I attended a presentation with Michael Meade a couple of months ago that really got my head spinning around the importance of rituals and initiation. Like others, Meade ascribes to the three phases of initiation--separation, ordeal and return. The return is the reunion--the welcome back by the community; the acknowledgment that one is a different person for having been initiated. The very compelling point of the presentation was that while our society has plenty of separations and ordeals, we are short on returns. I think about high school graduations, for example, where the sum total of the return is a trip to Disneyland or getting drunk. The community doesn't treat the graduate substantially different than they did before the graduation. There really is no thought of transformation, other than to get a job. It's a very weak ritual for its lack of specific intention and community involvement. Here are some of the good points that Meade made during the day:

• Initiation = revealing oneself to oneself. The original reason for coming to life is revealed—one is separated from others in order to dwell within oneself.
• Unfinished initiations create neurotic disturbances within the self.
• The particular style of one’s soul can be discerned by examining the initiatory experiences throughout one’s life.
• The soul is a wild being—needs an outside drama to confirm an inner myth.
• The soul is deeply subjective and it forever tries to express itself over and over.
• Each initiation prepares one for the next initiation.
• Without initiations people don’t ever discover their deeper selves. For example, the soldier is doing what he’s told to do; but a warrior has a divine mission.
• Without a return, the soul keeps doing Steps 1 and 2 over and over—this is where addiction comes in. And this is an important role of 12-Step programs—these programs are based on the ideas of Jung. (I didn't know that!)
• Abuse is the wrong thing done to the wrong person by the wrong person at the wrong time. Regardless how wrong it is, the soul experiences abuse as an initiatory experience. We can treat abuse as an initiatory experience. If we don’t do this, we will remain a victim forever (i.e., cycle of Steps 1 & 2, without Step 3).
• An example of turning abuse into an initiatory experience: story of the African village Meade visited—a 9-year-old girl was raped by her uncle. When it was learned what happened, the tribe immediately arranged for the coming of age ritual for girl who first come into their menses. In that tribe, having your period was the point at which you became a woman, and they had an elaborate ceremony for the girls, after which the entire tribe saw them and treated them as women. In this case the tribe took this action with this little girl. From that time on, she was treated as a woman and welcomed into the activities of the women in the tribe. At the same time, the tribe banished the uncle to find a new community. The tribe knew that if he was allowed back his very presence would be toxic for the little girl. Thus, they took an event of abuse and transformed it, so that the soul would see it as an initiation.
• Initiation is a way to “re-value” a traumatic event.

I think that, by using ritual in a very intentional way, we can bring about returns that so many people (including myself!) deeply long for. When asked, Meade said that if you want to create some returns in a life filled with separations and ordeals, you must intentionally look for opportunities and sudden communities who can play the role of welcoming you. In having a community welcome you, you are actually welcoming your unclaimed self. For anyone interested, Meade's new book is, Fate and Destiny: the Two Agreements of the Soul (2010).