Months ago, I turned on Netflix to watch a movie of some kind. One title pulled my attention straight away: Ancient Apocalypse, the controversial series about human history. It instantly became clear that I had to watch it, so I did.
In the series, Graham Hancock tries to connect seemingly unrelated dots to weave humanity’s past into one coherent whole. His findings do not fit the dominant materialistic worldview of today and are therefore quickly categorized as “pseudo-science”, especially because he uses the symbolism of ancient myth to strengthen his view.
One myth is dominant in his entire work: That of the great flood. The epic collapse of entire societies by a specific event that is interestingly found in every ancient tradition known to men. Apokalyps, the end of the world. At least, that´s what we´re told it means. But it doesn´t, because humanity survived the great flood, albeit severely damaged, to give rise to a new collective story.
The symbolism of the Apokalyps archetype
In symbolism, the flood is more than an apocalyptic event. It’s an end of structure (ground) to be replaced by chaos (water). It is the shedding of the skin of the snake, the unveiling of truth. Revelation.
If humanity moves too far away from Heaven, meaning that it finds no inner meaning in itself through spirituality, religions or traditions, disbalance ensues. Disbalance is natural, as it is seen over and over again in the arc of history. As if humanity is bound to learn through forgetting, resulting in crisis, to then remember its true purpose once again. To remember that the Earth and humanity needs Heaven to inform us, so that we as humans can support the larger arc played out through our physical reality.
With Heaven, I mean Jung’s notion of the collective unconsciousness. The timeless and spaceless realms in which the archetypes hide. Archetypes that rule us without us being aware of them, simply because most of humanity has lost the connection to their hiding place. It is there where our deep fear for Apokalyps lives. A fear so deep that we rather avoid its true face than learn its other side. For Apokalyps, like every Archetype, has both a shadow-side and a light side. But instead of getting to know its true purpose, we rather hold on to the story of humanity’s eternal progression, thereby subtly avoiding the laws of nature that show that eternal progression has never been the case in the history of Earth. Maybe we have to realize that crisis is the fuel for transformation. A necessary fuel that cannot be skipped over with force.
Anyway, let’s not be all gloomy. Although every somewhat sensitive person can feel the immense collective pressure weighing on their shoulders, I personally believe that a collective awakening of the Apokalyps archetype is the only option for collective transformation. Just like an individual awakening spontaneously happens when you’re brought to your knees in agony, a collective one could come through ultimate worldly surrender too. But to get there, it seems that the collective pressure cooker needs to build some more pressure first.
Welcome in the pressure cooker
Welcome to the pressure cooker, a period in which an extreme amount of seemingly unrelated intense global events converge, simultaneously challenging all our beliefs.
What do climate change, wars, escalating government debts, inflation, and extreme increase in polarization, an ever-growing chasm between rich and poor and an existential crisis with people dropping by the bushes have in common?
Nothing if you look at it from a materialistic perspective. Everything if you view it from a perspective of interconnectedness. A perspective in which every small part of the universe is inherently linked to every other particle. A perspective in which humanity as a whole is guided by a deeper intelligence with its own purpose.
The pressure, manifested in worldly events, might build until we finally realize that our greatest enemy is not in the world outside. It has always been in ourselves. Hidden in that which we rather avoid than face, the emptiness of our existence. The underworld and Heaven simultaneously.
“But what if I should discover that the least amongst them all, the poorest of all beggars, the most impudent of all offenders, yea, the very fiend himself – that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the arms of my own kindness – that I myself am the enemy who must be loved, what then?” - Carl Gustav Jung
The more we bathe in our perceived innocence, the darker the world around us becomes. The longer we try to avoid our mortality, the louder Apokalyps knocks on the door. The harder we cling to our belief in eternal progress and growth, the deeper the chaos that follows.
The game of order and chaos is always seeking balance. But in a world in which there is a clear trend towards order, chaos is an inevitable consequence.
In ancient traditions such as Buddhism, ignorance is the cause of our suffering. Not wanting to see how reality is constructed, because this truth simply hurts too much. A simple example is death, a subject we prefer to avoid, even while each of us inevitably walks towards their own death. It is this unwillingness to face reality, the unconscious suppression of everything we do not want to be, that has such a destructive effect on the external world. Because everything that is not allowed within ourselves manifests in the outside world.
