For Those Approaching the Third Degree - Jon Eden Khan
I’ve felt myself called to write something on the journey from completion of the second initiation into the third initiation. This is something I’ve perceived a number of people around me interested in, and I sense there are a number of beings in our field who have been approaching this threshold, which feels deeply significant for the field as a whole.
To be clear, the initiations I’m speaking about here are not some path offered by Avatara. They are the 5 major initiations that the Trans-Himalayan teachings describe happen as a soul completes its journey through the human experience. My sense is that these represent a deep structure for the pathways of development described across our global spiritual traditions. For those interested in this, see the book I co-wrote with Dustin DiPerna back in 2012, Earth is Eden. There, I trace out how the Trans-Himalayan model of the 5 initiations can be seen in the way the path is described in Buddhism, Vedanta, Sufism, and Esoteric Christianity.
You can access a table that tracks these initiations according to the language of Esoteric Christianity here.
Additionally, it’s important to note that we understand initiation can be taken when two-thirds of a particular level has been mastered by a higher energy. For instance, the second initiation is taken when the love of the soul has been drawn on to master two-thirds of the emotional level of the personality. Importantly, that means one-third remains ‘unsolarised’, which means still potentially having shadow, reactivity, self-loss, self-abandonment, trauma, etc. This is where it is up to each initiate what they do with the remaining third once initiation is taken on a particular level. One can choose to move on and focus on new horizons or continue to round out that level. That said, at a certain point on the path anything left behind will ask to be integrated. This principle of two-thirds is important as context for the rest of this piece. When I discuss fundamental shifts in the initiatory process, I am not saying 100% of the being is transformed by those shifts. At least not yet.
Back to the topic at hand.
The second initiation involves the mastery of the emotional plane with the love energy of the soul. This means that love is landed as the law of one’s being, inwardly and outwardly. And not in some bypassy way that has yet to truly descend into the hell realms of one’s own most fractured parts.
Inwardly means there is a fundamental shift in how a person relates to themselves, mentally, emotionally, erotically and somatically, all the way down to the places in themselves that they have the most shame and vulnerability around. Love becomes the currency of relationship with oneself, including with one’s trauma and places of shadow and self-loss. Violence towards oneself through self-judgement, self-shaming, and self-criticism ends. One still gets triggered and reactive at times, but there is now a fundamental commitment to always come back to love as the basis for how one operates with oneself and others as soon as possible.
Outwardly, those in the second degree are discovering and experimenting with their expression of soul purpose. This brings them into group fields that serve as incubators for their expression of soul purpose. Group work also allows them to update how they are operating in the world so their alignment with soul becomes increasingly expressed in service. Group fields provide safety containers for this vulnerable work, which is why those in the second degree often have a sense of emotional dependency and attachment to the group field, which is normal but also must be watched.
In the process of someone moving through the second degree, the purpose, relationships, and work domains of their life all come under pressure to be aligned with their soul and its energy of love (whatever the soul ray). About halfway to three-quarters of the way through the process of the second degree comes a dark night of the soul. This happens when the challenge of facing all the traumatised, reactive, and avoidant parts of ourselves that seem to prevent our stable emergence in soul gets so great that the being cries out for a greater power to help their soul meet what they are facing in love. That cry is answered under law, bringing in a pulse of monadic will. This provides the soul with the strength to stay present in the face of its incarnated expression’s deepest pain. The will of the monad strengthens the soul’s will to descend as love to repair its relationship with the most fractured parts of the personality, and anchor compassion as the basis of relationship there.
This work provides the critical foundation for the movement into the third degree, but it’s important to note that the passage from resolution of the second into the third is not guaranteed.
In the completion stages of the second initiation, the being has made peace with themselves. Love has landed as the law of their life, and the path becomes much easier. There can be a sense of victory, which may bring with it an easing of the foot off the accelerator. Sometimes what I have seen at this stage of the path is beings who feel complete with walking through initiatory fire for the foreseeable future or maybe even this incarnation. Such beings tend to focus the next phases of their path on more incremental shifts around work, service, deepening radical awakening, meditation, embodiment, soul alignment, etc.
What opens the entry portal from here into the third initiation is a radical commitment to monadic will as it pulses the soul’s purpose into full expression in service, in a way that demands the soul anchors itself all the way down into the base chakra.
This is a big ask. It requires full surrender and availability to monadic will, plus being to be willing to stand alone. As a being enters the process of the third degree, they retain the group fields through which they moved through the process of the second degree as places they feel loved and supported, but they know that now they must spiritually individuate. They commit themselves to taking the path demanded by the monadic will now streaming into their soul and then crown, heart, and base, whatever the challenges that may come.
This brings up survival fears, money concerns, etc. All of which require the initiate to choose to stand for who they are as a soul no matter what, all the way down to the base chakra. And it requires them to leverage everything they know about how to operate in the conventional world so they can land what wants to come through their soul.
