repetitive inner work of this kind, coming to know the forces of one’s own psyche, is its own initiation. It is a tempering process. Usually heat is involved. It takes discipline to tolerate the heat, to persevere. But what comes of keeping at it is mastery and non-naivete, attainment of an inward order unattainable without the discipline, the heat, the descent into our darkness and fear. Even the interior defeats we suffer serve us in this tempering.
