February 2012

2012: Lessons Out of the Darkness (revised)

An investigation into facing the global shadow and the tools we have available to us to meet this great challenge with success

James W. Jesso

The Global Shadow The deepest potential of darkness, destruction and consumption present in our evolving collected spirit is manifesting on great scale a result of avoiding to address these shadow aspects of ourselves on a personal level. By evading responsibility for these personal snippets of darkness, we are forcing them to slip from our psyche into the realm of collected consciousness. Our independent shadow aspects are merging together and joining forces to come to life on the grand stage. They are manifesting into the highest levels of organization in our society, embodied by those whose participation in the corporate machine has hollowed their spiritual essence. It has been an epic journey human kind had embarked upon, one of ingenuity, grace and gratuitous brilliance. As information technology increases to develop, so does the ability to observe our patterns and direction. It seems though we are coming to a culminated understanding that the majority of our actions over the course our recent history have been destructive, to ourselves and to the planet. These actions are still ongoing and are leading us into a crescendo of consequences for our consumptive and selfish choices. We are being forced to face our shadow globally; forced to bear witness to the reality of our dark-side. Though the challenges we now face after spending so much time in denial of our responsibility for life may seem too much to handle, a divine opportunity to awaken is being presented and all is not lost. The depth of our shadow is the depth of our light and if we can learn from the lessons this darkness is presenting us, we can learn to shine the light of our awareness upon the honesty of our own darkness, addressing it with selfcompassion and love. With the advancement of our spiritual understanding, our technology and our human potential we are capable of healing this world and ourselves. Yet if we continue to scapegoat responsibility for our personal darkness through blame, projection or procrastination, we perpetuate this worlds destruction.

Technology and Evolution There was a time when hiding from the depth of the self was a necessary defense mechanism - a fear instilled by the natural progression of our evolution as a planet to protect us. The true nature of our existence is so vast that the budding beauty of our premature minds would not have been able to handle it. Yet now as we progress into the age of wisdom and our technological creation amplifies, we are learning to sort through mass amounts of information in shorter and shorter periods of time. We are laying new neurological networks in our brains through cyber space, training ourselves for the complexity of observing our vast depth of consciousness. To some this integration of technology may seem like a hindrance and a downfall, however these observations are short sighted. Our use of technology has been grossly misguided towards profit and entertainment, pulling us away from an honest experience of the physical world. But like any new tool without instructions, we are bound to hurt before we help ourselves during a progress of trial and error. As we learn to use technology instead of letting technology use us, we begin to embrace the mind extended1 through machine and into a technologically augmented transcendence of time and space, instantaneous connection across the globe and access to the largest collection of human information ever complied. We are restructuring our neurology to be able to handle the potential overload of a climax within this techno-psychological movement. Our embrace of this new information technology and its constructive implementation is enabling our ability to conceptualize the vast complexities of consciousness. This is a cognitive evolution that goes far beyond the technology itself; we are expanding the filter that once slowed the flow of the mind at large. The Lessons we have yet to truly learn As consciously self-aware creatures inhabiting a world of relative comparison, in order to realize why one path is better than another we often use the experience of suffering as a defining point of reference to help us recognize potentially better choices. This ability for intellectual comparison is a fundamental aspect of our ability to learn from our experience (assuming we utilize this capability and learn those lessons). Yet we are fallible and it often requires time for us to understand the depth of what our experience has to offer, inducing a repetition of the same challenges until our lesson is learned.

The use of mind extended is in reference to The Extended Mind presented by A. Clark and D.J. Chalmers in 1998 where they explain how the mind is extended beyond the skull through active externalism when devices in our external environment are used to facilitate functions of the mind.

Although lessons may repeat themselves until learned, eventually we get to a point where our ability to learn these lessons and still be alive in some physical form may no longer be an option. It starts with signals and we ignore them. Then they become warnings and we ignore them. They become emergencies and reluctant to deal with our responsibility we ignore them. Then they become tragedies and there's nothing left to ignore. Lessons James W Jesso Emergencies are what we are coming to as a species as we enter a state where our socio-economic system is about to collapse, our political system has been grossly corrupted and biodiversity and our means to live in harmony with the vibrant ecology of the planet are being rapidly dismantled by consumptive and destructive patterns. The patterns that have brought us to this point are made from our own hands and will eventually make the planet, from which we were given the blessing of this life, uninhabitable for us. The longer we avoid responsibility for our role in the darkness that surrounds us, the closer we get to a tragedy there is no coming back from. Yet as I said earlier, the darker the veil becomes, the brighter we realize we can shine. Now is a pivotal moment for us to learn the power of our light, but we must take the responsibility to do so by learning from the mistakes we have made. A New Galactic Environment Though where we have placed ourselves may seem like the coming end of our existence, like all things in natural life, it is but a part of greater movements towards a new harmony. The perception of dissonance that comes from the realization of our mistakes is the tone to guide us into concurrence with our planet and the cosmos. Not only are we in the dramatic midst of planetary events resulting from our poor choices as a species, but we are also entering a new energetic environment along our journey through the Milky Way. This is a point in our journey that many ancient traditions have spoken of as representing great change. The energies of the new environment we are entering within the galaxy is amplifying our exposure to the darkside of our collected consciousness by intensifying whatever aspect of our consciousness might be responsible for the manifestations of energetic archetypes into physical world events. The butterfly effect is getting stronger and the time between action and consequence is getting shorter. Simultaneously, our personal development as intelligent spirit is coming full bloom. With our advanced understandings -- of consciousness as it relates to reality through quantum physics, how the physical body operates both chemically and energetically in relation to the mind, an integral understanding of all spiritual teachings and the experiential intelligence of the planet through different indigenous traditions -being pieced together by the glue of a clear self-vision and an increasingly compassionate self-awareness, we are opening the field of view on our true potential.

