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Archetypal Psychohistory
The Unconscious Is Coming
It should be clear by now that wetiko isn’t something that exists in isolated individuals, nor is it something unique to our current day and age. What can be referred to as “archetypal psychohistory” is the study of the unfoldment of the collective unconscious as it expresses, elaborates, and transforms itself politically, economically, socially, and culturally in, throughout, and as the very process of history itself. In understanding the wetiko psychosis, it is important to contextualize it and see it in its greater meta-historical perspective. Instead of seeing wetiko as an isolated entity, we can view it within the greater context of the living psychospiritual ecosystem from which it sprouted. This helps us to see wetiko through a broader lens that is simultaneously historical and trans-historical, which helps us add a deeper sense of significance and meaning to its current outbreak. Bringing meta-awareness to the wetiko epidemic, where we contemplate it from a vantage point simultaneously within, above, and beyond itself, helps us to connect the dots and see the deeper mythic, archetypal pattern that is emerging. Seeing in this way can not only help us put wetiko “in its place,” but can also help us find our place in the cosmic drama. Viewing things meta-historically can also shed light on where and who we are in the midst of the wetiko epidemic, inspiring us to create a new and empowering mythos for our world and ourselves .
Just as we can interpret our dreams symbolically and we can view our life as a dream, we can also contemplate the history of the world as a dream being dreamed by a deeper part of ourselves. Being a dreamed-up phenomenon, it is helpful, even essential, in understanding wetiko psychosis to view human history as if it is a mass shared dream that our species has been collaboratively dreaming up over millennia. This perspective opens up vast vistas of perception and insight that are unavailable to the more reductionist and literal-minded. Seeing the dreamlike nature of existence is to be awakened to the nonlocal field, which is like an omnipresent atmo-“sphere,” an etheric amniotic fluid that seamlessly connects us and in which we are all contained. Seeing the nonlocal dreamlike nature is to realize that the field isn’t just manifesting itself all around us, but that the field is coming through us and expressing itself in our inner subjective domain as well. We are not in any way separate from the field, a realization that is the doorway through which we can step out of the part of ourselves that thinks and imagines otherwise. As we become aware of the field’s omnipresence and all-pervasiveness, it is as if the field becomes aware of itself through us.
We can contemplate humanity as a single individual, and view its history as a dream it is having that is being performed on the world stage, revealing the inner condition of its psyche. When the psychic history of humanity is viewed in this way, the strength of our shared human consciousness can be seen to be quite weak and in its early formative stages. Humanity may be likened to a person carried away by the torrential, rushing waters of the unconscious. The forces of the unconscious all too easily seize power and have their way with us for many seemingly interminable whiles. In our current day and age we are experiencing an irruption of the unconscious itself, a huge upheaval of titanic forces which have been lying dormant in the collective unconscious. As if we are experiencing a second “Great Flood,” the powers of the unconscious are ready to break through all moral barriers and burst the dams. In our modern world the unconscious, instead of being in the background, is coming to the foreground, and is forcing us to turn one eye inward upon it. The unconscious is coming, whether we like it or not! Like Noah, we must build an “Ark,” that is, a psychic container, if we are to survive.
Dreams, an unmediated expression of the unconscious, function to compensate and bring in balance a one-sidedness in the dreamer. Spontaneous expressions of our unconscious aspects, while at the same time both literally and symbolically revealing to us our deepest unconscious, dreams help us to potentially become conscious of what was previously unconscious. Paradoxically, dreams are a manifestation of our unconscious itself, while at the same time, they can help to wake us up. Not only are symbols the language of dreams, but dreams are themselves living symbols that bring together and unite the opposites of consciousness and the unconscious in one phenomenon. Just as in a dream, this upheaval in our modern-day world of dormant forces emerging from the unconscious was meant to be a compensation, but because it is not being recognized as such and thereby not integrated, it manifests, as we are seeing today, as the worldwide wetiko collective psychosis. Those of us who are waking up to the dreamlike nature of reality can be the compensatory agents, the “human anti-psychotics” within the greater body politic which is currently having a collective nervous breakdown.
