This afternoon I was in a visionary state at a Temple of Apollon. He was working on healing the group soul of humanity, which appeared to me in a humanoid form, but with pieces missing.
There were several things that I learned and areas of contemplation that I need to think through.
First, as far as our growth goes, one of the biggest challenges for humanity is that we are pack-oriented apex predators. That is part of what we are. So, the evolutionary path forward for us involves recognizing that, and then taking control of those instincts and directing them differently. It is not suppressing them. If we suppress them, we aren’t growing. The clearest path forward is to take those instincts and direct them to towards the pursuit of excellence. It is still the PURSUIT that will drive us. That is part of our nature. It, honestly, is less about the achievement than the pursuit.
Furthermore, both the agon, (which means struggle and competition) AND the cooperation are parts of our nature as well. Again, the question is how to we redirect them so that they are healthy and not destructive? If we direct them towards the pursuit of excellence, we will thrive and evolve. Challenging our personal best. Challenging our team’s best and wanting our partners in competition to be at their best. The emphasis cannot be on winning so much as excelling, or we are in trouble. We do best when we are working in teams and we feel best when we are part of something larger than our individual selves, but we have to be careful that this does not create in-group/out-group hostility. We need to direct it towards the excellence we are striving to achieve and our main comparisons should be against ourselves on timelines. In other words, measured against our own improvement…individually and collectively. But we will always need to be in pursuit and expansion. We begin to die inside when we aren’t pursuing something.
So…those are the reflections on our own nature. The pieces that seem to be missing are the parts that experience wonder, and joy, and experience beauty without complication. It is the part that we identify as “childlike” but really it is just a part of us that we tend to lose touch with along the way. A lot of this has to do with glamour (a delusion that happens at the level of self in which cognition is mixed with emotion). Because we identify this aspect of being with a life-stage, we have a delusion that we have to give it up in order to attain maturity or that, if we possess it when we are older, it is a sign of immaturity. That is a glamour that needs to be stamped out. There is some sort of an illusion (I think this is mostly a cognitive mistake) that it makes us vulnerable…as opposed to being a source of resilience. There is a glamour in our society around suffering that is very strange…like the “suffering artist” bit. I don’t think their power comes from their suffering…I think it inhibits their creativity. I think that some of this comes from the fact that we are apex predators and almost all of our hero tales involve fighting….trying to fight for something that has a mental and moral code to it, maybe…but our hero tales always involved agon…struggle.
Anyway, we, collectively, seem to be missing some pieces of this aspect. Even children seem to be losing these aspects of self earlier and earlier. From my vision, I think there were several things going on.
The parts we should be focusing on are two-fold at this moment. We should be focused on strengthening the parts of us that experience that sense of wonder that we call “childlike” but is really just an essential part of the human soul. The more that we build that and do so intentionally, the better. We are all cells in the greater body. We need to call those parts of our collective soul back through the call of like to like. Any of the work that we are doing on re-enchantment is a part of that. But it needs to be done from a place of play and joy and wonder…not duty. On a personal level, this is where I can fall down. I get overwhelmed by the enormity of it and I start to lose touch with what I am actually trying to do sometimes.
The second line of action is also to look at our social structures that inhibit the development of this part of human nature and build alternatives. So, for example, we have created a society where we are all consumers of the art of the very best artists and then we compare our own artistic/creative endeavors to them and feel lacking. This is really harmful. And, of course, unless you are making a living by your art, it is incredibly difficult to prioritize making time for creating it yourself and spending the time to develop. Plus, we are all too isolated and are often consuming professional art alone. If we could create more opportunities to come together and just artistically “play”…whatever that looks like….that would be helpful. And we have generally got to do something about the way in which our “work” lives take up more and more and more of our time, energy, and psyche. We need to find ways to put the breaks on that because it is wrecking us.
There are other issues of collective soul loss, by Apollon said that They are working on some of them and we should focus on the pursuit of excellence and re-enchantment of ourselves and the world.
