The Sorcerer's Apprentice

For my inquiry into the change of consciousness necessary to avert global eco-catastrophe, I want to focus on the theme that is currently emerging.For this purpose,I'm going back and forth between two resourcesThat I've been digging into for months.They are Scott Preston’s blog The Chrysalis and Jordan Peterson’s YouTube videos of the two courses he teaches at the University of Ottawa.

[Caveat about Jordan Peterson – 2/14/18. I was very enthusiastic about Peterson before he became a combative public figure. I watched all the way through both his 2015 courses, ‘Maps of Meaning’ and ‘Personality and It’s Transformations’. I liked the way he combined a Jungian approach to mythology with evolutionary psychology and several other disciplines. I was entertaining Jung’s archetypes as a key to the depth we needed to access in our psyches to produce the New Story. But once he got into the public arena as an opponent of political correctness, his dogmatic tone and anti-left rants which had seemed an interesting part of the mix, tainted even the parts of his presentation I had enjoyed. This great piece from the Guardian explains why I feel it necessary to disavow him.]

 seems to me that both Preston and Peterson are talking about the need to re-integrate what has been lost in the turn to, and dominance of, scientific rationalism that is de-valuing the accumulated wisdom of our species.This time I want to share Preston’s blog posted today, entitled The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. In it he examines the difference between command and mastery. He says “This is the real issue that lies at the heart of almost all critiques of Late Modern society...expressed in Carl Jung’s observation that ‘we have grown rich in knowledge but poor in wisdom’. Having command is one thing; but mastery is another.”Scott PrestonIt is, as most everything he writes, pretty deep, with numerous references that only become clear with careful follow-up. But if you want to follow me down the rabbit hole, I recommend you give it a try. Maybe it will make perfect sense to you. Even if it doesn't, we can start to unravel this incredible ball of yarn together.

Maps of Meaning

For almost my entire adult life I have been periodically drawn to the writings of Carl Jung. But every time I engage, I find myself somewhat mystified. I usually tell myself that I should try again when I am older and wiser. It always feels like there is something there I need to know, but I'm not quite ready to grasp it.

[Caveat about Jordan Peterson – 2/14/18. I was very enthusiastic about Peterson before he became a combative public figure. I watched all the way through both his 2015 courses, ‘Maps of Meaning’ and ‘Personality and It’s Transformations’. I liked the way he combined a Jungian approach to mythology with evolutionary psychology and several other disciplines. I was entertaining Jung’s archetypes as a key to the depth we needed to access in our psyches to produce the New Story. But once he got into the public arena as an opponent of political correctness, his dogmatic tone and anti-left rants which had seemed an interesting part of the mix, tainted even the parts of his presentation I had enjoyed. This great piece from the Guardian explains why I feel it necessary to disavow him.]

Watching Jordan Peterson’s 2015 Maps of Meaning videos on YouTube has been, on one level, a revelation of why I've been drawn to Jung. Tonight as I re-watched Peterson end his long section on psychobiology, behaviorism, and dominance hierarchies, and begin his transition to narrative psychology and myth (Lecture 5 Part 1) I realize that the magnificent overarching synthesis that ensues was totally inspired and enabled by his reading and deep integration of Jung. Jung and Peterson together point the way toward the necessary and long overdue reconciliation of science and religion, the physical and the mental, and many other problematic dualities. The depth and breadth of the world-view that opens up is staggering and awe inspiring. The koan I took on as the theme of my Active Hope blog, what is the change of consciousness necessary to avert global eco-catastrophe, has led me to this particular juncture. It is unfortunately very deep and complex. But I am somehow thrown to keep on trying to unpack, clarify, and maybe even somehow embody it.

Charles Eisenstein on the Yin and Yang of Active Hope

I want to share this whole essay I received today from Charles. It captures the two poles of hope and realistic despair, and shows how they work together.

Scott Preston's blog, The Chrysalis

What is the collective shift of consciousness so many refer to as necessary for the healing of the earth? 

I was bogged down after spending about a year of inquiry into that question.  I found myself strongly drawn to reading The Red Book of CG Jung, which started with him being called by “the spirit of the depths”.  It took me to a deeper level, but I was unable to connect it with the results of my inquiry up to that point.

Then I stumbled upon a blog called The Chrysalis. Apparently Scott Preston had a fifteen year head start on me, and was uncovering deep patterns from broad reading in the history of human culture. Frequently referenced sources woven into the emerging pattern were Eugene Rosenstock-Huessy, Jean Gebser, and "Seth" (all of whom I was almost totally unfamiliar with), and William Blake, Carlos Castaneda, Friedrich Nietzsche, CG Jung, the Buddhist tradition, and the Sacred Hoop of indigenous North Americans, who were more familiar to me, even special favorites. I have been eagerly reading each new post for months, and following references back to a rich trove of older posts. 

Recently Mr. Preston started reading a book by Iain McGilchrist called The Master and His Emmissary. This was the first time I saw Preston discover a new resource that created a significant impact on the emerging pattern. McGilchrist's twenty years of research into the neuroscience and implications of the divided brain provided a breakthrough for the clarity of Preston’s theme of the structures of consciousness. 

I started submitting comments when Preston's writing suggested a resource I thought he could weave into the mix. Last week I sent two comments to one of his posts, offering two of my major sources for their relevance to the line of thought in his post. He picked up on one of them, Thomas Berry, saying he had a couple of his books on the shelf, had never read them, and would have to see what is there. A couple of days later, on January 28 his post was titled “Thomas Berry: The Great Work”. It began,

Upon Ed Levin's earlier prompting, I dug out Thomas Berry's books that had been idling unread in my bookshelf — The Dream of the Earth and The Great Work. I have begun with The Great Work, and I'm very pleased to have discovered this book. Not only is it a fine illustration of what Nietzsche means by “Be true to the Earth!”, Berry also is, in my estimation, a very good approximation — an evident precusor, an incipient manifestation — to what Jean Gebser anticipated as “the integral consciousness”.

