Sacrificing Yourself at The Altar of Becoming

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Transcript

The giving of offerings and the making of sacrifices, the surrendering of a resource in order to give thanks or to create change.

These are age-old human practices spanning through deep time, going back hundreds of thousands if not millions of years.

When you look at indigenous or traditional cultures, you don't find a single one that does not have the giving of offerings in some form or another woven into their culture and or

Holding prominence in how the culture is even structured.

Offerings anchor people into a particular time and place when we give offerings to the land, when we give offerings at particular seasonal junctures.

Offerings build relationships to spirits, to gods, to natural forces.

Offerings ease tension.

Offerings show gratitude.

To give offerings is a part of being human.

We have been doing it so long that at this point it is a part of how we even orientate.

In the modern world, offerings are still a part of how we relate to one another, whether it is in the offering of our time,

In the offering of a skill, in the offering of a resource at our disposal to aid someone, to open the way for someone, to help someone in dire straits.

At a deeper level of the other than conscious mind, what many people call the unconscious,

The giving of offerings and the making of sacrifices is a built-in feature.

We instinctually understand that in order to create balance and harmony with others and with the world, we must give and also learn to receive.

And one can understand this through magical practice, for magical practice is the language of the other-than-conscious mind in action.

It is a symbolic language and a poetic language working with the underlying energetic currents of reality.

And in relevance to today's talk, it's important to recognize that we all exist as a part of a food cycle.

Whereas one force dies, it feeds another force.

And all beings and all entities and all discrete energetic packages must take in nourishment.

They must eat.

and innately indigenous and tribal cultures understood this reality and the giving of offerings was understood as essential for exchange.

But there's another aspect to this that is very pertinent to today's talk, which is the fundamental alchemy that is present in the process of giving offerings, in the process of making sacrifices.

For sacrifice is a type of death.

Sacrifice is a release for the action of giving sacrifices removes something from your current threshold of experience and gives it to another and what happens it creates space

For with every expansion there is a contraction, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and this is a fundamental truth that the other-than-conscious mind understands at a root level.

This is why often people must struggle in order to accept something into their world.

Because at a deeper level we understand this process of going out and exerting effort, of doing, of engaging, of paying the price to receive the reward that we seek.

For we evolved in the wilderness, moving through forests and through savannas, hunting down animals that could easily kill us, and that we felt awe and inspiration around, in order to feed our families.

In this world, sacrifice is a core aspect of how we understand.

For to take something that we feel all around and to kill it in order to feed our family in a process where it could kill us is to truly understand the giving of offerings and the making of sacrifices.

And this deep primal rhythm is still with us today.

and what I can tell you is that life is calling out to you to inhabit a more expanded space of capacity that is the life that you understand that you came here to lead and the gifts that you understand that you have come here to bring and the talents at your disposal

and for many people they feel like they just can't quite get there as if it's right at the threshold of possibility they understand that they came here to do something more than what they are currently doing and they want to grow and they want to grow and they want to grow but what they often cannot allow themselves to do is the contractive process of sacrificing who you currently are

That is to sacrifice yourself as you currently are at the altar of becoming.

What is an altar?

An altar is a place of change.

It is in the word to alter.

So whether we are altering our life, whether we are altering our relationship with spiritual forces, whether we are altering ourselves, the altar is the place of change.

This does not require an altar in the classical sense of an erect structure where we sit at daily to give offerings, but more so it is the altar itself where we are in consistent change.

And in order to fuel this process, in order to fuel this altar, we must continuously sacrifice who we currently are for who we are becoming.

That person who is capable of giving the gifts, the person who has embodied, truly embodied the values, the principles, the practices, the way of life that they are calling in.

Often this is a painful process, just like taking a knife and plunging it into the neck of a sacrifice in order to spread the blood over the stones of our fetish, of our altar, of our gods.

This is a process that is often uncomfortable, for it is death, and nothing inherently wants to die.

The Parts Of You That Are Currently Existing Where They Are At Are Trying To Hold On And The Discomfort Of Being Able To Actually Die And To Relinquish What Is In Order To Create A Compost To Take What Was And Create A Compost For The New Self This Is The Sacrifice

and we do this just not for ourselves but for the greater reality that is calling us forth to bring our gifts and our talents to the world those who are in need of what you have to give and for the evolution of the soul that is at the core of your being that doesn't get attached fundamentally to the current more temporary iteration of you

And your sacrifice in this way continuously feeds the evolution of that soul as well.

and this need not be a harsh process for truthfully it is only the willingness and the courage to allow the death to occur that is required for if you are already engaging the practices if you are doing the work if you are showing up earnestly and making the call for this more expanded version of you

Then the willingness to contract the current version is often what is required.

But most people cannot surrender.

Most people cannot let go.

Most people cannot relinquish.

and this is what keeps most people stuck because the old parts become sedimented they become concretized they become stale and old unwilling to break unwilling to shatter unwilling to release and when that happens you feel like you are at this threshold perpetually like you're right there like you could just make the jump like you can just make the change

But you just can't because every expansion requires a contraction, every birth requires a death, and every altar requires consistent sacrifice to feed it.

and this sacrifice is something that can be done not just for you and the life that you want to lead but to the life that is calling out for you at a deeper level at the level of the soul

that is not just for your own evolution which of course is present but also for what you have to be able to give others to be able to give the world this greater sacrifice that we make of who we currently are to the altar itself of the world