| A Season of War, Greed, and
Lies: The Collective Dark Night of the Soul by Karen Engelsen Excerpted from "Diagonally Parked in a Parallel Universe: Culture Wars and Our Crisis of Spirit," a forthcoming book by the author. "Nearly all of us have faced seasons in our life where everything seemed to be falling apart. At these times, all the beliefs upon which we based our life are torn from their moorings; we thought we understood how to live life, but now we feel lost in a stormy sea." -- Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance I have felt that, since 9/11, our world has grown steadily away from peace, wholeness and community values. Before that moment, reading books on spiritual wisdom, attending seminars and absorbing uplifting messages had given me hope that humanity was about to achieve a great liberation of spirit. Many had written of this hoped for transcendence, calling it various names like Ascension, Omega Point, Enlightenment, Nirvana. In the last several years, our species' once immanent transcendence seems to have fallen victim to chaos, fear and spiritual illness. The philosopher Teilhard De Chardin also proposed that the Spirit of the Earth had a fundamental kind of destiny -- that human consciousness was coalescing toward a Unity. This evolutionary unfolding would be a new organ of consciousness, a "new layer of the noosphere" analogous on a planetary level to the cerebral cortex in humans. This "planetary thinking network" would be "an interlinked system of consciousness and information...a global net of self-awareness, instantaneous feedback and planetary communication." However, this is not merely a function of Logos -- but a coming together of hearts. In The Phenomenon of Man, he writes: "It is not our heads or our bodies which we must bring together, but our hearts.... Humanity...is building its composite brain beneath our eyes. May it not be that tomorrow, through the logical and biological deepening of the movement drawing it together, it will find its heart, without which the ultimate wholeness of its power of unification can never be achieved?" Chardin's image of the Noosphere gave me language to understand our current collective "Dark Night of the Soul." Just as an individual human must burn out spiritual impurities in the process of fully opening to higher spiritual realms, just as the "Dark Night of the Soul" tasks us as individuals to lift to the light what had been repressed, the Noosphere -- the Collective World Soul -- must burn out our collective spiritual impurities. If we are to experience a collective time of Unification into a transcendent global consciousness, the Noosphere must go through its own "Dark Night of the Soul." It, too, must undergo an initiatory period of seeming separation from the Divine. What seems on the surface to be a retrograde era of War, Greed and Lies is a purgative time when the Noosphere shatters in a death and rebirth experience necessary for collective enlightenment. Jim Marion in "Putting on the Mind of Christ" writes of his individual experience of the Dark Night of the Soul: "The darkness had also come in from that part of the world's negative collective unconscious that vibrated at the same dark heavy level as my own soul's repressed negativity. ...All the 'roots' of my buried dark side...were now fully exposed to the light, their deep sufferings and pain brought into conscious awareness." These extremes of psychic pain were described by John of the Cross as "the soul, at the sight of its miseries, feels that it is melting away and being undone by a cruel spiritual death...it suffers...anguish." Is this not exactly where we, as a collective species, stand today? We must struggle to lift the veils that prevent full formation of the Noosphere. Politics, war, disease and economic disasters are evidence of collective impurities, pulled up to the surface of collective Noetic consciousness for examination and clearing. This does not only occur on some vast transpersonal level beyond human understanding. Each of us has a part to play in purging the dross, and healing the Noosphere. We need not give in to fears of our own smallness, or believe that, as individuals, we are powerless to affect global healing. Just as thoughts have been discovered to be holographically distributed within the human brain, our individual human intentions are holographically distributed within the Noosphere. We each have vast capacities to affect its healing! Below, I propose a few tools for clearing shadow and trauma from the Noosphere, and assisting it in its rebirth process. Andrew Weil in Optimal Wellness proposes a news fast, to assist with physical healing. I believe this to be a solid recommendation for healing collective energies as well: For a week, avoid radio, TV, newspapers, current events books and even office gossip. Fill that time up with being fully present to family, nature or constructive projects. When you return to consuming media, make the choice to read and view only those things that contain positive, uplifting messages about the good that is happening in the world. Become a part of the Noosphere that holds for POSITIVE information flow. The power of Prayer: Take writing materials to a place filled with negativity, where the Dark Night of the Collective Soul seems particularly dense, such as a military installation, hospital, Government Center, or your workplace. Write to your guides, power animals, Avalokitshvara, the Goddess, Jesus and the Virgin Mary, the Ascended Masters -- whoever and however you conceive of grace, light, blessing and love. Spend an hour in written contemplation of the Good, the True and the Beautiful, acting as a powerful agent of Light while in this darkened space. Write your way into a state of bliss while contemplating the Divine. Know that your actions create a wave of potentiality that will shift the Darkness. Much of the world's current pain is composed of unmourned losses our collective psyche sustained during this human evolution toward full consciousness. To be transformed and released, the pain of the Noosphere must be acknowledged and honored. One process of grieving collective loss is ritualized mourning. Accompanied by a grieving buddy, seek a private, sacred space, preferably near running water. Bring candles, a good bottle of wine, treats, a blanket. Lie down and allow your gaze to rest in the sky. Invite the Noosphere's grief to wash through you. As two voices speaking for the Noosphere, antiphonally chant: I am grieving for...(death of innocents, loss of wildlife habitat, ..., ...) back and forth until you are both emptied. Image your tears flowing down the nearby water. Afterwards, light the candles, and ritually feed each other. Know that you've lightened the load of the collective, and remember that after loss always comes a fresh, clear opening to possibility. Engaging in work to heal the collective will bear personal fruit as well. As we heal ourselves, the world heals -- and vice versa. Tara Brach writes of what awaits us after passage through the dark night of the soul: "As the storm quiets, we begin to see our life with freshness and a striking clarity." I might add -- as the Noosphere awakens from this dark time of trial, we will be graced with all the blessings of peace. Karen Engelsen is a writer, editor and writing consultant who assists writers to publish works on spiritual development. She also teaches Spiral Dynamics in Community Education classes. She can be reached at siribear@earthlink.net Copyright © 2004 Karen Engelsen |
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Oct 2004 |
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