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The Group Mind and The Community’s Inner Dragon: Heroes, Shamans, and Gurus … Ah, But Scapegoats As Well
Why We Scapegoat … Why We Insist on Saviors: Reflections on a Collective Shadow and Of Sacrifices—Human, Animal, and Cucumber
The Community’s Inner Dragon
She’d experienced being raped was what she’d told us. This veteran consciousness explorer and trained facilitator had also done a lot of regression work on herself. Yet she related how, in one of her breathwork sessions, she’d definitely had those feelings of rape . . . despite the fact that she’d not been sexually abused in this life. And this last part she knew. It was not denial or repression.
The conference attendees were shaken. It did not coincide with any common psychological, or even transpersonal, models concerning healing or experience they’d ever heard of. But in her response, the panelist offered the idea that there is a kind of storehouse of experience of collective pain that anyone can tap-in to, if one is sufficiently open . . . and ready.
Since this type of thing has come up, as well, in my own inner journeying, I would like to suggest that what we’re dealing with is a possibility, based on the evidence, of a sort of collective shadow unconscious, a collective pool of pain, if you will, which has been built up currently and in the past of distress that needs to be released.
I remember a Santa Barbara-based spiritual teacher expressed a similar idea. As she put it, after you clear out your own stuff, then you do it for the rest of the species, then for all living beings in this world, then for living things in other worlds, then for all entities, and then so on, and on, and . . .
Shamans, Sages, Tribal Kings, and Prophets
Similarly, from history, the spiritual literature, and anthropology we hear of certain people—shamans, tribal kings, prophets, saviors, sages, gurus—who, after dealing with their own inner dragons, can tap-in to this collective pool and thereby help other people. In resolving the negative material, releasing it and integrating it, they can have a positive effect on their community, and even the Universe as a whole.
I am reminded of how certain African tribal “kings” (chieftains would be a better word), tribal leaders, and “clan kings” would be sacrificed for their tribes to the point of and including actual physical death. Similarly, shamans would take on psychic tasks that they would consider to be too dangerous or difficult for members of their tribe to do. In this way of looking at things, it is as if there is a group mind, and that the shaman’s duty is to resolve the collective issues, to work through the unfelt feelings, so that the rest of the tribe can function better.
It is as if everyone in a community does not have to, or is not able to, “work” all of their own stuff, but that a certain person can volunteer to face some of those inner demons for the entire group, or at least for those having difficulty.
Ah, But Scapegoats As Well
In this respect I believe it is possible to make a fascinating, albeit disturbing, connection between this idea and scapegoats. In the case of scapegoating, particular individuals are selected to be this kind of lightning rod for the group’s pain and psychic distress.
So there seems to be both this tendency for people to adopt this role for themselves and for societies to put people in these roles whether they want it or not. This indicates some kind of social, human need, or at least a fundamental human expediency, that is to say, ego defense.
It would seem, in any case, that there is a right way and wrong way to do this. And we can deduce that these attempts can have either beneficial or negative transpersonal and psychological effects depending on which way it’s done. Obviously there’s a huge difference between a guru or a savior taking the “sins” of their group upon themselves to release their people in that manner, versus a scapegoat being chosen to dump all the group’s unwanted feelings and shadow material on.
Sacrifices — Animal and Cucumber
Other fascinating perspectives on this arise from study of one of its variations: This is the widespread phenomenon of sacrifice, and in particular, animal sacrifice. The Nuer of Africa, for example, as well as the neighboring Dinka, created rituals for many of life’s events around the killing of sacrificial oxen. If no oxen were available, a cucumber was often used; in other cultures, lambs or other animals may be used. At any rate, when the ox was slain, the carcass was then split, with one half being consumed and the other half thrown away from them into the bush . . . reputedly taking with it the sins, indiscretions, and wayward elements of all those assembled. Higher forces were then called forth and entreated to remove the carcass/transgressions; indeed, at times they were directly invoked, then subsequently admonished to “go away” and “be gone!”
Since the group or individual is said to be identified with the animal, it is interesting to consider the possible message here that one takes into oneself and incorporates (integrates) only half of that which is of oneself; but one seeks the Universe’s help in disposing of the other half, relegating it to “the bush.” It is fascinating to think of the common use of prayer in this respect, that is, prayer where one invokes the Divine to take away or to “handle” those things in life, or the parts of those things, that one is incapable of handling oneself. Apparently it is the rare individual who completely integrates her or his Shadow.
Experience Is Primary
It is important to keep in mind that all of this idea of a group psyche is built upon a perspective, a paradigm, in which subjectivity is primary: Experience or Mind being the only reality. Such speculation as engaged in here is not even conceivable within the dominant materialistic paradigm. Nevertheless, these possibilities have long . . . far longer than this upstart of “objective materialism” has been around . . . have long been the common currency of our species, and have been so in the vast majority of human cultures that ever existed.
