
...[shock] often produces a sense of Limbo, floating feelings and an overall disconnectedness. Depending on how traumatic the shock is, we'll enter into anything from 'spaciness' to the Permanent Vocation of Psychosis. Shock temporarily disconnects the soul from the body and sends it to CHAPEL PERILOUS to learn the lesson of the sermon. This process of returning to ourselves ... will be referred to as INITIATION.
The initiatory nature of the Dark Night is now explicit. Alli sees the actual initiation in the rebirth aspect of the process. The death aspect occurs when the soul flees the body, and the individual is 'reborn' when the soul is recovered.
Initiation is a creative response to the shock of the
unknown. Since SHOCK disconnects us, how do we reconnect and where do we begin?
One creative way to respond to shock is by reconnecting ourselves to new habits
and routines which increase our intelligence and make us happy. During the phase
of our disconnection, we are perhaps most vulnerable to
impressions
and suggestions from ourselves and others. It is during this time that new directions
may be initiated and crystallized when the 'gap of our death' eventually closes
down again and we stabilize. ... If we are naive to this effect and don't reconnect
ourselves creatively, we lapse back even deeper into our previous habits...
like them or not. (Alli)