Sunday, December 2, 2012

13 Degrees of Fire: Initiation Stage-Atonement

13th Day of 42-
13 Degrees of Fire: Initiation Stage- Atonement
 
Joseph Campbell's Initiation stage: 

At-one-ment with the Father, who is also "good" (merciful, provident) and "bad" (threatening, terrible)--initiation into the Father's office





On the Ship, Death Star, Luke must face his father.  Luke must face and defeat the "bad" Father to eventually hold on to the position of power.  The hero, the merchant marine, has an on going battle as a first engineer who must face the old school "Chief Engineers" who should of retired a long time ago, but don't.  This chief engineers are like Darth Vader who rule with fear and ego.  They barely know their own ship, and ride along letting the first, second and third engineer either permanent or temporary engineers do all the work.  If the chief engineer just rides along to suck up salaries, benefits and retirement, then they are not doing their job 100%.  This prevents experienced first engineers to get a good job, or move up the ladder.  It also puts extra stress on the engineers who have to fix, maintain a ship that is not kept up to shape.  The initiation happens every time a temporary engineer comes on a ship.  He is thrown in the deep side of the pool right away.  This becomes a sort of dysfunctional initiation.  Most modern professional experiences are dysfunctional because everyone has alterior motives.  Usually an initiation has ceremony and a story that proceeds the actual action or deed.  The rituals have all but vanished.  So what the modern hero experiences is an empty action or explanation of his actions.  Since some careers do not promote you or initiate you on the grounds that you have earned it, you have quality to match your position or  you were voted in, then all is a lie.  When we deal with this lie day in and day out, we go a little mad.

The Jypsy, the hero of this blog, is surely in the atonement stage of the initiation.  He will probably continue in that stage until his return.  I do not know where he is exactly on his journey, but I would guess that he is leaving Korea for China.  He was feeling very uneasy about the job as a first.  He thought he knew the ship better. His struggle to know the ship and then to fit it is the initiation stage.  To either work well or defeat the father, or the authority figure is another part of the stage. 

As most careers have an authority figure or boss, then most of us must deal with this aspect of understanding them so that we are atoned.  We simply do not want to be in turmoil all the time with our career.  The problem these days is that the person who is the authority figures has serious dysfunction and thus puts demands on the worker that are ridiculous and or petty. 

The hero is born a true heart when faced with these Petty Tyrant and maintains the discipline and control to defeat them.  (Carlos Castenada coined the phrase of petty tyrant in Fire Within). 

"To be defeated by a small-fry petty tyrant is not deadly, but devastating. Warriors who succumb to a small-fry petty tyrant are obliterated by their own sense of failure and unworthiness.  Anyone who joins the petty tyrant is defeated. To act in anger, without control and discipline, to have no forbearance, is to be defeated.  After warriors are defeated they either regroup themselves or they abandon the quest for knowledge and join the ranks of the petty tyrants for life." (http://www.prismagems.com/castaneda/donjuan7.html)

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