The Bul­gar­ian mas­ter Om­raam Mikhaël Aï­van­hov used to tell a story about the old Egyp­tians and their ini­ti­a­tions.
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The deep knowl­edge of the Egyp­tians made peo­ple like Plato and Pythago­ras spend many years of their life there to learn their se­crets. They where ini­ti­ated and had to prove their will, their courage, their en­durance, jus­tice, wis­dom, pu­rity etc. through dif­fer­ent tests or ini­ti­a­tions.

 An ini­ti­a­tion was to learn some­thing deep within your soul. Not only an un­der­stand­ing or per­cep­tion, but an ac­knowl­edge­ment and in­ner-re­al­iza­tion, an in­ter­nal­iza­tion a re­al­iza­tion from within mak­ing it your own knowl­edge and a prop­erty of your own soul.
The old texts of­ten read the pharaoh ex­press­ing; I am Ho­rus, I am Ra, I am Osiris etc.
This was to say, I have the same abil­i­ties in my soul as Osiris or as Ho­rus.
If you are as Osiris you know how to re­vi­tal­ize your­self, how to make the dead parts in you more vi­tal and alive. This re­quires steps of evo­lu­tion that only a few mas­ters at­tain. To be like Ho­rus is a de­gree of au­ton­omy where your one and only pro­ject is to be­come the golden Ho­rus, to achieve the gold of the soul the in­ner virtues.
And ini­ti­a­tion did not aim at telling you things as a lec­ture, but ex­pe­ri­enc­ing it with your soul, when your soul was ready.

The story Om­raam would tell is about one of the first ini­ti­a­tions of the searcher.

Dark night out­side the tem­ple, the searcher or neo­phytes, as they of­ten are called were wait­ing with an­tic­i­pa­tion look­ing at the stars.
One of the priests they al­ready had been in­tro­duced to, ap­proach in si­lence and the ini­ti­ates one by one were taken into the tem­ple.

In a room only lit by a burn­ing torch, the neo­phyte was asked to wait. One of the high-priests ap­pears af­ter a while bring­ing two glasses, one in each hand.

First, he re­ceives a glass that has a nice sweet taste in the rim. Ea­ger to taste more he dis­cov­ers the con­tent be­ing bit­ter and not very pleas­ant. Then he re­ceives the other glass tast­ing rather bit­ter on the rim, the neo­phyte tastes the rest care­fully to dis­cover the most de­light­ful drink.

Noth­ing is ex­plained and the seeker on the way is left to pon­der and think and un­der­stand that the things in life that taste sweet first might give a bit­ter re­sult, while the things in life that are bit­ter and chal­leng­ing give a sweet af­ter taste.

Or that if you eat a lot of good food and sweets, you will get a foul taste or smell from the mouth and stool. While if you eat sim­ple food, even things that have a strong taste like onions, cab­bage or en­dives they have a sweet af­ter taste and cleanse the sys­tem leav­ing you with a nice taste in the mouth.

If you live in the slope of a val­ley, go­ing down to the bot­tom is ease but you have to climb back, if you climb to the top you have a nice walk back af­ter­wards.

Do­ing ex­er­cise, prac­tic­ing, tak­ing a walk in the cold rain etc. is fol­lowed with a pleas­ant state. If you sleep long, re­lax on the coach with your smart­phone and lie sleep­ing in the sun, you get drowsy and lax and tired.

Two small glasses with a deep wis­dom be­hind, let­ting the seeker un­der­stand what he or she is ready to re­al­ize within their soul.

You can read more ar­ti­cles like this here.