The unconscious is revealing itself by synchronistically configuring events in the outer world so as to give shape to itself. What is happening in our world is the unconscious manifesting itself in, as, and through the forms of our world. The unconscious is revealing itself through its very projections onto the world. We are living in a truly historic moment of time in which, just like a dream that is potentially becoming “lucid-ified,” the inner is revealing itself to be the outer and vice versa. The unconscious simultaneously is veiling and revealing itself as it acts itself out and births itself through us. As long as this deeper process continues to go unrecognized, however, it will continue to be acted out unconsciously, and hence, destructively. When the unconscious appears in full-bodied form, it catalyzes a deeper, unconscious process in all of us. Recognizing and consciously metabolizing what is being activated within us is the very act that can transform us.
This is a historic time, a time when the gods of the unconscious are transforming. We are living in a time that the Greeks called the Kairos —the right moment—for a “metamorphosis of the gods,” that is, a transformation in and of the collective unconscious itself. The peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is that the timeless unconscious within us is transforming itself in unprecedented, dramatic ways. Coming generations, if there are to be any, will undoubtedly appreciate this monumental transformation in which we are all currently participating, as it will deeply influence their very form of being. We are blessed to live in such “interesting” times. It can be helpful to consider the possibility that those of us who are alive today may have chosen to incarnate at this time in history so as to help birth this realization into living form for the benefit of the whole of humanity. When I make such statements some people might accuse me of merely dreaming, an accusation with which I would not disagree.
We can’t compare this time with early Christianity, which was a movement that came down from above, inspired by a light shining forth from heaven. Today, instead of God incarnating in his light aspect, it is as if the powers of darkness are coming out of hiding in the shadows and are emerging from below, increasingly unmasked so as to reveal themselves. The powers of the underworld are giving shape to and in-forming our world as they incarnate in visible form all around us. Instead of the spirit coming down from the celestial realm, it is as if spirit, in its darker aspect, is emerging and rising up within and as the material world itself. As a species we are experiencing an undeniable uprising of the dark, destructive forces of the collective unconscious. As thinking, reflective, conscious human beings, we can no longer deny the dark stirrings of the unconscious as it plays itself out ever more conspicuously on the world stage. These overwhelming psychic forces are active powers that cannot be fitted into our rational world order, explained away by our reason, nor argued out of existence. If we are not in denial, it is obvious that the powers of the underworld, as if they have a severe “control process,” are attempting to centralize power and global control over our entire species in a way that is devoid of any pretense of democratic legitimacy, compassion, or redeeming charm whatsoever. We are being confronted with the naked darkness of the soul, and asked, make that demanded , to come to terms with and face up to this darkness. The dark side of our nature, or we could even say the shadow of God, is revealing Itself and incarnating through the unconscious of humanity. In these apocalyptic times we live in, the dark God, the deus absconditus —which is an essential element of the psychological self—is incarnating. This hidden God is paradoxically present in its apparent absence. Something is being revealed to us in the process. The times in which we are living are truly initiatory.
The Archetype of the Apocalypse
Psychologically speaking, the “apocalypse archetype” is highly activated in the collective psyche and is living itself out in, as, and through human history in an unconscious and hence destructive way. When an archetype like the apocalypse is activated in the collective unconscious, it tends to attract, conscript, and direct whatever is of a psychic nature in its vicinity to align with its own field of force. The word “apocalypse,” etymologically speaking, refers to something previously hidden and invisible being uncovered, revealed, and brought to light. Whereas in religious language, the apocalypse has to do with the Incarnation of God and the coming of the Messiah, psychologically speaking, the “apocalypse” means the momentous, world-shattering event of the coming of “the Self” into conscious realization. What is happening on the world stage is the very archetypal “event”—we can call it the “wetikolypse” (the apocalypse informed by wetiko)—into which we have all been born so as to play our supporting roles, whether we are conscious of this or not. God and humanity are operating in concert with each other, co-creating the apocalypse together. If the wrath of God comes, it will be human hands that push the button; if the love of God will replace the old order with a new age, it is human work and creativity which will fashion it.
