Signs of Our Times

Breaking the Spell (Chapter Two)

Two

Signs of Our Times

We are living through very interesting times. Yet unlike the Chinese ‘curse’– May you live in interesting times – the prevailing and coming years don’t need to be to our misfortune. Nevertheless, they will be remarkable. The next twenty years will be so very different from the past twenty years. Rather than living through ‘interesting times’ we are now entering momentous times. The next decade or two will be especially intense, and may prove to be a period of change in social, cultural, and political systems as well as mental and emotional patterns.

If one wishes to consider this astrologically, planet Earth is currently riding through a Uranus- Pluto wave. Uranus brings freedom and innovation (awakening or disruptive), whereas Pluto signifies depths and power (empowering or destroying).[1] These available energies provide the means for profound change as they present a major tipping-point for global civilization. They can be disruptive and destroying, pointing the way towards breakdown; or they can be awakening and empowering, leading the way towards breakthrough. The next twenty years may prove whether human societies succeed in navigating past an upcoming pivotal crossroads.[2] We are collectively entering a period of unprecedented change. And every change has simultaneously required an accompanying change in consciousness – in our cognitive systems. This has always been the case. How we respond to, and use, the available energies will be largely a question of our cognitive capacities.

This era of change will heighten existing sensitivities. Current psychological and mental imbalances will be made more prevalent. Similarly, human perception and sensitivity will be intensified and exaggerated. This may require us to adopt a different set of reference points in order to identify with our everyday ‘reality’. Decisive actions and insightful vision will have increased impact than at other times. Such influences will reverberate and disseminate more strongly during these heightened moments. This will be a period where so many things will be highlighted, challenged, and tested. In other words, there has never been a more pressing time for conscious mindfulness. We have gone as far as we can get with our state of denial as part of a living, vibrant, conscious cosmos. What may be forced upon us will be a ‘cleansing of our house’, which in itself will be a ‘wake-up call’. Situations may arise that call into play different aspects of our being. This is likely to impact our very principles and cherished beliefs. Again, we are being asked to think about how and what we think – and why?

Looking at the world around us it seems that we are living in a perpetual state of disturbance and upheaval; reinforced by ‘rational intelligence’ yet not restrained by awareness. It appears that a great deal of complexity is overriding our fundamental and ‘simple’ basics. This may be an error of perception: it may ‘simply’ be a question of “the end of our exploring/Will be to arrive where we started/And know the place for the first time.”[3]

However, many of us go through life as automatons, barely touching the epidermis of wakefulness. We are often out-of-synch and whistling a wrong tune. We need to shake the sleep from our eyes. It appears that there is too much ‘information’ but not sufficient ‘meaning’ in our lives. Many so-called ‘civilized’ cultures put great store by the collection of information like greedy children. Yet we can be intellectual giants while at the same time being spiritual infants. Great intelligence is often little more than showing an accomplished cerebral dexterity – this can still be dead intelligence, as opposed to living intelligence. Behind this often lies a lack of engagement with the creative imagination, deep insight, and is replaced with low quantities of conscious awareness. As one celebrated thinker put it:

People today are in danger of drowning in information; but, because they have been taught that information is useful, they are more willing to drown than they need be. If they could handle information, they would not have to drown at all.[4]

The emphasis is often placed upon a one-way processing of information on a daily basis rather than having a living engagement. Modern industrialized society trains us to be consummate data-jugglers, honing our mental agility, while we renege on our conscious awareness. People are in danger of becoming data carriers. Our focus should be less upon the pitcher and more upon the water – less upon the container and more upon the content.

Much of modern life has become an unbalanced distraction. For many it can be said that the world is an ‘attention distracter’ (AD). For such people, they are truly living in the 21st century AD – to the full. We suffer less from an ‘attention deficit’ but more from ‘attention overload’ – or rather misplaced attention. The external environment is complete with too much interference and static. There is too much of the glitter-ball and not enough of the homing-call. Too much attention has been placed upon exterior gratifications often at the expense of our inner state. In general, we are in need of transformation; yet a transformation that has a deep focus upon the inner, perceptive realm. Any sort of external, socio-cultural transformation without the accompanying progress in consciousness is in danger of disempowering us. Our living social matrix is already dependent upon our attachment to external systems and controlling technologies. Such exterior loyalties where we give away our inner authority only serve to further emasculate ourselves in the face of our own great human adventure. Sadly, this relationship all too easily perpetuates itself. It has been remarked that:

One shouldn’t worry about taking pictures or making tape recordings. Those are superfluities of sedate lives. One should worry about the spirit, which is always receding.[5]

At the same time it is often assumed that something which is transcendental or ‘spiritual’ must be far off or complicated. This is nothing more than a lack of knowledge from those least qualified to judge. What lies within is only ‘far off’ in a direction a person does not comprehend.

Another misconception, and one that is important to the realm of the creative imagination, is that of original thinking. Nothing is original, although each thought or event may seem unique to our set of experiences. Everything has gone before, and every possibility exists in potential. Further, each of us possesses the capacity and potential to bring into existence, or manifest, developing awareness. It is therefore important how we deal with each experience, event, situation(s), and circumstances. We create meaning not by what happens to us, but rather how we respond to our circumstances. It can also be stated that there are no original thoughts or words; what exists are unique ways of making the unknown known – or rather, manifesting that which is not yet manifest. Each of us is already that ‘original element’ that no originality can supersede. At the same time we each have the capacity to express life through our own interpretations. We have at our disposal the power of creative intention to manifest our every moment as a meaningful experience. Each time we do this we open up the meaningful possibilities and potentials of our future. Psychologist Viktor Frankl expressed this as:

…man’s main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life. That is why man is even ready to suffer, on the condition, to be sure, that his suffering has a meaning.[6]

Here, importance is being given to those aspects of life that are the potentialities. Nietzsche rather elegantly summed this up by saying: “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” It is up to each one of us, in a balanced way, to capture the sense of life’s potentialities – even in disruptive periods.