Continue with Wounded Healers, Heroes, and the Group Mind: The Universe Bears Up and Rewards with Renewed Life Those who Voluntarily Sacrifice Themselves for All
Return to Apocalypse? Or Earth Rebirth? A Smaller Number of Us — Standing in the Right Place and With a Lever Big Enough — Might Be All That Is Needed to Move the World
Footnote
This is the first half of the Afterword of Apocalypse – No: Gurus, Shamans, Sacrificial Lambs, and Scapegoats: Reflections on the Prospect of Collective Pain. A description or synopsis of the entire chapter follows:
DESCRIPTION: The essence of Christianity is the idea that a person — Jesus Christ, of course, in Christianity – can suffer and die for the “sins” of others, so that those persons won’t have to bear the burden of their sins. This article addresses that theme in a larger, multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-religious context: Are there people who take on the the “sins” — or “Pain” — of others, who take on the karma— in an Eastern sense — or the mistakes and evil of others who are not able to handle the consequences of their actions? Is the Divinity inherent in the Cosmos compassionately concerned enough to manifest or call forth individuals to take on the same kind of task that Christ, in a most extreme brutal form, demonstrated? This article is not about Christ but about that theme of extraordinary individuals with a divinely-inspired mission of suffering for the sake of others who cannot “help” themselves in raising themselves above the consequences of their ill deeds. For are not people of all times and cultures children of the same Divinity, some would say “sparks” of that same Divinity, which others, including this author, have theorized is commensurate, i.e., equal, to all of Nature, including humanity — each and every one of us? Assuming this, in this article the author discusses this phenomenon of people taking on, willingly and unwillingly, the pain and sins of their society — from the small tribe to that of all of humanity. And it puts forth the proposition that there is a collective “pool of pain.” In that ultimately the distinctions between people are illusory, that we are all One, all interconnected, then both the evil, as well as the good, of each of us is both the result of the collective actions of us all as well as being a part of the consciousness that we all share —more correctly the One Consciousness that each of us is.
Related Book: Go to Primal Renaissance: The Emerging Millennial Return by Michael D. Adzema.
Related Article: Go to “Nature As Alive: Morphic Resonance and Collective Memory“ by Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.d.
Related Article: Go to “Sathya Sai Baba, Avatar“ by Mary Lynn Adzema.
Related Article: Go to “The UFO Abduction Phenomenon’s Challenge to Consensus Reality” by John E. Mack, M.D.
Continue with Wounded Healers, Heroes, and the Group Mind: The Universe Bears Up and Rewards with Renewed Life Those who Voluntarily Sacrifice Themselves for All
Return to Apocalypse? Or Earth Rebirth? A Smaller Number of Us — Standing in the Right Place and With a Lever Big Enough — Might Be All That Is Needed to Move the World
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“Kill or Be Killed”: Planetmates View Their Deaths with as Little Gravity as a Game – The Thirtieth Prasad
Planetmates Do Not Fear Death the Way Humans Do…. They know their consciousness continues on, does not end, cannot end…. The Thirtieth Prasad
Planetmates Release the Thirtieth Prasad
We do not wish death. But we risk death often in our immersion in fantastic life. We experience life as highly enjoyable, but in knowledge of our blessedness at all times, we view it much as you would sport. So its consequences are no more grave than that in a game.
Hyena is first consciousness at the Thirtieth Prasad.
“Since…consciousness…can never really “die” or be destroyed, there is nothing dire about [death]; it is seen as simply another game beginning.”
The Thirtieth Prasad – “Kill or Be Killed”
First off, we would not imagine keeping and using another Earth Citizen.
Certainly, we find that the Reality that sustains us includes a plan wherein some of us prey upon others and the others try to get away. The prize for winning, if one is the predator, is food, which extends one’s life; the prize for winning, if one is the prey, is escape from becoming food, which extends their life.
But in that all lives end; and most are not very long at all; and because there is no reason to not expect that this Reality that suffuses and defines us is anything but Beauty, in that our abode of existence is paradisiacal in its beauty, complexity, and qualities of change and surprise which are, along with our imagination, the foundation of a lifetime of entertainment, engagement, and joy, losing is of no more consequence to losing any other kind of game. And since new games can begin at any time, i.e., consciousness continues and takes on new forms always, and can never really “die” or be destroyed, there is nothing dire about it; it is seen as simply another game beginning. (to be continued)
Paraphrase/ Summary/ Abstract of “The Thirtieth Prasad” — by SillyMickel Adzema
We, planetmates, could never conceive of doing what humans do in the throes of their controlling mania. We would never care to, let alone seek to, keep and control the destinies of others or use them to inspire phantasms of vanity. If nothing else, we would see that as an unnecessary burden.