Navigating the pressures of this process calls the soul’s consciousness down into the brain of the initiate, who starts to experience themselves as a soul – a divine and eternal being of light and love (whatever the soul ray) who is a child of the Most High here to serve as that. Identity shifts from the personality into the soul. This allows the initiate to become what the teachings call “a conqueror of death”, because who they know themselves to be is now no longer held by the birth and death of the body.
Key to this is the maturation from exploring and experimenting with soul purpose in the second degree to becoming a mature and stable expression of soul purpose in the third. A third degree initiate is a stable anchoring point on the physical plane for the Plan, which is the collective evolutionary purpose for humanity as a whole as it vibrates in Hierarchy. That means the 3rd degree initiate creates from alignment with the Plan and can sustain that creation on the physical plane. Their soul is pulsed into this by their monadic current, which becomes stable with the increasing marriage of soul and body via the connection set up between crown and base. This reveals the monadic current stably through the heart.
As monadic energy pours into the soul, it turns it radioactive. The initiate becomes a sun who is holding a field in which other beings gather to activate their own evolution, purpose, and healing.
To even be available for this kind of service requires a process prior to fully entry into the third degree where it is said the initiate makes a conscious choice to precipitate any remaining karma from their path that stands between them and their ability to give their whole life to service. That means their whole professional life too. They don’t know what this will bring. Maybe a health crisis. Maybe the loss of something precious in their lives. But the drive to take their place in service to the collective evolutionary process becomes so great that they are willing to face and move through whatever it is.
As said before, the third degree involves spiritual individuation. The personality is an integrated vehicle that is increasingly fusing with the soul, and the being chooses to give themselves to the path of what they must do so fully that they learn to stand alone. In this, perhaps the most esoteric aspect of the third degree is opening to being ‘seen through’ by Sanat Kumara – the Lord of the World who is the incarnated expression of the monad of Earth. In this, the initiate comes “eye to eye with the King”, meaning they are seen through by a ray of Sanat Kumara’s gaze, in a profoundly humbling experience that shows them they have reached the summit of humanity and yet only the base of Hierarchy.
They take their stand in the world and over the course of the third degree complete their “masterpiece”, which is some offering of service to humanity that demonstrates their understanding of the Plan and capacity to stand for it in the world. This generally takes the form of some project, body of work, business, organisation, movement, or mission of service.
There is another transition here that is also significant. It is only in the third degree that the initiate enters into one of the 7 major ashrams, now on their monadic ray. The reason for this is that spiritual individuation and the capacity to stand alone as a server in the world is the necessary foundation for being a trustable and stable co-worker in the One Work held by Hierarchy. This is the point where the initiate has enough of a foundation to participate in the group attunement to monadic life that characterises the ashrams, without their participation getting stuck in personal issues or concerns.
From this point forward, their monadic ray is increasingly sensed as their primary energy that drives the soul into supernova in the world, radiating out the harvest of its gifts cultivated across all incarnations.
This sets up a tension that begins in the last stages of the second degree and unfolds in the third between the soul ray and the monadic ray. At an earlier stage of the path, leading into and through the first initiation, the clash between the personality ray and the soul ray played this role. Sometimes the being was more in the personality ray and it felt clunky to shift into the soul ray, and sometimes it was the other way around.
Now, that process happens on a higher turn of the spiral, between the soul ray and the monadic ray. This can be disorienting for the initiate, who by this time has come a long way in establishing themselves in their soul ray.
As the monadic ray increasingly impacts the initiate, it asks for a whole new shift of identity, one that is transfigured by the life force of the monad. Over time, the initiate finds themselves sometimes more in their soul ray and sometimes more in their monadic ray, which can feel like a challenging oscillation.
What is important to remember here is that this shifting back and forth is an expression of an intelligent process. When the focus is on the monadic ray, the initiate can feel a drive to just let go more and more deeply into their monadic core. But this absorption is what allows pulses of monadic energy to pour into their soul and catalyse its full breath out in service.
That, in turn, activates the soul ray and an impulse to fully give its gifts to the world, which once expressed in service then makes the being available for deeper absorption into the monadic ray again.
Starting to come to conclusion now, something I feel is important to land here is that there is no way around the choice to stand alone that is part of the third degree. This is not a ray 1 bias and nor is this expressive of the old Piscean paradigm that is now being replaced by a new Aquarian group process where we get to do this phase of the path together.
This doesn’t mean the being doesn’t collaborate with others, have deep connections, or form part of groups. They might, but they also know that this is about them making their own way to the mountain top, opening their core of the Father, and making the choice to stand without that being based on anyone or anything ready to hold them. They know there is no other choice if they wish to continue deepening on the path, and also no guarantees of success. Indeed, they learn that true success is purity of alignment regardless of the challenges that come. As their masterpiece matures they realize this also will eventually involve facing the shadows engendered in what they created that are a reflection of their own. Remember, only two-thirds mastery of a plane is needed to take initiation, so third degree initiates still can have significant shadows and areas of needed integration like second and first degree initiates.
Once the third degree initiate has completed their masterpiece and given it to humanity, and once the soul has completed the full breath out of its gifts to the world, then comes an internal 180. The being reorients to the monad, which starts to breathe in, and the path into the fourth initiation begins.