To initiate is to do, and to do is to die. Death is change.

Initiating something is to begin something new. To start. An initiation is the death of the old.

In order for there to be space for the new, the old must go. This is true for time and space, you can’t exist in multiple moments consciously, as much as you can’t be in two rooms spatially (unless you found a way, then please, let me in on it).

The adage “sacrifice for the thing you want, or the thing you want becomes a sacrifice” is akin to the idea that your new life will cost you your old one. Your new life with it’s new sets of problems will cost you your old life and your old sets of problems.

You can’t journey into tomorrow without abandoning something from yesterday. We carry memories forward but not the moments in entirety.

In fact, any time you solve a problem or complete a lesson plan, there comes more. Like a never ending Sisyphean task.

Show me a man with responsibilities and no problems, and I’m sure you’ve found a happy man.

I do enjoy the Buddhist view of carrying water and chopping wood (responsibilities) while being non attached (stoicism reduction of problems to alleviate ‘worry).

To interact into the world, in a new way.

When someone is initiated in a club or group or esoteric clandestine knowledge and wisdom, they become something else. When you get a high school diploma or college degree or go through a baptism or some other form of ceremonial ritual, you become initiated into a structure or order. You become something outside of what you once were. Graduated or initiated.

As a side mention, Graduation is the mere changing of grades as if life has a scale of levels or gradients that we can upgrade or downgrade from. It’s a sort of axiomatic view.

The version of you before the ceremonial ritual, and the version of you after, are treated as separate being. The identity of you is arguably still you (unless you wrestle with identity and Theseus’ ship)

I mean, in time and space, you’re technically a different person from one moment to the next. It’s just that an event can demarcate or be the filter that announces or marks your transition from one being to another being, albeit you’re being yourself.

In a Many Worlds interpretation

There may be limitless possibilities laid before you, but the moment you do or don’t, is the moment you solidify the actions of your being and person. Crystalizing a sort of canonical and causal flow of what is true by mere action or thought.

Your character is made and forged by what you do.

Saying things and words, promises and oaths, are also actions. Speech Acts.

Saying and Doing -will build your character. Doing and actions build your character, to shape who you are.

So if you’re presented with the option to do or die, you technically are presented the option to choose your own death, to choose your own regret, to forgo a path of potentiality. To do is the death of the old you, and to die is also a death of the old you. Change.

You are the agent of change and chaos to choose your next action, and thus you ‘kill’ the other potential versions of reality simply by not making it happen.

Side note

The path of destruction and construction, or creativity is similar. Two sides of the same coin.

One cannot create a painting without destroying what it once was. Mixing paints together and splattering it on the canvas is a path of destruction, and the finality of it is the creation. . . Atleast until it decays and weathers away eroding with time.

Destruction and Creativity are two sides of the same coin. Just a side note or tip in case you wanted to make some ‘change’ in the world.

Also side note, Death is esoterically connected with the idea of change or transformation. Just as Scarabs are connected with change and transformation. There is a lot of symbolism in the phoenix and butterfly, the metamorphosis between worlds.

Complete side tangent, death is very fascinating as a state of change. I find it funny how in fantasy literature they have priests or paladins that can resurrect people, and that isn’t at all compared to necromancy. I’d argue life and death are two sides of the same coin and that necromancers get a bad wrap, but would be viewed as exalted priests if they did things with more aesthetically pleasing gold and white vibes. Resurrecting the dead? If you’re from the holy order it’s kosher, but if you’re not than it’s unregulated necromancy. . . I sure do have my own set of questions over the Bible for it’s ‘miracles’ and how it also mentions to not practice necromancy. But hey, I’m not gonna ask Lazarus questions for my answers, so who knows if I’ll get the answers I want. (also, I view healing spells in fantasy genre as blood magic) . . . (further side tangent, I knew a guy who played Dungeons and Dragons and he ran a priest, but charged his party for coins anytime they wanted a heal. He said something about being modern like a doctor, and he’s not wrong. But again, I wouldn’t sell pigeons or condolences in a temple if you know what I mean).

Epilogue

Going through some notes, and debating on some ideas back and forth. I am still wrestling with the idea of an objective parallel universe or multi-verse, but if we suppose that time and space exist outside of concentric panpsychism and solipsism of here and now, then it’s only reasonable that more time and space would exist beyond observable time and space. Just a thought.

Who we are, and our actions, and our words, are shaping our being, as well as the journey that we experience through time and space.

I argue that actions themselves are words, as well as the shape and form of the universe, is itself a word. The being and the motion being both a language. So when we align to a new universe as the old one fades in time-space, then I hope it makes more sense to what I mean by;

Words Mean Things