“The Self” is considered to be an antinomy, a conjunction of opposites—a coincidentia oppositorum —containing both light and dark, consisting of and uniting the most extreme opposites within itself. The Self is a borderline concept, expressing a reality to which no limits can be set. The Self is both indefinite and unique, personal and universal, and absolutely paradoxical, in that it represents in every respect thesis and antithesis, and at the same time synthesis. The concept of an all-encompassing wholeness must necessarily include its opposite if it is to represent any kind of totality. The principle of the coincidence of opposites must therefore be completed by that of absolute opposition in order to attain full paradoxicality, perfect psycho-symmetry, and hence psychological validity. Being a co-incidence of opposites, when God or the Self incarnates, the opposites split apart and become totally polarized (think of Christ and Satan in the last iteration of this divine drama of Incarnation: Satan didn’t make his appearance on the scene until Christ Incarnated; these figures mutually co-evoked each other). Every intensified differentiation of the Self brings about a corresponding accentuation of its unconscious complement. Opposites are intrinsic to the nature of the Self, and as the Self incarnates in an individual (or a world), that person (or world) becomes a vessel filled with divine conflict. If the person is unable to contain, metabolize, and transform this inner conflict, these opposites get enacted via projection out in the world through conflicts big and small. As the Self, or God, emerges into conscious realization, we are faced with a divine problem, to which we are literally demanded to find an answer. As Jung points out, “It is the question of the opposites, raised at the moment when God was declared to be good only. Where then is his dark side?” 1 In the wetiko epidemic, we are truly confronted with the dark side of God.
Contemplated as a dreaming process, the fact that the apocalypse archetype is activated deep within the human psyche and is playing itself out collectively in the world means that the Self, or what some call God, is incarnating; but this time, instead of incarnating through one man, as “It” did a little over two thousand years ago through the chosen person of Jesus, God is incarnating in modern times through the collective unconscious of all of humanity. This is a big discovery, of the greatest significance, something genuinely worthy of our deepest attention. To realize that the God-image is transforming and Incarnating itself through humanity is to be contributing to and supporting Its transformation and Incarnation. The degree to which we comprehend this process is the degree to which we become active participants contributing to the very process we are comprehending.
The ancient art of alchemy unconsciously prefigured, presciently anticipated, and symbolically expressed that the opus Christi (work of Christ) is transferred to the individual, as human beings themselves have now become the bearers of the divine mystery. In a further iteration of the divine Incarnation, it is as if the New Testament has turned into an even newer one—the Newer Testament—with us as its living tabernacles. We “find ourselves” in the present moment participating in a genuine “Second Coming,” only this time the “Incarnation” is happening within and through the unconscious of all of humanity. It is as if we ourselves are potentially the Messiah for whom we have been waiting. In an insight with profound relevance for us today, the ancient alchemists had the epochal, revolutionary, and evolutionary realization that we are all collaboratively playing a crucial, participatory role in the Incarnation and, if we can speak in such human terms, evolution of the divine being. The alchemists realized that in a cooperative venture, God and humanity (or in psychological language, the ego and the Self) mutually redeem each other, whereby God descends into the human realm and humanity rises up and ascends to the realm of divinity. Just as in alchemy, the interaction between the subject and the object reciprocally transforms both. The alchemical symbol of the “lapis” (which symbolizes the alchemical gold and the philosopher’s stone—the highest, most supreme value, i.e., the Self) was expressing something created by and yet supra-ordinate to humanity. Participating in the transformation and Incarnation of the deity, the alchemists developed a relationship with, became assimilated into, and thereby became a channel for the Incarnation of the emerging Self. Wetiko requires us to put on our alchemical garments and vestures of light and in a very real sense, become “living philosopher’s stones.” Paradoxically, humanity is a living, breathing alchemical vessel in which spirit has seemingly become trapped, while simultaneously being the very instrument through which spirit becomes materialized in space and time so as to be liberated into greater orders of freedom. As the ancient alchemists intuited, it is as if God, with our help, is born into and out of humanity. Deo concedente —God willing—as the alchemists never failed to add.