This current point in our history as a species and as a planet has presented us with many hardships, through which we have also been gifted a wonderful ability: we are being exposed to the true potential depths of our psyche, both light and dark, as it's patterns manifest in physical reality on a global scale. Providing us with the blessed opportunity to address and integrate these aspects of our collected psyche into conscious understanding with a loving self-awareness, bringing us back to a sense of wholeness: a sense of wholeness our species may not yet have ever experienced. The choices we make in our actions, thoughts and feelings are intensifying their effect on the outside world and the result of creatively choosing to make choices of loving intent have never been so powerful and necessary. By choosing to learn the lessons presented in our collected dark night of the soul2which more and more of us are choosing to dowe may be able to save ourselves from extinction and come to experience a philosophical return to Eden. The Eyes of Spirit are being opened. With a growing recognition of how most psychical illness is sourced in off-loading psychological stress onto the body and that the human bodys ability to heal with energy/intent/prayer is beyond what we once thought possible, we are opening ourselves to recognizing how to fix the damage we have done on this planet. We can use this exposure to our shadow, both individually and collectively to act as an opportunity to learn the truth of who we are and integrate the valuable lessons contained within the challenges we face. These lessons will teach us how to make conscious choices of constructive, inclusive and lovingly interconnected growth as a community and as a planet. They will help us access the realization our own divine ability to heal ourselves. If we continue to hide from our shadow and hide from these lessons, pushing them out of sight and down into the depths of our unaddressed psyche, they will continue to grow in that darkness and we will continue to sink into the manifestations of the darkside we pushed deep within to ignore. Our personal darkness will continue to slip out into the world. When we avoid facing our own darkness on the small scale of our personal lives, we have helped energize the darkness manifesting on a global scale. Amplifying the presence of perversity within our human civilization. We are all Connected -- Earthquakes, Heart Dis-ease, Cancer, Floods, Depression, Murder, Theft, Famine, Clear-Cutting, Pollution, Hate and War: Suffering. Can we see how our personal choices are the source of creation for all that exists in our reality? How the choice of our actions, thoughts and feelings are potentiating
2

The Dark Night Of The Soul is a poem written by St. John of the Cross in the 16th centaury. The main idea of the poem can be seen as the painful experience that people endure as they seek to grow in spiritual maturity and union with God. (wiki)

consensus reality on a global scale? Can we see the light breaking through the crust of our Cartesian founded manipulation into consumptive materialism through the global corporate oligarchy that hides behind a pseudo-democratic system? Can we see how the worlds suffering can be changed when we place the light of our honest and compassionate awareness onto our darkness with intention to make better through love? Can we see the scales tipping? I can see the scales tipping. I believe enough of us are moving towards an integral embracing of love through the integration of our darkness to create global harmony. The lessons we learn when we address our darkness, both within and without, are helping us to awaken to the truth of our current global order. They are helping to inspire changes in how we operate our lives. When we begin to embody these changes with an understanding of our responsibility for our own life and for life in general, we inspire others who have not have the experiences or support structure to face these challenges constructively and with love. Rupert Sheldrake speaks of morphic resonance. It is a process by which evolutionary traits are communicated between species energetically through what he calls morphogenetic fields. At this time, it would seem that the changes in how we live our lives that are being generated by these great challenges we face are of great evolutionary necessity. So not only are we sharing our growth with those directly within our lives, but also with our entire species through morphic resonance. However, this sharing doesn't mean we don't have to try. The progression of spirit shared through resonance is only a leveraging point and once lifted we must learn to stand on our own. Without a conscious choice and movement towards growth in love, we will sink into the intensified manifestations of our avoidance. It's no longer sustainable to think we can just continue to go about our normal lives without change, sitting back in our hope that someone else will fix things for us. Well we're moving into this age of people all remembering who they are as love and becoming it, that's the long and short of it and it's becoming more and more inconvenient and painful to use freewill in non-accordance with love. And the more people do that the more pain and suffering happens The "no choose zone" is falling awayeveryone needs to adopt "it's all up to me. I'm the only one on the planet, its all up to me" because if I throw a cigarette butt on the other side of the planet an oil tanker just crashed. If I scream or swear at a child, somewhere else a woman's being raped and I created the rape because we're all one. When I pick up trash, an oil spill was just diverted. When I plant a fruit tree, 3,000 children were just fed a care drop from Salvation Army just fed 3,000 starving people in South Africa. I have to adopt that "it's all up to me". Louix Dor Dempriey We are facing the greatest challenge in our known history and never have we had such tools to meet that challenge with success. With technology and spirituality merging into a new evolutionary state of human potential, we are able to heal the injuries we have

inflicted onto each other and onto the planet, but only if we first take responsibility for our own darkness. So it important to remember to try, Cause this is not just for I, It's for us All of us. References -- Lessons James W Jesso (2011) -- A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Morphic Resonance Rupert Sheldrake M.A. Ph.D (1995) -- Nothing is Coming with Louix Dor Dempriey, Online Video. Last modified October 9, 2007 -- http://youtu.be/t3EE-QUCZrc -- Dark Night Of The Soul Wikipedia (Accessed Feb 11 2012) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Night_of_the_Soul