Initiation means “to begin, to step into,” but also to enter a path that takes us further and deeper than we would choose to go on our own. Amongst the many forms of initiation, there is a practice in which initiates blindly choose proverbs that they carry with them and study for a year. One day, I picked up an ancient African proverb which I have carried ever since and may study to the end of my days on earth. The proverb says: “What you love is the cure.”

Of all the paths of awakening and ways of learning, there is one pathway that appears as an initiatory requirement for each soul born. Here on earth, we are each and all called to personally experience the mystery of love. Love is an essential element in each person's life; it is also the quintessential element of life on Earth itself.

In Greek myths, Eros is a divine figure, also called protogenos, meaning “the first one born.” In the darkness and chaos before creation began the Goddess of Night united with the Wind and produced a golden egg that was set upon the primordial ocean. When this original egg cracked, what had been concealed in darkness became revealed as the primal energy that connects all life. Without the connecting energy of Eros or love, the world could not come together or be able to hold together.

In mythic terms, the act of creation is not simply something in the distant past; but rather a dynamic, ongoing process that continues to inspire and shape the living world. In that sense, when everything seems dark and chaotic, the energy of creation is near and the missing ingredient, ever waiting to arise is always Eros or love, the interconnectedness of life.

When we lament how everything is now divided and people have turned against each other, we are also pointing to a lack of Eros, a lack of love and a loss of the bestowing soul that otherwise would remind us that we are in this together. In terms of ongoing creation, you could say that the amount of eros and love present in our lives determines the state of our individual souls, but also affects the collective conditions we all share in and suffer from.

Sadly and tragically, a loss of eros and soul is at the heart of the mistreatment of nature and the earth. A punishing lack of connection appears in the growth of economic and social disparities. The loss of eros connections also appear in the divisiveness and spite arising in response to the worldwide pandemic.

In following what we love we enter moments of becoming in which we reveal ourselves to ourselves. Loving involves an initiation in which we become our self in a deeper way, while also giving ourselves away to something greater. We love through the agency of an awakened, deeper self within us that also connects us to the dynamic of creation ongoing.

But first, the ego must relinquish its fortress that would lock out love and lock us in as well. Just as Eros was hidden in darkness until the primal egg cracked open, the love within us remains concealed unless the ego’s shell keeps cracking and opening us from within. 

The voice of the little-self says, but I am but a speck in the great ocean of life, what difference can my loving make? It's true that each person is microscopic compared to the cosmos. Each of us is but a frail being compared to the massive crises facing the world. Yet, each soul is also a living link in the great chain of being that began with creation and continues to sustain collective life on earth.

It is our shared fate, to be alive at this troubled time and we are being called to help weave the elements of life back together. On one level, we are insignificant; on another level, each of us is a unique torchbearer carrying the eternal flame of imagination and the energies of creation.

If we allow ourselves to forget that we are initiates come here to open again the paths of mystery; if we forget that we are also lovers come here to keep creation going, then consciousness diminishes, the world becomes darker and the genuine paths of knowledge and devotion become obscured.

Then, it is not just the potent tragedy of losing the salmon and other vital species. Nor is it only the catastrophe of people dying unnecessarily. We can find ourselves in danger of breaking the hidden unity of the living chain of being. Eros was there at the very beginning, concealed in darkness and chaos and the energies of love and creation are trying to be found again in the darkness and turmoil of our troubled times.

At critical times, it becomes important to look, not simply at the cause of a symptom or a problem, but rather at what the symptom aims at. In the barrage of symptoms that keep driving us apart, the hidden aim can be seen as an increasing need for a soulful sense of inter-connection. Individually and collectively, we are being called to find again the underlying unity of life and the enlivening, healing energy of eros that was there at the beginning and remains at the core of life.

As chaos and uncertainty grow around us, it becomes hard not to feel the rush of angers, fears and anxieties. Yet, it also makes sense to let those emotions run through us. For, after they have passed through, we are not simply left empty and abandoned in the darkness of despair. If we are true to our own souls, we are left at the gates of surrender where what we love can be both the guide and the medicine we need.