Instead of leaving the work of redemption to an autonomous divine figure, alchemy was an expression of the dawning realization that we ourselves play a crucial role in this process. The incarnation of the (Higher) Self can only be accomplished if humanity becomes conscious of this deeper, archetypal process in which it has gotten drafted, because consciousness is the agency of transformation and incarnation for both the Self and humanity. In a mutual alchemical opus, the ego and the Self reciprocally and collaboratively redeem each other: the ego needs the guidance and support of the Self, while the latent Self needs the cooperation and participation of the ego in order to incarnate in embodied form. The ego is the child of the timeless Self, as the Self is the source of the ego’s being. At the same time, the realized Self can only be born in time and space through an ego. This is why Christ, who symbolizes the Self, in addition to being called the “Son of God,” is also referred to as the “Son of Man.” The formless Self emerges in embodied, incarnate form as a result of an encounter with a conscious human ego; the Self is therefore called the son of man, or the child of the philosophers (i.e., the alchemists). The alchemists’ art allows God to know Itself by creating Itself through the individual alchemist. To quote an ancient alchemical text, the “Stone [i.e., ‘the philosopher’s stone,’ a symbol of the awakened state of consciousness] can only be brought to its proper form by Art.” 2 Notice the key role that “Art” plays in the Incarnation of the deity itself. Through their sacred art, the alchemists, in discovering the philosopher’s stone, were literally re-creating themselves in its image, becoming living philosophical stones, as they participated in the process of creating consciousness. Individuation is Incarnation.
Stepping out of viewing our situation from the personal perspective into the more expansive view of the archetypal, it is as if we are all playing roles in a deeper, mythic, cosmic process, a divine drama of Incarnation. Commenting on the incarnation of this divine figure, Jung writes, “Although he [God] is already born in the pleroma [the atemporal, divine fullness of the collective unconscious], his birth in time can only be accomplished when it is perceived, recognized and declared by man.” 3 Jung is pointing out that what has already taken place in the timeless dimension of the pleroma exists in our dimension in a state of potential, and we, through our consciousness of this process, play the crucial, participatory role in this divine drama of actualizing this potential in embodied form. In other words, the process of the Incarnation of God in, through, and as humanity is apparently playing itself out in linear, sequential time in our world; yet, in the atemporal, higher-dimensional reality in which our universe is contained and from which it continually emerges into form, this process of divine Incarnation in humanity has already been accomplished. We simply need to recognize what is symbolically being revealed to make it so and fully consummate its realization in full-bodied, incarnate form. Recognizing what has potentially already happened “attracts” that particular universe and “matter”-ializes it. Just as the past affects the present, it is interesting to contemplate how the future may be affecting the present, too (a view called retrocausality ). To the extent that God intends to become incarnate in empirical humanity, we are drafted into, immersed, even baptized, so to speak, in the pleromatic process of Self-Incarnation. This is what Jung is referring to when he talks about “a broadening process of incarnation,” 4 “the Christification of many,” 5 and “a continuing incarnation of God.” 6 Jung refers to Christ as “the first born who is succeeded by an ever-increasing number of younger brothers and sisters” 7 and “a divine paradigm which will be followed by further incarnations of the Holy Ghost in the empirical man.” 8 But, and here’s the rub, it should be noted that humanity, unlike Christ, who symbolically was spotless in his purity, participates in the darkness and evil of this world. When God became man through the Christ event two thousand years ago, all darkness and evil were carefully kept outside of God’s chosen instrument, who was considered to be solely the Incarnation of the light, untainted by darkness. In our current day, however, it is as if God is incarnating through the darkness that is emerging from the underworld. From all indications, God (the Self) now wants to incarnate through all of humanity, and has chosen the creaturely human tainted with darkness and who has learned the divine arts and sciences from the fallen angels. The closer this connection becomes between God and humanity, however, the greater the danger of a coming to terms with the darkest evil, which is what is happening in the current worldwide wetiko epidemic. Thus we can see wetiko as not just an isolated, aberrant happening, but rather, in its greater cosmological context.
There is a psychological truism that says when an activated inner psychic content is not consciously realized and integrated by the individual in the course of the individuation process, this content will manifest itself externally in the outside world, where, as if by fate, it gets unconsciously dreamed up and acted out in a literal, concrete, destructive, and potentially initiatory way. Conversely, we can say that an inimical external event which is threatening to happen may be averted or mitigated through becoming conscious of its inner, psychic origin. If the danger can be experienced psychologically and successfully integrated, we can be spared the concrete living out of it experientially. Those who understand the deeper psychological and spiritual meaning of the apocalypse archetype being activated are thus able to more easily navigate and “incarnate” this archetypal process as individuation.
