The 21st Century: a Spiritual Crisis?
Behind the unprecedented civilizational collapse we are living through, the earth herself is in a cyclical transformation fuelled by runaway global warming and species extinction. We are being forced to evolve or die – and we can feel in ourselves whether we are contracting and holding on, or letting go in these times of change. We are psychically transiting through the five stages of world grief, whilst authoritarian powers struggle to control the narrative to control what new world emerges. Amongst all this chaos we need a map, a vision of what’s happening: a way home.
Are we undergoing some sort of global reboot? Yes, undoubtedly. We’re currently facing simultaneous planetary challenges in order to let go of the old pattern of living and enter a new, natural way of engaging with ourselves, our community and with Mother Nature as well. The old has to die to make way for the new, and the ego-identification with our possessions, wealth and mental filters, e.g. ‘capitalism’ strangle our ability to see what life really is, to change, and to accept what is needed.
The world is made of language, and those that control the narrative control the understanding of what we are experiencing. The last few years have seen an amplification of the polarity paradigm: left-right, Republican-Democrat, us vs. them. This focus on differences underlies the evolutionary pressures forcing change and shows us the ego once again is our core problem.
The ego goes hand-in-hand with civilization as a response to the trauma of our separation from the soul of the world. So changing our ego/consciousness is the only way forward. There are many paths to awakening – psychedelics are but one dynamic option. By awakening our full consciousness and our sense of belonging and connection we can rise to the challenges of these times.
Contraction people believe in centralized authority and that there are powers that be that will save us – whether that's our leaders, the hierarchy, the empire, the CEOs, the billionaire class who are going off to Mars or conquering the human genome or whatever – but it's always externalizing the responsibility of the spiritual path and of realizing what you're in: the ultimate narrative. The expansion side of the equation is actually exploring questions like ‘who am I?’, ‘what am I?’ and ‘how do I plug into the big story – and what is it all about?
How did we get here? one might ask. History is a species story of uphill struggle from basically a nomadic subsistence reality, into a cooperative tribal cluster that eventually bloomed into villages, cities, nations, states – it's scaling up and up. The ego is protecting itself from nature by building more and more layers of separation. And as we extract all the resources we are potentially creating the next species: Artificial Intelligence: the ego made manifest. It’s now a runaway race between civilizational collapse and the birth of global AI.
I don’t think we could’ve caused all the destruction that we have if we were emotionally present with the real-time damage and wounding that we're doing to our environment. You can't do that and stay sane. It's like mankind had to go insane, to dwell in the ego, to remain separate and kill Mother Nature, while it's in her womb.
Right now, we’re going through a grieving process, and I think that’s only the beginning of our collective healing. A lot of us have begun to realize and feel this collapse but the real wisdom is this: the emergency creates the conditions for an emergence of something new. By going with the pressures we can free ourselves from our attachment to the old ways, a process which is like an ego death for the individual and the collective, activated by these times of crisis.
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Our Journey Back Home
Many of us have started our healing journeys by having shamanic experiences and entering altered states of consciousness with the help of plant and earth medicines. However you’ve begun the path of awakening I need to tell you – once you step into this, there’s no way back. Every altered state experience comes with the possibility of deep healing, which is what a lot of the Psychedelic Renaissance is integrating into the West now. But that's just the start of the spiritual awakening process, of learning who we are beyond the trauma body.
After a peak psychedelic experience we often go ‘back to normal’, because everyone around us is that way and sharing psychedelic experiences with the uninitiated can be as empty as sharing the content of a dream to those that don’t understand. But deep inside, your truth is alive and the process of integration continues as a prelude to your rebirth.
Do you see? Life is happening for us, not to us. Civilizations rise and fall, mass species extinctions are part of Gaia’s own growth as a macro organism. All of the pressures are catalysts for the soul’s awakening.
During this process the most important key is to turn our attention to our patterns of behavior. Are we inclined towards separation and ego, ignorance, malevolence, suffering? Or can we trust the process and unfreeze those scripts and replace them with awareness, compassion, love and understanding? Let go of your attachment to the material world, embrace the great unknown and dissolve into the presence of your 'inner home' : your own soul.
I think that the greatest thing that people can do is to get in touch with their own consciousness because that is how you find the way home.
What we are living through now is, from my point of view, a planetary initiation We’re all part of it, and we all respond to it in our own way. It's a mythic opportunity for you to investigate the nature of your reality and discover how you can dissolve more and more the ego, separation, and scripts that promulgate to keep you small. As you awaken more of your higher possibilities you will realize how you have been guided and shaped for this new awareness all along.
There has to be a way home, a way to feel safe, a way to feel connected, a way to feel in relationship with the events that are unfolding so they're not happening to us but we're a participant in a process which is perhaps part of the evolutionary cycle. As everything seems to be disintegrating perhaps there is a literal as well as sort of metaphoric rebirth on the horizon.
Key takeaways
- Our ego-based lives led us to this point of destruction of our Mother Earth, but we now have an amazing opportunity to heal and be reunited.
- We need to start exploring ourselves on a deeper level and change our fear and anger-based reactions to what is going on in the world.
- We are the ones that build the narrative of our lives and we can start changing the collective narrative only if we are willing to change ourselves first.
- Plant medicine and shamanic rituals can be the starting point of our ego death and rebirth.
- The way home starts with each and every one of us shifting our attention from separation to unity.
