REFLECTIONS
YARO - AUGUST 2022 BLOG
Dear Reader,
I sat to write the August Blog and felt
strongly that I am very perturbed by the chaos that is being experienced all
over the world today. I notice a constant turmoil in the political world, war in
Ukraine that was invaded by Putin without any provocation. Climate events like
the fires in Spain and other parts of the globe, followed by floods and other
destructive phenomena due to extreme heat and dryness. Many western counties
have not experienced, in the past fifty years, the lack of fuel energy and the food is getting more and
more expensive.
However, in these moments that seem to be so
chaotic and depressing, I like to seek wise mentors and men with courage, who
have gone that path before and are better for it, and ready to give us answers
that connect with the SOUL. The personal Soul and collective Soul.
My Mentor, Michael Meade is my current Wise
Man, who speaks and writes about the issues we are experiencing today - both
culturally and environmentally. I have no words to add to the wisdom he is expressing,
and I wish to share this with all of you readers.
THE ARCHETYPE OF APOCALIPSE by Michael Meade.
To be alive at this time on Earth, is to be a
witness, willingly or unwillingly, to the upheaval of the world. To be alive
now means to be caught between the opposing poles of existence as many things
polarize and conflicts multiply. All the great questions about life and death
and all the fears of dissolution and destruction, now hang in the polluted air
and troubled waters all around us.
The chaos we witness in the outer world
repeatedly stirs the unconscious within us. On a collective level, that leads
to a psychic overflow of fears and resentments that threatens to swamp whatever
is left of civil society and the social contract. Even if we are willing to
face the facts, the facts themselves keep changing as radical change at all
levels of life may be the fact that most needs to be faced.
The scope and complexity of problems that face
every government and every citizen are so great that an increasing
fragmentation of parties and politics is also part of the reality we are
challenged to witness and absorb. We are increasingly governed by insecure
majorities and threatened by extreme minorities as patterns and institutions
that may have provided a sense of wholeness in the past can rarely do so now.
To be alive at this time means being called to
become consciously aware of more aspects of reality than most would choose to
be. It means to be challenged to undergo an awakening of the soul, a shift of
imagination and an expansion of identity to avoid being overwhelmed by the
flood of changes surging through both nature and culture.
At this time, it is not simply a change in
political perspective that we need, but rather a shift in archetypal
understanding that we must find. To make such a fundamental change of awareness,
it is helpful to know something about how archetypes work. An archetype is an
original pattern that exists on a universal level that can affect human
thinking, imagination, and behaviour. When activated, archetypes can connect
the primordial, generative forces of life with the pressing issues of the
world.
Archetypes are the original forms of life that
continue to carry transformative power and boundless potentials. If we can
recognize and assimilate an archetype, it can change our lives, help us grow and
have a healing effect on the world. Although commonly associated with images of
the final end of the world, it turns out that apocalypse refers to the initial
phase of a greater archetypal process. The first phase of the archetype
involves apocalypse, which has the sound of collapse in it. While the
subsequent phase, termed ‘apocastasis,” carries the sense of restoration by
virtue of a rebalancing and renewal of the world.
Archetypes carry intentions as well as powerful
potentials and a restoration of the world is part of the intention and aim of
the archetype of apocalypse. In this ancient way of imagining, the world renews
by returning to its origins and reactivating original potentials. Thus, the new
world that comes out of all the chaos and upheaval is the old, original world,
renewed and reinstituted.
Amidst all the upheaval and uncertainties, we
face, it becomes easy to fall into despair about the future of the earth.
Strangely, just as so many things in the world become divided and polarized,
scientific theories and religious beliefs now seem to parallel each other. As
both statistics and scriptures predict apocalyptic scenarios, science, and
religion, seemingly opposed for so long, finally find agreement in a fatalistic
sense of the impending end of life on Earth.
Rationalists as well as fundamentalists can
both miss the point that the exaggerated images and fears of apocalypse refer
not simply to facts about the outer world, but more meaningfully to
psychological conditions affecting the inner world of psyche and soul. By
contrast, the archetype of apocalypse presents a paradoxical situation of
dissolution and re-creation, rather than a predetermined or preordained
outcome. In mythological terms, the world can end, but not completely as the
end of one era secretly leads to the beginning of the next.
In accepting that we are amid a great
turnaround that involves a shift of the underlying archetypes of life, we
become more able to tolerate and understand the tragic events that threaten both
nature and human culture. The question becomes whether the pattern of collapse
and renewal takes place simply through the raw energies of the unconscious or
does a transformation of life on earth develop with the conscious awareness and
assistance of people living at this very time.
The archetype of apocalypse is related to the archetype of
wholeness and to the sense of creation as an ongoing force of life. According
to the old traditions, the original energies of creation try to enter the world
through us, especially in times of crisis. As human beings capable of being
conscious and aware, we are called and challenged to be a part of a
transformation of life on earth that is already underway.
The wholeness that is missing in the outer
world at this time cannot be found through a political process or be created
through an agreement of ideas alone but must be found in the depths of the
individual soul. The fragmentation and polarization that troubles the outside
world is deeply felt and experienced within us. And that which is missing in
the outside world must be sought for and be found within us as well.