Self-Reflection
We are clearly destroying ourselves. Yet, in this act of self-destruction, something is being revealed to us . It is as if we are destroying ourselves as the way to learn how not to destroy ourselves, which we clearly haven’t yet learned, or we wouldn’t be destroying ourselves. If we can step out of time for a moment, and step into the point of view of the aforementioned “pleroma” (the indwelling cosmic plenitude, otherwise known as the plenum ), we have already had this realization and events in our world are the medium through which this realization is actualized and made real in sequential time. What exists in the pleroma as an archetypal, eternal, whole process projects itself into and repeatedly materializes itself in time in a variety of different patterns. It is as if fragments of the pleromatic process, essential components of the divine drama itself whose source is from outside of time, have crystallized into our three-dimensional world as potential revelations of itself. The seemingly endless self-destruction we are perpetrating on each other is the atemporal footprint of this revelation, expressed symbolically, projected backward in time from the future into the present moment, just waiting to be recognized as such. The poet Emerson writes in his first published essay, Nature , “Every man’s condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth.” 9 The negative, destructive energy being dreamed up and played out in our world is the catalyst and potential inspiration for the very necessary collective realization and collaborative action that dispels it. Once again we have a situation where encoded in the seeming problem is its own resolution. This process is accomplished by an expansion of consciousness co-joined with the creative giving shape and form to this realization in the outer world. The outer world is the 3D holographic canvas, so to speak, in which this realization is made manifest. Our widening of consciousness, a further step in the realization of the “Anthropos,” the primordial human being, signifies a rebirth of the deity through humanity as well as in the world.
By self-reflecting, we thereby play a key role in the divine Incarnation process, as we become the medium or instrument through which God, so to speak, becomes conscious of, reconciles, resolves, and re-unites the opposites intrinsic to the totality of Its nature, which includes both light and dark simultaneously. Where else, after all, could God’s paradoxical, antinomous nature attain unity except in the very vessel of humanity that God has prepared just for this very purpose? The cradle in which God is born, humanity is the alchemical retort in which God descends into the densest matter, transforms Itself, and out of which the refined spirit emerges. As if the circle is now closing, just as humanity arose and was revealed out of God, it is as if God is emerging and being revealed out of humanity. This vision re-contextualizes and re-frames our place in the cosmos, expressing a new mythos of who we are and the role we play relative to God.
It is as if the unconscious, through its local wetiko “rep,” is arranging events in our life so as to potentially catalyze our lucidity. To quote Jung, “The unconscious works sometimes with most amazing cunning, arranging certain fatal situations, fatal experiences, which make people wake up.” 10 Paradoxically, while the inertial, entropic, and darker forces of the unconscious seemingly paralyze us and keep us asleep, another aspect of the unconscious, or perhaps it’s the same part, has a tendency to create an overwhelmingly impossible situation for us in order to propel us over our edge and help us to step into our highest evolutionary potential and deepest wholeness. The unconscious itself is a conjunction of opposites, in that it is the source of the tension of opposites within us, while simultaneously—potentially—uniting them. Paradoxically, that which wounds us is also the source of our healing.
The “good news” is that a deeper realization is potentially available to us at such uniquely challenging moments of time as we are currently living through. The fact that an archetypal, daemonic energy like wetiko is manifesting in fully visible form in our world right now is an expression that this particular energy is available for assimilation in a way that it previously was not. Before an archetypal energy such as wetiko can be integrated consciously, it always materializes itself and manifests physically, forcing its subject(s) into its own form. When an unconscious, daemonic content such as wetiko is ready to be metabolized, it causes the universe to self-organize in such a way so that it can manifest in fully embodied, corporeal form as the “medium” to potentially transform itself if enough consciousness is available to effect this transformation. This physical universe then becomes the stage upon which the energy bound up in the infinitely regressing feedback loop animating wetiko disease is dreamed up, accessed, and potentially transmuted. It is only when these deeper energies become incarnated into the physical realm can the energy bound up in the compulsion to re-create the deeper archetypal pattern be accessed, unlocked, and liberated. This emancipation is the teleology—the underlying purpose, or goal—of the repetition compulsion of trauma. This realization occurs within and is accomplished by the agency of our consciousness, through the medium of the fully embodied world, which is the very thing being revealed.
