Wounded Mind - Quareness Series 195th "Lecture".
For some time before 2020 some people were coming to wonder if everything in our collective world was turning upside down. Living in a world where economic greed seemingly came to override all other factors and with so many people so much of the time seemingly adhering to quite unhealthy ways of thinking and behaviour, could it be that we were "progressively" losing our minds to a collective psychosis seeking to imbue us with a traumatic mind? As a global species we humans might from time to time also tend to project the wounds of our collective unconscious out into the world...a perhaps necessary collective cleansing of the traumas and shadows that lurk in the dark recesses of our minds in order to prepare us for the next phase of our evolution?
Modernity has given us the perspective that anything of importance lays external to us...a mindset which in turn has fostered a largely hostile attitude to the world outside. We've been (and continue to be) heavily focused on trying to conquer this external world instead of seeking to master our own inner nature...to the extent that whatever we project externally must eventually become our sense of reality itself. Our modern way of life, in attempting to reinterpret the human condition, is seemingly giving rise to a separation from our need to seek essential inner meaning in our lives. In disregarding any notion of the spiritual or the metaphysical as essential to our daily life, it seems we can readily be conditioned with a form of thinking which opposes a genuine path of human psychic development.
In order for any ruling few to maintain stable power and order, they must convince or persuade or condition the mass of people within their societies to believe in and support this order, or at least not to rebel against it. This now appears to be the dominant mindset / social narrative underpinning the functioning of our modern societies and manipulating collective consent through coercion and/or persuasive propaganda. Perhaps any developed society driven by the desire for power inevitably over time channels this desire into creating highly disciplined and rigid structures whilst managing to conceal their controlling mechanisms through institutional conditioning. And as such institutions go on to create an established "pecking order" between people, the inherent ranking social status system continues to exploit the general population through more socially "normalised" means...even to the extent of enticing illusions of individual freedom and personal power.
The psychologist Carl Jung in regarding what we see playing out upon the global stage as largely a projection of the unconscious psyche of humanity, came to consider that this collective unconscious is inherited rather than individually developed. Should this be so, we could all be inherently prone to a sort of psycho-pathogen that infects our individual minds from the underlying collective realm. This type of collective psychosis functioning as a field phenomenon would have to underlie the entire collective field of non local consciousness. In effect each of us could potentially be seriously infected by the psychosis simply by not being mindful of our thoughts. Indeed most people could be unconscious of and unwitting carriers of this pathogen. As yer man Jung himself put it..."wars, dynasties, social upheavals, conquests and religions are but the superficial symptoms of a secret psychic attitude unknown even to the individual himself".
Rather like how a virus can enter our computers and install malware or change the coding, maybe such a type of mental pathogen could act in the same way by installing its own malware program in our minds. Most of the time we would be unaware of it acting alongside our own "normal" mind until a time when it takes over completely. Over time then our own psychological state might adapt the "foreign invader" and assimilate it into its own functioning as a way of normalisation...eventually coming to consider this wounded mind as our own.
It's believed by some that there are spiritual forces at work on humanity seeking to bind us to matter and influence our minds in distracting us from aligning with our evolutionary potential. Looking around at the state of our world today it can seem that such forces may be fostering a materialistic, mechanical conception of the universe with a rational-materialistic based scientific dogma and an economic view of social dynamics and systems. Also quite noticeable nowadays are a strong feature of national and group identities, the popularity of separatist party politics, the prevalence of fundamentalism in religious dogma and the dominance of an arid intellectual culture. These signals seem to point towards the intention of such forces to make human beings dependent upon their control as they conceal from us that modern rationalistic science is somewhat of a great deception/illusion. And keeping us dulled with our materialistic concerns leaves us with little inclination to seek out knowledge of "soul and spirit in the cosmos" (a la Rudolf Steiner). Indeed all of this enforcing of the dominant cultural paradigm of economic and material needs through sowing discontent, disarray and conflict to create confusion and division, could be greatly enhanced should people fail to develop an independent life of the spirit.
Whether humanity's traumas are due to a collective psychosis of civilisation, a predatory invasion, a devolutionary impulse, or a combination of these, it's quite clear that there's a traumatic presence lingering within our collective psyche which needs to be recognised for what it is and overcome. And to do so we will likely need to curtail these "foreign impulses" in order to evolve toward a better future for us as a human species upon our Earthly home.
Sean.
Dean of Quareness.
October, 2023.