction. Either a mental addiction - thinking about it, watching porn and obsessively thinking about it in that addictive energy. Or it can be a physical over preoccupation - having lots of sex, being very promiscuous, having lots of partners - that is definitely part of that first initiation.
And it can be under-active, it can be that you’re not interested, you’ve never had sex, you don’t think about it or it’s just something you’re not focused on, which again is another extreme. And again it's about the root chakra - not feeling safe in our bodies and not feeling safe to connect.
Transitioning into the second initiation
So how can we go to the second initiation? (I will talk more about the second initiation separately.) The second initiation is all about emotions, and mastery over the emotions - and by the way, the good news (and thank goodness for this!) is that it doesn’t have to be a perfect journey. And it doesn’t have to be mastery to 100% either - if it was I’d still be stuck in stage one!!
For me, it was enough, going into AA, cleaning up my act, stopping drinking and stopping the addictive abuse that I was doing to my body at that time, and going on a very deep healing journey. Which then led me on to looking at my emotions and stage 2. But first of all, I had to put down the drink, be abstinent and get used to being in my body and stop escaping it.
For everybody who has active addictions, the way that they can go to the second initiation is through dealing with these addictions - confronting them, and dealing with them. Otherwise we get stuck in that lower seal of consciousness - because of course, each of these 7 stages in the Ascension process have spectrums of consciousness - so we can’t start accessing the higher realms until we go through and master each one. As I say it doesn’t need to be perfect, but you do need to take yourself on - in whatever way that is for you.
For some people, for example that have this over preoccupation with fitness and diet, and they’re extremely strict with their bodies, it’s going to be a part of their initiation to come to a place of balance, harmony, love and acceptance of self. Because what is going on when you’re overfocusing on exercise, and diet and fitness, is that you’re not accepting yourself, your natural self, and you’re trying to transform yourself into something you’re really not naturally. Again, there’s nothing wrong with being healthy, being fit, that’s still very important - but it’s the extreme that we’re looking at here.
And it’s interesting to consider, in the spiritual community of course we talk about food and our bodies and health a lot, we talk about eating high vibrational foods, and a lot of us, myself included have stopped eating meat (I do eat fish occasionally so I’m a pescaterian, but I haven’t eaten any meat for the past few years). But I think it’s interesting that even if you look at the vegetarian and vegan communities - some of them can be very, very extreme, and exceptionally judgemental.
And I’m an animal lover, I’ve stopped eating meat because I do love animals (I have a dog!) and it was very clear in my consciousness one day it was like ‘ok, no more meat’ and I’ve learned to follow my intuition so it was actually very easy to stop eating meat. Even though I’m a real foodie, I love food - that has been another addiction for me, and it’s been another way for me to bring a lot of love and happiness very quickly and easily into my consciousness. But I don’t eat meat anymore.
But compare this - an angry, judgemental vegetarian or vegan, compared to a fun-loving, open-hearted meat eater. And when you think about this in terms of the first initiation of the physical realm, where are both of those people in terms of the evolution of consciousness? I think that’s interesting to look at. Personally, I would far rather hang out with a fun-loving, heart-centred, open-hearted meat-eater, versus a very harsh and judgemental vegetarian.
It’s about taking ourselves on in this first stage around the physical realm. Putting down the addictions or becoming much less excessive in whatever way. Learning to love our bodies. Learning to appreciate money, to make money in a more conscious way. And also sexually as well - taking ownership of that desire body and bringing it into a more balanced place - bringing light to it, bringing consciousness to it. That’s how we are going to transcend into the next initiation.
That’s what I wanted to share with you.
My personal journey transmuting addiction
I will say that in terms of my journey with addiction, it has been very interesting for me to go through this Rite of Passage, because at one point I was completely emotionally dependent on alcohol to survive - it was a big, big crutch for me. And as I mentioned earlier, if I hadn’t gone into the rooms of AA when I did, I probably wouldn’t be here now - I owe that fellowship a huge debt. And even though I’m not in the fellowship anymore, and it doesn’t feel aligned for me, the teachings don’t resonate for me anymore, it was an incredible foundation for me and it certainly helped me to connect with my spirituality. To find my truth in terms of my spiritual beliefs.
And I am one of the very few people, and I count myself as being very blessed and fortunate because of this, that I am able to enjoy a glass of wine now, or a bit of alcohol, which many people can’t understand when they’ve gone into AA. Because you’re told that’s it - you’re an alcoholic for life, and if you drink again you’re going to die, or end up insane, or in prison. But it was part of my Rite of Passage, part of my trusting in my guidance. Because my guidance after 4 ½ years, my soul said to me it’s time for you to leave the fellowship, and you need to trust that you can drink again in a safe way. I was a different person by then, I had sorted out a lot of my emotional stuff, which is stage 2 on the Ascension process and I will talk to you about that another time.
I’m not part of that fellowship anymore, and it has been an incredibly liberating process for me to learn to trust myself to have alcohol again. I don't do drugs, can’t handle drugs, they completely mess with me - and I wouldn’t want to. I’m not compelled to get out of my face anymore! I enjoy my life, I want to be here, I don’t want to escape and get out of my head. Having a drink or two once in a while for a party, sure, it’s all good. But I’m just not compelled to drink like I used to, it’s just not in my consciousness whatsoever.
However, I am aware that I am one of the very rare and few people that happens to, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone else. It was a journey that my soul took me on to leave that fellowship and trust myself again, and I wouldn’t want to recommend that to anyone else. I have seen other people who have tried to do it and it’s ended very badly for them, so I wanted to mention that and be responsible with the message I’m sharing on that.
Thank you for letting me share a little about my journey and my experiences with the first stage of initiation. I hope you’ve found the information illuminating and supportive on your own path.
Let me know any questions you have down in the comments below about the Ascension process or anything you want to know about Ascension and Awakening. I hope this information helps to support and serve you on your path.
You can also watch me talking about the first stage of Ascension in the episode of Ascension Talk with Ariella below.
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