The only thing that really matters now is whether humanity can climb up to a higher moral level through self-reflection and be able to evolve into a more expanded state of consciousness in order to mediate the superhuman powers that the dark God has placed in our hands. Jung comments, “If—and this is the great question—he has today acquired enough consciousness to keep up with the furious pace of the devil within him.” 11 If ever there was a time when the turning inward of self-reflection was of critical importance, it is now, in our present catastrophic epoch. Self-reflection, an act in which we recognize ourselves in the mirror of life, is a bending of consciousness back upon itself, a privilege born of and intrinsic to human freedom, in contradistinction to the compulsion of the demonic. In the moment of self-reflection, the psychospiritual necessity for evolutionary growth overrules the biological compulsion of unreflective animal instinct. Though an ego is needed for its actualization, reflective awareness occurs not by the will of the ego, but by the promptings to individuation originating from the Self. Self-reflection is a genuinely spiritual act, which is, essentially, the act of becoming conscious. In alchemy, the work is considered to be brought to perfection by reflection; the essence of reflection is to understand what we have previously not understood. The attitude of self-reflection returns us to the ground of our deepest being, connects us to our destiny, and it begins a cure for the pervasive psychological and spiritual blindness which reigns at the present hour. Whoever reflects upon themselves can’t help but to touch upon the cutting-edge frontiers of the unconscious, which contains above all else what is most important for us to know.
To concern ourselves with our dreams at night, as well as to contemplate the dreamlike nature of waking life, are ways of reflecting upon ourselves, of “self-reflecting.” The instinct toward self-reflection, or what amounts to the same thing, the urge to individuation, is a true retrieval of our soul. It has an integrating effect, as it gathers together and recollects what had previously been projected out, dis-owned, divided, and separated by the dis-integrating effects of evil. Genuinely lasting gain is a direct result of broadened reflection. The true leaders of humanity are typically not the political leaders, but those relatively few individuals who are capable of sustained self-reflection.
Any one of us self-reflecting and recognizing the dreamlike nature of our situation is immediately nonlocally registered and invested in the “psi bank,” the collective consciousness of humankind, where our realization gains incredible “interest,” so to speak. Self-reflection is truly the best “investment” that any of us could possibly make. Describing the nonlocal nature of the collective unconscious, Jung writes that it is like “an omnipresent continuum, an unextended Everywhere. That is to say, when something happens here at point A which touches upon or affects the collective unconscious, it has happened everywhere.” 12 The act of self-reflection activates a process of transformation in the archetypal realm, which results in the Incarnation of God through humanity, that is, the light of consciousness is born. This is why Jung says, “God becomes manifest in the human act of reflection.” 13 The human act of self-reflection motivates God to empty Itself of Its Godhead and to step off Its throne, so to speak, and incarnate through humanity in order to attain the precious jewel which humanity possesses via self-reflection. If we can speak in such human terms, whoever knows an aspect of God has an effect on God, similar to the way becoming aware of the unconscious transforms the unconscious. In essence, humanity is the aperture through which God makes Itself known and real in time. We are the eyes through which God sees Itself from the outside, thus becoming conscious of Itself. Not merely the “subjects” of our inner process, we become the “objects” of a deeper, mythic, archetypal, and divine process that is incarnating through us. We are the conduits through which the universe, in becoming consciously aware of itself, is waking itself up. Self-reflection is therefore the best service we can do for ourselves and the world, as well as being the highest way for us to serve and love God. It should get our highest attention that wetiko disease is the very catalyst and inspiration for our self-reflection.
The present-day manifestation of the daemonic is an archetypal expression of the potentially catastrophic upheavals that accompany the great transitions from one age to the next. Wetiko is both spirit and anti-spirit in one. When an archetype like the daemonic appears as it is today in the wetiko epidemic, things become critical, with heightened possibilities for both good and evil alike. Catastrophe can only be avoided if enough people wake up to what is being revealed to us as we act out the unconscious destructively, and then connect and cooperate with each other in new ways so as to creatively de-activate, assimilate, and transform the potentially deleterious effects of the activated daemon. We can then, under the guidance of the Self, more fully incarnate our intrinsic wholeness, as we help each other to usher in a new era of sustainable peace, understanding, and mutual cooperation. Just like becoming lucid in a dream en masse, we can connect with other parts of ourselves who are also waking up in the dream, and realize that we can put our lucidity together so as to change the shared waking dream we are having. Imagine that! Our continued existence as a species on this beautiful planet depends upon our imagining, participating in, and embodying this realization in our lives.