“Initiated”: a Book Review and Then Some

This post is going to be a book review, but in a general sense. There is a lot more to cover. The book is a good doorway to the topics we need to be discussing, and so we will start there.

The full title of the book is Initiated: UAP, Dreams, Depression, Delusions, Shadow People, Psychosis, Sleep Paralysis, and Pandemics and it was written by Matthew Roberts. My only critique of this book is that Roberts spends, in my humble opinion, far too much time delving into the details of Greek mythology, and that he never gets the difference between “effect” and “affect” right (a pet peeve of mine, as an editor). The message of the book, however, is what is essential.

Roberts is a former officer in the U.S. Navy, and he was aboard the carrier group that recorded the now-infamous “Tic-Tac UFO” footage. As you may expect, it had a profound EFFECT on his life. Roberts was led to recall memories from childhood and experiences throughout his life with what those of us he calls “experiencers” refer to as “the phenomenon.” And his insights are brilliant, poignant, and incredibly important.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is seeking real answers. If you follow this blog (and again, why the hell would you?) you know that I frequently promote my own book, the unfortunately titled The Big Blue Turtle: The Meaning of Life and How to Survive Death. (In my defense, the book was written as the result of a joke bet made with friends during the lockdown phase of the pandemic.) I am telling you now, don’t read my book. Read Initiated by Matthew Roberts. Not only do we have the same given name, but both of our mothers were nurses, and I did try to enlist in the Navy but was rejected due to hypertension. And we both have found ourselves on this strange and wonderful path of Initiation. He has completed his initiation, or so his book seems to indicate. I feel I am still working on mine.

Like Roberts, I have had my own experiences with the phenomenon (what I like to simply call “It” as it reminds me of a more benevolent version of the thing that is the town of Derry, Maine, in the novel by Stephen King). While I did not get the benefit of the military training that Roberts feels is conducive to cultivating such experiences, I have approached it more from the drunken boat style of Arthur Rimbaud. I have lived a life of experiences, traveling a great deal in the United States and experimenting with altered states of consciousness, and then leaving the U.S. to live and travel abroad for the past fifteen + years. So far, I have traveled to twenty-eight countries and lived in three. Everywhere I go, I see this phenomenon manifested in history, art, culture, and people.

I won’t go into the great detail of mythology and literature and the Hero’s Journey as reflections of the Initiation process – Roberts has already done that expertly in his book. It is true that this phenomenon has been a part of our world and our development, both as individual beings and as a civilization, since we were created. It has always been here. For more on that, all you have to do is read back through this blog, or my book, or, better yet, Roberts’s book. Or just poke around on the internet yourself. The information is freely available now for anyone who cares to seek it.

I will simply share one of my favorite poems with you before I explain why I feel like I have had the blessing of being brought into this initiation process. The poem is entitled “Leisure,” and it was written by British poet W.H. Davies, originally published posthumously in 1911.

I have been fortunate to have led a very leisurely life. I had a comfortable and happy childhood, and then after my father died, I stopped attending school. I mean, I didn’t drop out right away, but I did skip school as often as I could to the constant anguish of my poor mother. I preferred to spend my time at the local university library, reading books that appealed to me as I strolled among the stacks. I watched movies, and I tried my hand at writing terribly. When I turned seventeen, my mother finally gave in and agreed to allow me to drop out of high school. It was not a decision she made lightly. After long talks, she realized I was getting a better education elsewhere.

That education is what I sometimes refer to as my “secret education” and it began when I was thirteen. To be accurate, that was when I first noticed it. It was after my father had died and I had begun spending my evenings sitting in our back yard, gazing up at the stars, and communicating with It. But as I now realize, this education – this Initiation – started when I was very, very young. I have mentioned before in this blog that everyone is invited or tested early in childhood. Depending on the child’s reaction – curiosity or fear – the education either begins or is postponed. Everyone has some strange early memory that they either come to think back upon as childhood dream or imagination, or they choose to not remember it at all. Something strange, surreal, and maybe scary.

After I dropped out of high school, I continued to isolate and follow this process, only to drop back in again by getting my GED and enrolling at the local university through the Act 101 program. After getting straight A grades in my first semester, I was established as a full student and my years at university became extensive and expensive. I studied everything I could get into, including a disastrous attempt at physics. When I finally left graduate school, I was offered a job overseas and away I went. You can read about all of that in previous posts.

From drop-out free time to university free time to university teaching overseas free time (right now I teach twelve hours a week during the semester and have four months of paid vacation, eight weeks in winter and eight in summer, and I am just about to start my eight summer weeks off next week, which I intend to use on some “shadow work” – getting into my interior mind and connecting further with It), I have been blessed with a life of leisure. I’m not wealthy by any means. In fact, I am quite poor – but not by global standards. By the economic standings of all of my friends, yes, I am very poor, but the world largely exists in much poorer conditions. But I have had enough free time throughout my life to turn my attention to something that I feel is vastly more important than the pursuit of material wealth. I have been communing with It. And It has literally been showing me the world.