This is why wars are fought in the name of the ‘good’. "We, the innocent, must defend ourselves by destroying ‘evil’.” With our belief in innocence leading the way, we point out other cultures’ lack of democracy, while our own democracy slowly sinks into polarization-politics where a subtle middle ground or any form of realism is no longer findable. If you are not for, you are against. If you do not choose a side, but view the story from multiple perspectives, you become an enemy to the collective narrative that is based on fear. Fear of truly facing the situation. And fear of deviating from the group with the risk of possibly becoming the target of the collective shadow of innocence, projected onto the vulnerable individualist who dares to think for himself.
When one has several times seen this development at work, one can no longer deny that what was evil has turned to good, and what seemed good has kept alive the forces of evil. The arch-demon of egoism leads us along the royal road to that ingathering, which religious experience demands. - Carl Gustav Jung (Full text read by Alan Watts!)
Should it stop? Or is crisis the fuel for transformation?
It is a commonly used phrase in politics nowadays: "That has to stop." Violence has to stop, war has to stop, everything that is bad has to stop. Although I agree with it at a rational level, I realize that this simple ideology is part of the crisis. A person cannot stop projecting the shadow within themselves onto the outside world. It is not something you do; it is how you see the world. A drug addict cannot simply stop using drugs. The desire for the feeling that the drugs give them, coupled with wanting to avoid the pain they feel at the moment, is much stronger than our personal will. The same personal will that is ironically still highly regarded by the world-famous self-help gurus as the key to become successful.
We can see the current time as terrible, as something that should never have happened. But we can also see it as a transition. Maybe we need to fall to our knees in repentance, begging for redemption, to find out that it cannot go on like this. Perhaps this is the only way to bring about a new step in human collective consciousness. One of connectedness with the universe and each other. Where we realize that the other is not the enemy, but we ourselves are, deeply hidden in our human nature.
An evolution of consciousness. A transition to the new, which means the old must die first. The death of a worldview based on ego, polarization, and duality, to make way for a worldview of unity. The much-needed realization that light and darkness rule in all of us as part of the complete universe, so that we, as humanity, can become the container in which that polarizing force can exist, without reacting on it. Just like Buddha did not react to Mara, the goddess of delusion, and Jesus did not allow himself to be tempted by Satan.
Chaos and order, dark and light, good and bad, in balance within ourselves as ourselves. Grand and small, unbreakable and so vulnerable. Not acting to avoid our darkness but daring to bear it in every moment, as Jesus bore his cross.
Spirituality as a counter-movement? Or the same egoistic story packaged in a different way?
The rise of modern spirituality in any form is nothing more than a counter-movement. A movement against the urge for control and order, the dominant role of reason, and the fragmentation of meaning. It is chaos on a personal level, often arising from personal crises, where Ego can do nothing but bring order again by clinging to spiritual words, concepts, groups, clothing, and other material things that contradict everything that spirituality is really about.
And at the same time, it is precisely this movement, an ever-growing undercurrent in society, that is breaking away from the collective story through personal catharsis and thus creating space for the new story. First in the rare individual, but ultimately in humanity as a whole.
A new story in which myth, chaos, mystery, and reason, order, and science find each other again. Both as part of the world soul, the Anima Mundi, that encompasses us all. Together, one as a world. Heaven and Earth inseparably connected, where humanity becomes the bridge again between the material and the invisible, inexplicable spiritual.
The way forward is clear. Crisis is the fuel for transformation, but only when the way out is no longer to be found. Only then do we realize that the only way out is to turn inward, to pray for help and to confront what leads us to so much suffering and violence. And maybe, just maybe, it is by letting this war rage within ourselves that war in the outside world is no longer necessary.
But until then, I grief, all the while appreciating this here now so much more than I could have ever imagined. Especially because I know it’s going to end.
Do you feel it too? The friction, the urge for polarization and violence? How do you personally cope with it?
Let’s end with some words of Apokalyps himself.
Thus spoke Apokalyps
What is it with you people?
Why are you so afraid of life.
Of truly living in the freefall of unknowing.
Death in every moment, new life in every new one.
Death is your only salvation, and yet you fight it as if death were unworthy of life.
Death is what gives rise to life.
Emptiness what gives rise to form.
God what gives rise to experience.
Your people should see the wonder of my powers in their every moment,
but they blind themselves to me out of fear of change.
Change is death. Birth is change. I am transformation.
The revolutionary principle, the empowering force.
If only more could see me for what I am,
how much more beautiful the world would be.
For the longer my shadow of death is neglected,
the longer only life is sought for,
the more I spread death among your kind.
Only through looking in the eyes of death,
through standing upon the cliff of annihilation,
will humanity find redemption through rebirth.
Your fear for the End,
is your love for the World.