In their work, the specialists of the “Growth” center pay special attention to such a component of the process of personality formation as initiation. This practice became most widespread during the “Hunt for Power” training tour. Initiation - (from Latin initiatio - performing sacraments, initiation), a system of customs widespread in tribal society associated with the transfer of boys and girls to the age class of adult men and women. Initiations were aimed at preparing young people for industrial, social and family life and, as a rule, were accompanied by training, various, often painful tests, initiation into the secrets and myths of the tribe. Some of the initiation rites subsequently, after losing their original meaning, were moved to an earlier time in life. The crisis that has gripped modern culture has had a particularly strong impact on the institution of education. This is most clearly manifested in modern problems of youth. The dire symptoms of the crisis are manifested in the increase in the number of crimes, drug addiction and suicides precisely among this age category. At the same time, adolescence, being a transition from childhood to adulthood, is in itself a difficult, crisis moment in personality development. Alarming symptoms indicate that modern culture and civilization are not coping with this crisis and are not able to help the individual inevitably going through it. Therefore, many researchers look to the experiences of past cultures to find clues, models, and valuable insights into solving these problems. Modern research in anthropology, religious studies and cultural psychology provides rich material for comparisons and possible ways out of the current impasse. One of the most interesting in this regard is the practice of initiation of maturation in ancient cultures. Initiation was one of the “rites of passage” that accompanied the most significant social and personal changes in a person’s life: birth, growing up, marriage, maturity, death, etc. The expression “ritual of passage” shows that a person has moved from one level of his experience to another. Performing a ritual of passage speaks of a socially recognized right to change or transformation - the right to enter a new level of one’s development. That is, how to pass an exam to a new level of personal and social maturity and receive new instructions for the correct passage of a new stage of life. As the leading mythology researcher Mircea Eliade wrote, initiation allowed the young man to comprehend “a triple revelation: the revelation of the Sacred, Death and Sexuality." The child lacks all three types of experience. The initiate learns about them, accepts them and includes them in the structure of his new - adult - personality. In addition, the initiate is likened to the cultural ideal of the tribe, represented in the form of a deified ancestor, hero or deity, whose legendary and difficult path he repeats in initiation. An approximate course of initiation can be briefly described. Upon reaching the age of initiation, all girls and boys of the tribe are taken from their families. The boys are taken to a remote place in the forest, jungle or wild, frightening area and gathered into groups under the guidance of a special mentor - an initiate. There they live in a special hut, they are forbidden to communicate with anyone or engage in usual activities until the end of initiation. Each girl is also taken from her family and placed in a fenced-off dark corner or secluded part of the house, where no one interacts with her. Then the girls are also gathered into groups under the guidance of an experienced old woman, who teaches them women's, sacred crafts and sciences (weaving, weaving, knitting, childbirth), initiates them into the cult of fertility, and teaches them the art of love. The forest, darkness, and jungle are a symbol of “otherworldliness” , death, entry into cosmic Night, primordial Chaos, i.e. return to the beginning of the cycle. The teenager must symbolically die as a Child and be born as an Adult, starting a new cycle. The initiation hut is a symbol of the mother's womb; some of the heavytests and teaching myths about the origin of the world, secret tribe traditions, secret names of gods, etc., which are known only to adults, i.e. initiation into the ideology and social institutions of the tribe. The main theme of initiation is the experience of initiatory death. The initiates are buried in the ground, sometimes covered with dry trees, given appropriate coloring, and in some tribes the initiates imitate the behavior of the dead. Associated with this same experience are severe, sometimes cruel, trials that the initiate must endure. These are ritual tortures, such as scourging, beatings, circumcision, pulling out teeth, cutting off fingers, starvation, sleep deprivation, etc. Applying tattoos, notches, incisions on the skin, symbolizing death and resurrection. Then follows the experience of rebirth, a new birth, the birth of oneself in a different capacity. The initiates are given new names, taught new, secret words, language, sometimes they are taught to walk again, fed like little ones, i.e. imitate the behavior of newborns. The initiation ends with a grand celebration at which the community welcomes and honors its new members, treating them as mature, adults, socializing and affirming their new role, new identity. As mentioned earlier, initiations of growing up were ubiquitous and mandatory. in ancient societies and continue to exist today in surviving archaic cultures (for example, among the Indians of North America, among the Bushmen of Africa, etc.). In most civilized societies, only “rudiments” of initiations have now been preserved, having lost their deep meaning and structure. Examples of this include: admission to scouts/pioneers, profiling testing at the age of 11-12, some religious rituals - circumcision, hiking and labor training for boys and home economics for girls, and some others. For the Indians, the Visionary Search accelerated their socio-psychological growth during a potentially crisis period of change and transition from youth to maturity, at the vital stage of formation in the soul of the image of one’s “I”, self-identification. Recently, a number of psychologists and researchers have developed methods and psychotechnologies based in the practice of initiations. In general, the initiation process can be divided into several stages (stages). The first stage is preparation, instruction, creation of a context and rules for working with the inner world, group training in the ability to see and accept one’s feelings, intuitions, dreams, fears and their correlation with external reality and the life of the individual. The second is purification, fasting and ablution, letting go of ordinary, ego-centered consciousness. The third is a period of loneliness and isolation in the wild, where participants enter a special state of consciousness caused by ceremonies, fasting, detachment from the structure of their normative reality and the experience of what it means to be a natural being in the natural world. All this allows them to get in touch with the deeper levels of their being, and, having gone through their fears, worries and suppressed emotions, consider their belief systems and attitudes, think about questions like “who am I?”, “where am I going?”, “ what am I doing with my life?" The fourth stage is a collective celebration of the new found meaning of self and a ceremony of reconnection with the social world. This is the interpretation and integration of the experiences of the Visionary Search into current life. Having gone through emotional cleansing, course participants often discover and/or strengthen their internal resources, abilities and skills to cope with stress (adult stress, i.e. they receive a pass to adulthood) and fear unknown. Successfully surviving difficulties through experience confirms and affirms the hidden strength of the individual (i.e., the birth of a mature self). Participants talk about deeper self-trust, self-confidence and how they and the universe co-create their lives and destiny. People begin to feel better about themselves and others, and gain a sense of optimism about managing their lives. This information is not purely speculative, conceptual.