We are all on a journey. We can either do it alone, or in a beautifully held container that fosters deep and unmatched connection with the natural world and fellow initiates. I am so grateful for the subtle and potent energies that are now alive and refreshed in my spiritual and emotional systems.
Elena Pinsky, 2017-19 Tree of Life Initiate, Singer, Artist, Graduate Student
Are you feeling The Call into a Deeper Level of Relationship to Life?
Tree of Life provides a sound ceremonial container for a 2-year immersive process for young women (ages 18-early 30’s) who are longing to connect more deeply with their true nature, their ancestors, the living earth and their relationship with spirit. Through transformational personal and relational practices, inquiries, skills and ceremony, participants cultivate embodiment, resiliency and a growing capacity for being engaged, mature participants in the web of life.
Adulthood, in its traditional essence, is about being ready and able to be in service to something larger than yourself; to know who you are and go through the metamorphosis needed to be giving your gifts back to the world.
Intact cultures throughout time have and currently hold humans through rites of passages that support the transition from adolescence into adulthood. These initiatory processes are specific to the culture within which they are enacted. They often involve some sort of trial alongside mentorship from those who are already adults, often times in the elder stage of life. The grip of adolescence is strong, and with a sound spiritual container, a personal and spiritual transformation into adulthood can occur. Without this, the consequences can be costly to the health of the individual, their relationships, community, and the earth that sustains us.
The mentors and elders of the Tree of Life journey are here to help prepare the way, to bring guidance and support, to create and hold the container needed for your initiatory process and transformation.
Consider these questions to help you understand if this journey meets what is calling you or someone you know at this time:
Do you long to feel deeply connected to and resilient within
the web of life that sustains you?
Do you want to gain an understanding of how to walk upright in this world and with all of your relations; to live in sacred reciprocity with life?
Do you long to know who you are and why you are here beneath the social conditioning and external messages you have received?
Do you feel the quiver of what it is to be made useful by Spirit; to empty out your grief and become a vessel for your unique service to the world?
Do you feel the call to initiation? The call into adulthood?
The Tree of Life journey is an invitation through a portal; a proposal dropping at your feet.
The proposal involves a commitment to a preparation of FOUNDATIONS followed by an INITIATION journey. Reciprocity to the land, spirits, and people who are aiding you, relationship with your ancestors and the land you are sitting on, and a willingness to be in deep ceremony are central to this endeavor.
What informs the Tree of Life Initiation Journey?
The Tree of Life's women's rites of passage work is the most powerful transformative experience I've ever witnessed. In the course of two years, a group of young women - unsure, a bit insecure, a bit frightened, still in many ways "adolescents" - flourish into gorgeous adults: confident, clear sighted, fully in their power, clear in their goals, moving fearlessly through the world from their hearts. Learning how to truly pray and authentically make offerings to Spirit is a touchstone that the women can - and do - return to throughout life; the ceremonies are an enormously powerful tool for remembering who they truly are, how to humbly serve the Holy, and how to care for one another and this earth. Any woman who has the enormous good fortune to take part in the Tree of Life initiation process will be forever transformed and blessed with the power to center and re-center herself/themselves throughout life.
~Rachael Knight, Land Rights Attorney, Consultant and Ceremonialist