The counter-initiatic force

In his latest posting on the Golden-Dawn-blog, David Griffin talked about the counter-initiatic force as a force that tries to hinder important initiatic events.
Well, i think i have encountered this force several times for myself.
I remember my first date with the german Imperator back in 2002.
I wanted to introduce myself to him, and ask for initiation into the Neophyte grade.
We had an appointment in a cafe i knew well.
I was in there right on time, and since i have already seen him at the official inauguration of the german Temple, i knew after whom i was looking.
But i could not see him, neither inside the cafe at one of its tables, nor outside or in front of it.
I spent maybe half an hour going in and out again, desperately looking after him.
Then i went home again, sadly thinking that he must have made a joke on me, and doubting my worthiness for initiation into the Order.
But then i decided to call him again and it turned out that he, like me, was there right on time, and could not find me too!
When we finally met again, we could not explain how we could not have met at this first date.
This still puzzles me.

What is also still on my mind is my trip to America to attend an international Golden Dawn gathering and to receive my Philosophus initiation (!).
First, my bosses would not grant me vacation.
But then i decided to go there for just a weekend, despite my voice of reason (and now, of course iam glad i ignored that voice on that special account).
One or two days before my actual flight, several flight unions started to strike.
This caused great horror in me, since i knew i had to be exactly on time in Las Vegas to not miss anything important.
Finally every plane i had to take was too late and i missed every planned connection flight.
I found myself at the airport in Frankfurt, not knowing for one hour where my luggage is or which plane to take. Time was running, and i already had the thought of giving up altogether, and flying back to Berlin.
Finally, maybe 15 minutes before start, i found out that i had been redirected to an alternative route, and that my luggage was already at the new plane.
All in all i spent 24 hours on planes and in airports. And i would have missed the last possible flight from Washington to Las Vegas, and thereby coming one whole day later and only being able to meet-and-greet before going home again, would i not have ran through the customs and practised queue-jumping (i remember one european guy shouting: "Oh these germans, they always cant wait!").

The most bizarre thing happened one day before my scheduled flight to another european city for my initiation into Portal.
I woke up very early in the morning because the heater in my sleeping room started to make nerving hammering sounds.
I rushed out of bed, deciding to deaerate it now.
I grabbed a screwdriver and fumbled with it at the valve on the side of the heater.
Suddenly, the valve broke off, and a fountain of hot, almost boiling water flooded my room. It was a matter of seconds, and all my bed and furniture and book piles on the floor stood under water.
It even ran in cascades down the stairs to the lower floor.
In my shocking state, i was nonetheless really quick in collecting every towel from my house.
Fortunately, a good friend and neighbour came to help me with the mess.
But then i realized that the hot water had flown over both my hands, and that they started to blister!
So i went to my doctor and got both my hands bandaged.
Well, i thought, now i can cancel my flight and postpone my initiation.
But over night my hands started to heal very quickly, and when i was ready for the flight the next day, miraculously i even needed no bandages anymore.

I think i even know, to some extent, the counter-initiatic force, or the force that wants to hinder spiritual progress, before every greater invocation i plan. Especially in the past, or when i began to invoke regularly.
There have been many voices and moods that wanted me to linger away from my plans.
Sometimes this manifested as urgent phone calls from friends with unexpected news, sometimes maybe as slight headaches (that passed at the moment when i started to do my preliminary banishings), sometimes as subtle ailments in one or another kind.

In regard to my personal work at my temple at home, i always thought this to be a kind of spiritual or magical test in itself.
My own Evil Persona, trying to convince myself in subtle ways to give up my lofty plans.
But the more often i conquered this force with firm will, the less distractive or convincing it became.

But now i wonder about the gravity of the counter-initiatic force when it ever comes to higher initiations.
Will i nearly escape death if i ever receive higher adept grades?
Lots of laughter.

In L.V.X.,
L.e.N.e.