In trying to craft your future that way, you cannot take in nor enjoy the blessings of the present. That is why it is called that, in fact, for it is a gift. The present is a gift that humans do not open.
This is ironic, for as we have said, you refuse Divine Providence, whose only stipulation is that you accept the pain of uncertainty so you might enjoy the gift presented afterward of knowing you are always loved…which we have compared to waiting till Christmas to open one’s gifts. In doing this, you create the exact opposite abnormality—when you actually receive a blessing in the present, you then wait to “open” it. You will not bide your time waiting for your blessings; but when you receive them, then, you decide to wait. In this way, again, you create that which you tend to flee from.
This is just another way in which you create the “hell” in existence that you fear and, unbelievably, attribute to a loving God.
But we do have inner knowing of such a Providence. This Reality sustains us throughout life. We therefore have no doubt that Its blessings include the ending of this game in a manner, uncertain as is all of life, but in accordance with our Ultimate Good, which only That Which Is can know. But neither do we seek death, as you, in your mania do. As in so much else you create abnormal fears only to seek out the sources of them…death you fear extraordinarily yet unthinkingly draw to yourselves through myriad self-defeating decisions.
As for us, no, we do not wish death. But we risk death often in our immersion in fantastic life. We experience life as highly enjoyable, but in knowledge of our blessedness at all times, we view it much as you would sport. So its consequences are no more grave than that in a game.
So how do we view this death that you fear so much? In this game of life, there are rewards for playing well. These prizes are sometimes food, and this sometimes involves the total vanquishing of one or more of one’s opponents in this play in a way that ends their “game.” On the other side of this, there is the reward of continuing the game longer if one is able to foil one’s opponent’s move toward defeating oneself.
There is pleasure in escape; there is pride in being clever enough to fool one’s opponent. You bring forth your remembrance of this apprehension of living that we planetmates have in all the sport, all the play that you do. You are endlessly driven to remember your consciousness as other beings like planetmates, but you do not carry over that feeling into life outside the parameters of that which you call “game” and “sport.”
But these plays in our lives we know are ultimately of very small significance. Unburdened of the desire to control and completely trusting, rather completely knowing of the beneficence and beauty of it all, we welcome either outcome. If we win, there is a prize in that. If we lose in this exciting drama, we know there will always be more games, endlessly.
And why would we not expect as much? Our lives, throughout, are endlessly beautiful and delightfully complex and intriguing. We discover existence to contain elements of surprise and change which make it fascinating. Along with our playful mental twists of these elements, adding to them from the package of previous existence we hold at each moment and which we add to and make more interesting the longer we stay in any particular form, we find life’s unfolding to be immeasurably entrancing, infinitely entertaining, supremely attractive and thus engaging, and in sum, conducive to joy overall.
So, winning or losing, coming out on top or being freed to begin a new game are equally attractive. This is rooted in a memory of consciousness existing beyond that of the form in which we find ourselves at any time. Because of your amplification of darkness with your untypical births, you have the greatest forgetfulness of your nature in existence. You forget much, not only the other forms and types of consciousness…other “games” you have played, if you will…but you forget much in your current lives. You forget your beginnings.
All in all with all this forgetfulness you can project the darkness you have about the beginning of your lives onto the ending of your lives. For you to understand what we are telling you, you must consider how it might be if you did not do this. We do not forget as completely as you do, so we always know that existence is the nature of Existence, or you might say that “consciousness” is the nature of That Which Is. Existence never ends; Consciousness never ends. “I am” is the nature of It All.
Consciousness does not begin or end; it is the reality. It is these games, these forms, this physicality that begins and ends. We are surprised you don’t know this, for you can see this all around you in Nature.
But Consciousness … Subjectivity simply changes, taking on ever new games, ever new forms.
So how can we dread the ending of any form when we know that each ending is the beginning of something new and even more exciting. We see our endings of form as being more like releases from the playing which sometimes, with time, loses its appeal or freshness. But only the Divine knows the path to our most perfect joy—whether continuation in one form or initiation of another. So we embrace either as a gift.
Continue with
The Great Reveal, Chapter Thirty-Nine:
The Thirty-First Prasad from The Planetmates
Return to
The Great Reveal, Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Twenty-Ninth Prasad.
Child Abuse and Human Tool Use – Humans Become Abominations in Nature
Interchanging mind control
Come let the, revolution takes its toll
If you could, flick the switch and open your third eye
You’d see that, we should never be afraid to die
(So come on)
Continue with
The Great Reveal, Chapter Thirty-Nine:
The Thirty-First Prasad from The Planetmates
Return to
The Great Reveal, Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Twenty-Ninth Prasad.
Child Abuse and Human Tool Use – Humans Become Abominations in Nature
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