In a reply to a comment at the end of the post, Preston said,

For the next little while, I'll probably spend more time speaking to the meaning of Berry's “Great Work” in its relation to Gebser, Rosenstock-Huessy, McGilchrist, Nietzsche, Seth, and so on. They are all connected, and what connects them is that there is, indeed, an emergent consciousness that is trying to become articulate about itself, and is not finding much in the way of an accommodating language in order to become articulate about itself. So, we are also seeing innovations in language: Berry's “Ecozoic Era” meets Rosenstock-Huessy's “ecodynamics of society” and these correspond to “integral consciousness” as an ecology of being. All this also links back to William Blake, who announced the onset of a “New Age” represented as his “Albion”. None of this is actually following some deliberate plan or logical model. It is a spontaneous, emergent “irruption”, just as Gebser described it.

Coalescence

My far-flung concerns have settled into the interaction of two mythic archetypes: the Bodhisattva and the Anima Mundi. I'm watching to see how it unfolds.

The More Beautiful World

An old friend I haven't seen for years has started a video blog where he and a partner are doing a collaborative discussion of The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible, by Charles Eisenstein. Here's the link to their Facebook page.

I watched their Introductory video and read the first four (short) chapters of the book. They invited participants to comment on their personal reactions to the material. Here's the comment I submitted to the web page:

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I've been stuck in my blog because I have defined the theme as inquiring into "what is the shift in the global planetary consciousness that will be necessary for the self-healing of the earth?" I had developed a table some years ago of various answers found in books I had been drawn to read (11/29/2013, second paragraph, link at "List of authors"). I read the first 4 chapters of "More Beautiful World" yesterday. The shift from the Separation story to the Interbeing or Reunion story is a perfect fit, and in fact an underpinning, for the contrast that has been forming up.

Reading the beginning of the book I realize it is time for me to move from asking WHAT IS the change to looking at WHY the change is so difficult for the Earth Community to make. One dimension that Charles provides a lot of insight into is the pervasiveness of the psychological resistance to the new story (not excluding my own resistance). Global consciousness change is far from a single-factor issue. The tipping point to collective critical mass is something I still hope to see in my lifetime. Dialogs like this are part of the work that make it possible. Thank you for hosting. I look forward to participating.
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It's been almost a year since my post about starting to read Jung. I'm still slogging through the Red Book and a whole lot of support and background material about him. Based on that and my as usual far-flung reading, this is the only note I've made directly related to this blog:
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Possible next blog post: mention of Jung in Dream of the Earth essay, Pope's Encyclical and Integral Ecology. David Graeber, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Jeremy Rifkin, David Korten, David DeGraw, Meg Wheatley.

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I'm swimming in the opinions of others. That's why I'm glad Scott and Jeremy's project got me excited enough to break the silence.

Called by the depths

Reading C.G. Jung's Red Book and using it as a tool for digging deeper in my life, thought, and various practices.

I mentioned Jung at the end of the last post, but that was more than three months ago. I have since been drawn in by the vortex of his Liber Novus (The Red Book). The gigantic facsimile edition has graced our home for almost five years, ever since I read this tantalizing pre-publication article in the New York Times. I was able to read a little of the book, but I eventually found the size and weight too unwieldy to handle. Recently I discovered its more conveniently sized companion, The Red Book: A Reader's Edition, which arrived in the mail last Tuesday, along with Reading the Red Book by Sanford Drob.  I have a lot of momentum into reading The Red Book after listening to all of Lance Owens' lectures and starting to read C.G. Jung: A Biography in Books, which I bought on Owens' recommendation. It seems I am being called by the Spirit of the Depths to overcome the Spirit of This Time :-)

Also, last Tuesday my brother-in-law brought my 1976 Antioch degree portfolio back from [the first typist I hired to type it] along with my copy of Ira Progoff's At a Journal Workshop. Seeing all the above on the dining room table at the same time makes me hopeful that engaging with The Red Book might provide the energy to drive me deeper into my own writing projects.

In this moment I see two avenues opening. One is talking with [the new typist] about finally getting the Antioch portfolio into machine readable format, so I can work it into my memoir project. The Red Book will be my touchstone setting the tone for that project. (How's that for enhancing gravitas?). The second avenue is reconnecting with my Progoff Intensive Journal as I look for an outlet for the energy I access from the Red Book experience.

At the same time, I have several other projects that are percolating in the background. 

I am hoping that engaging with The Red Book might allow me to go deeper with many
of these too. I prioritized them by the intensity of my current engagement, selected the top four, and together with Jung, appointed them to the new version of my five-member imaginary internal Board of Advisors:

Current advisory committee

1. C.G. Jung - The Red Book

2. A.H. Almaas - Spacecruiser Inquiry

3. Tenzin Wangyal - Inner Refuge

4. Thomas Berry - The Dream of the Earth

5. John Cobb - Whitehead as the Philosopher of an Ecological Civilization

As you can see, participation in my Advisory Committee does not imply having ever met me in "real life".

My committee also has five "backup" members:

Dogen - Whitehead, ecology, identity

Joanna Macy - Active Hope

David Abram - Earth in Eclipse

Matt Segall - Dissertation (Whitehead, Schelling, Steiner)

David McMahan - Buddhist Modernism

I am hoping that working with all of them on their interconnected visions will eventually help with the global consciousness koan that initiated this blog and remains it's primary focus.  In any event, I wanted to share what's churning as I try to process the difficult question of what is the consciousness shift necessary for healing the Earth.