As Davies writes, I have been standing beneath the boughs, I have seen where the squirrels hide their nuts, I have seen streams full of stars, and I have seen that smile her eyes began. I have seen the things Roberts describes in his book, and he is on point 100%. Something is changing for our entire civilization. Or world is about to become something very different. I often refer to it as “graduation.” Some call it “the shift.” The conservatives and the corporate greedy of the world are scared shitless because they can already sense it will not be good for them. They are in panic mode right now on all levels, and their fear is openly exhibited in the circus that is now the politics of the United States, my home country, as well as in the chaotically ridiculous “leadership” now emerging in other powerful nations such as the UK, Russia, and Italy. They are scrambling to get as much money as they can because they are so stupid that they think money is power. They think it might help them.

It won’t.

What’s coming? What’s happening? What is this new reality? I’ve written about it. It’s all here, hidden in the apparent chaos that is this blog. But it is also very clearly and openly described in Matthew Roberts’s book, Initiated. I highly recommend that you make the time to cram for this exam. It’s finals time, babies. Some of us have been lucky to have been studying for a long time. It’s always been here, from cave paintings designed to dance in firelight to the mythologies of all ancient cultures; to the religious texts of the Vidas and the Bible; to the psychology of Carl Jung and the philosophy of Schopenhauer, Emil Coiran, Stoics like Epictetus and so many others; to pop culture and films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Wars, Communion… well, let’s face it: It has been and is everywhere. I hope you have been able to see it because it is about to be seen in a big way.

Roberts predicts in his book that 2020 through 2023 will be difficult, but that we will start to see the Light in 2024. I would say he is a bit optimistic with his timeline. I will say that 2024 is when things are going to get really bad. Things are bad now with pandemics, inflation, political polarization, war and threats of war, but hold on to your hats, folks. You ain’t seen nothing yet. Tribulation is upon us. But it is necessary as something new is waiting to be born. The only question is, where will you be in this new world?

[Hint: If you still support a narcissistic man-baby like Donald Trump, you are SO doomed.]

In addition (I say that because I just came back onto this blog to add this bit to this post), “Leisure” should not be wasted. Do look at the world in its entirety. Look at the whole of reality. It takes some practice, really, some meditation. Your eyes and mind need to adjust and refocus. In a previous post I liken it to one of those Magic Eye posters that drove everyone crazy in the 1990s. Take the time to stand (or sit, or even lie down) and stare. Stare not just at the outside world, but at the backs of your eyelids, stare back into your mind and try to focus on your subconscious. Just as the individual has a subconscious, so does our collective consciousness. And just as the subconscious AFFECTS and guides the individual in subtle, often unnoticed ways, so too does the collective subconscious guide our civilization. And if you haven’t noticed, a lot of us are starting to notice something bubbling up from this collective subconscious. Something big. Something ancient. Something eternal that has always been with us. Some of us are already talking to It. I enjoy Its company. It makes me feel good.

I worry that not enough of us are going to meet It, or even catch a glimpse of It long enough to realize what is happening to our world, the EFFECT that we are having on our reality as well as the reality of so many other innocent yet thinking, feeling beings. We really ought to be ashamed. So, please do take the time to sit and stare. Think deeper thoughts, follow that will o’ the whisp down into the murky corridors of your own mind where you may even be afraid to go. Don’t look out at the illusionary world for answers. Look within. Quiet your mind and listen for Its voice. Don’t be afraid; It will be there to protect you. It wants you to see. Don’t look at the movie, look at the theater. Don’t just look at the flickering screens they put before you, the brightly colored moving shapes they tell you are reality, and that there’s nothing more. They are lying. They are lying to you and to themselves because they are scared.

Don’t let them scare you. Don’t trust them. Trust It. It is fun. It is all of the things you’ve always wondered about – or at least, used to wonder about when you were a child, before they got hold of you and told you to stop thinking about such “wastes of time.” It is extraterrestrials and ultraterrestrials. It is ESP and Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. It is shadow people and poltergeists and pookas. It is the tiny hidden secrets of the quantum realm and the furthest expanses of the macroverse. It is birth and It is death. It is magic and the supernatural, but you will see that there is no such thing as the supernatural, only the natural we can’t yet explain. But we are meant to learn. This world is a school and we are becoming something so much more than the “reality” they try to stick us with.

Above all, It is hope. It is possibilities. It is our last chance.

Take a peek behind the screens.