We create our futures – for good or for bad – within each ‘present moment’ through our active experiences. Our internal selves are involved at each step of the way within these experiential moments. Yet nothing in this world is for free: we must earn what we learn. The question is – do we ever use it? A modern rewriting of an old proverb states that:

Anyone can see that an ass laden with books remains a donkey. A human being laden with the undigested results of a tussle with thoughts and books, however, still passes for wise.[7]

It is the digestion of life’s events and experiences that has the capacity for meaning. Even when some ‘grander sense’ in a person’s acts cannot be perceived, a person should still act as if there is meaning in everything they do. This is the true mode of human participation within an energetic living environment. It should be remembered that ‘meaning’ also operates beyond a person’s comprehension and scope of understanding. In varying degrees ‘meaning’ operates within each person’s sphere of personal affect and influence. Through conscious intent a person can become more aware of how meaningful action comes into play.

Being more aware as a person does not confer parapsychological powers onto you (an ESP Guru), nor does it require an Eastern pilgrimage. It first asks that you listen to yourself. It then requires that you take great care in how you listen and interpret the external world. It is not a practice that requires one to be skinny and ascetic. Nor need it be mystical or hysterical. In fact, it is more often humorous and straightforward: more science than superstition. Don’t get confused with mystic-babble: ‘illumination of the elect’ may be nothing more than a rich person turning on their light bulb.

For many people the linkage between the exterior and interior worlds still remains murky and fuzzy. Most daily perceptions and interpretations (the cultural ‘cognitive system’) remain within the confines of arranged parameters. Intellectual thought is also constricted by layers of conditioning and operates largely mechanically. Instances of authentic creative thought and behavior are more suspected than made openly. Over historical time there has been a diminishing in the ‘magic’ of our collective creative imagination. As children we possessed this gift; yet being so powerful it had to be ‘educated’ out of us. We have been left stripped from childhood of our inheritance. Our social institutions have literally stolen the white rabbit and traded it for sawdust. Yet within each of us we have intuited these remnants of our hidden resources. It is the case that we have generally lacked the knowledge to access and to activate them once again. It is for this reason that operations of creative imagination, such as the troubadours, have been active within periods of human history. And it seems likely that opportunities now exist for rapid and radical shifts of consciousness.

However, under present social conditions the lines between what is deemed normal (‘sanity’) and abnormal (‘insanity’) have become increasingly blurred. Behaviors deemed ‘sane’ and ‘insane’ function as cultural classifications that help to perpetuate what are accepted norms and rules. A question to ask ourselves is: if our whole society were insane, would we know it?

The stimulation of certain cognitive and creative faculties does require, however, that a person maintains authentic power over themselves. That is, shielded from the bombardment of petty realities and the psychic abuse of petty people. Part of the process begins by understanding how much ‘wrong thinking’ we perpetuate in regard to everything we claim as our own: our thoughts, views, beliefs, tastes, habits. In actual fact so much of our ‘baggage’ is formed through imitation or from our cultural patterns of conditioning. An old proverb says that: “They that drink of the old wine have no place for the new.”

Our ‘old wine’ has been provided by our social constructs. And while they may vary according to time, place, and people, they all follow some fundamental basics. In brief, they operate to create shared cognitive systems. It is to the subject of how we gained our shared cognitive systems that I now turn.

A TALE TO FINISH: Madness

There was once a wise and powerful king who ruled in a remote city of a far king- dom. And the king was feared for both his might and his love of wisdom. At the heart of the city was a well whose water was cool and crystalline, and all the inhabitants drank from this well, even the king and his courtiers, because there was no other well in the city. One night, while everyone was asleep, a witch entered the city and poured seven drops of a strange liquid into the well, and said:

‘From now on, anyone who drinks this water will go crazy’

The next morning all the inhabitants drank the water from the well, except the king and his lord chamberlain, and very soon everyone went mad, as the witch had foretold. During that day, all people went through the narrow streets and public places whispering to each other:

‘The king is mad. Our king and his lord chamberlain have lost their reason. Naturally, we can not be ruled by a mad king. We must dethrone him!’

That night, the king ordered a golden cup of water from the well to be brought to him. And when they brought the cup the king and his lord chamberlain drank heavily from it. Soon after that there was great rejoicing in that distant city of a far kingdom because the king and his lord chamberlain had regained their reason

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Taken from the book ‘Breaking the Spell’ (published 2013/2020)

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[1] Birkbeck, L. (2008) Understanding the Future. London: Watkins

[2] See Laszlo, E. (2006) The Chaos Point: The World at the Crossroads. Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads

[3] Taken from Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot

[4] Shah, I. (1969) Reflections. London: Occtagon Press

[5] Castaneda, C. (1999) The Wheel of Time. London: Allen Lane

[6] Frankl, VE (1997) Man’s Search for Meaning. New York: Pocket Books

[7] Shah, I. (1969) Reflections. London: Octagon Press