Ushering in the New Year: revolution, power and the growth of the soul

Revolution has been the hallmark of 2011, and is also set to continue through into 2012. As I write, the revolutions and uprisings have spread to Nigeria, and gone beyond the reasons given for the fall of totalitarian dictatorships in Arab countries. The mark of the revolution is the coming into being of a collective desire for change, which has been kept under the surface, but which suddenly erupts into being. What we are witnessing are the first glimmerings of a volcano as it is about to erupt.  The level of changes as we move into this year is, perhaps for the first time, reflected in every area of human existence: geological, climate, economical, political, social, philosophical  - even cosmological.

The difference with former times is that at this stage, we have developed forms of communication that enable us to see what is happening in different parts of the globe  – and  this can challenge us as to our limited views of ourselves as members of a nation state, and to ask questions of ourselves as global citizens.

Never before has there been the possibility of understanding the interconnectedness of human beings, the planet and the universe in which we live, and yet never before has there been such a sense of helplessness in the face of the systems which in the past ensured our survival. Those systems no longer serve our collective survival, but serve the desires of a global elite who quite literally dominate the globe, through their occupation of positions of power in government, corporations and the media. These conditions have not arisen consciously, but are the consequences of a philosophy that has cut out Faith or any idea of the transcendent out of the equation, and which demands the immediate gratification of sensual desire, promoted by the media.

It is quite sobering to reflect that those of us who have reached a certain age, have had a machine in the living room that is daily shaping the choices that we make – a television that daily shapes my desire. It is not just in my living room – it is everywhere.  This consumer pressure leaks out of the very wallpaper to such an extent that we no longer notice it, and take it for granted. The growing rhetoric of government and communicated through the media, is to tell us just how much choice we can exercise – for example in the different types of  food that is available. Whilst this may feel like choice, it actually sucks us  deeper and deeper into a system whose values are purely material. Paradoxically, the one distinguishing feature of ourselves as humans – that is our free will, so much espoused as part of democratic systems, is the one thing that is denied us in these economic systems. However, by not engaging with what consumer capitalism offers me as choices, I am deemed to be rather simple minded, and not working towards progress or growth. I become the scapegoat: she who is not wanted. We are being fooled, and our souls are becoming more and more encrusted.

What is then this growth that is so important? It is growth in our output of goods and services  in competition with other nation states. This growth, however, is merely a growth in quantity, and not in quality.  It has become wrapped up in an economics system which only knows how to count in a mechanical, Newtonian fashion, and where well-being is measured in terms of monetary value, and where the system has grown out of all relationship to the material values it is supposed to represent. The astronomical figures that are bandied about daily have become meaningless. However, as living beings, we exist in a world that is formed by other qualities of feeling, tone, beauty, sadness, joy and sorrow.  These  are the qualities of the universe which both forms and supports us, and of a universe which  we also bring into being, through our understanding and consciousness of it.

Just as we are becoming connected globally, we are witnessing a return and a deepening into the collective unconscious – that phenomenon first articulated by the philosopher Jung. So there is hope too, as well as fear. Within this collective unconscious lie the seeds of change and of reconnecting with the universe that does support us.This is the unknown, the uncertain - that which we have sought to banish from our world.  There is hope here, though, for a reconnection with soul and ultimately spirit and this will be found in the realism that we are all having to come to terms with in a reshaping of all our values, expectations, which have been created by consumer capitalism. In order to make this reconnection, however, we will all need to journey through our own psyches to cut out the conditioning that has rendered us so seemingly helpless in the  face of a system that has grown out of control. We can reclaim our own power – not through violence but through careful re-alignment of our actions with our soul’s yearning for its own growth.