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Jung writes,
The unconscious is the source of our dreams; it is more and more as if our species is collectively acting out - and dreaming up - our unconscious to manifest in fully materialized form in the world.
To say this differently:
What is happening in our world is a living revelation, but what is taking place will only show its revelatory aspect if we consciously recognize what is being revealed to us.
If we don't recognize the light that is being revealed through the darkness, however, the nightmare will only become stronger and more horrific, potentially killing all of us in the process.
The root of this whole process is to be found within the human psyche:
A major part of what is
being revealed to us is the central role, just like in a
dreamworld, that the human psyche plays in creating events that
are playing out in our world.
As Jung points out, under the circumstances it is imperative that we gain insight into,
This spirit that seems to be obstructing our light is what the Native Americans call "wetiko," 3 which can be conceived of as,
Shedding light on the
covert operations of this virus of the mind serves us beyond
measure.
So many people, even close friends and family members, have fallen prey to the never-ending stream of lies, disinformation and propaganda that is fed to us on a daily basis through the media.
Once someone has become
influenced and has sufficiently been "taken in" by the
mind-controlling propaganda, it is as if their minds become "taken
over" - possessed - by something, such that, unbeknownst to
themselves, they then become an outpost, a link in a dark chain, to
further propagate the spell that they themselves have fallen under.
When someone has sufficiently imbibed the propaganda and become entranced by the internal logic and seeming coherence of a false narrative, they typically are of the opinion that they are in no way under the propaganda, which is nothing other than the propaganda itself speaking through them.
Convinced they are in possession of the truth, they have then become an organ of and mouthpiece for the propaganda to spread, all the while thinking that people who haven't fallen under the spell of the propaganda are the ones who are propagandized.
It is as if something has possessed them.
To quote Jung, man,
Jung is of the opinion that, developmentally speaking, our species' level of consciousness is at the stage of an adolescent whose sense of both self and the world is still forming.
As if beginning to emerge from a deep sleep, our species is evolving out of being identical with - and hence, blind to and possessed by - the unconscious, which is why our task as human beings is to make the unconscious conscious, i.e., to generate as much consciousness as possible.
Our species is suffering from a form of psychic blindness, 6 a peculiar form of self-created blindness that not only doesn't know it is blind, but thinks it sees more clearly than people who are clear-sighted.
Our task is,
When people fall into - and become taken over - by their unconscious, something within their unconscious has been activated that they are unable to bring to consciousness, which results in their self-reflective consciousness being pulled down, as if by a magnet, into the unconscious and disabled such that it can even be dissolved in its depths.
Becoming identical with - and hence, embodying - the unconscious, the person so possessed can't help but to compulsively act out the unconscious in a destructive way.
In this cursed condition, they have unwittingly become an instrument for the darker forces of the unconscious to act themselves out.
Describing this very process, Jung says,
Truly vacant, they become
a conduit for the darker aspects of the unconscious to come through
them, while the person so afflicted is simultaneously the living
revelation of these darker forces - if we have the eyes to see what
is taking place in them.
As if no longer home, the people so possessed - often by ideas and beliefs - become unself-reflective robotic automatons (with no creative potential operating in them), as they are compulsively driven by something that is riding them from beneath their conscious awareness.
These people are so disconnected from their authentic selves and from their ability to think for themselves that "something other" than themselves, to which they are completely unaware, uses them as its unwitting instrument to think for and through them in order to fulfill its agenda (at the person's own expense).
This "something other"
wants nothing more than to insert itself into a person's mind such
that the person so afflicted becomes the channel for this darker
force to incarnate into our world.
As Jung points out, when someone has been taken over in this way - a situation in which their psyche has been hijacked and colonized by forces other than themselves,
As if having blinders on,
people so afflicted are utterly blind to their affliction.
Fixed in a particular viewpoint, completely convinced they are in 'possession of the truth', they have a pre-existing, non-negotiable commitment to some idea, ideology or belief which forecloses upon their ability to consider that any other perspective (which they experience as a threat to their very worldview) has any validity whatsoever.
Becoming solidified in
their viewpoint is the diametric opposite of a fluid, flexible and
more open-ended omni-perspectival awareness, which reflects upon
what is happening in our world from as many different - and
oftentimes contradictory - viewpoints as can be imagined, without
snapping into a premature judgment that they know what is, in fact,
happening.
Philosopher Hannah Arendt points out that an inability to self-reflectively think about ourselves - similar to how a vampire casts no reflection in a mirror - is one of the primary characteristics of evil.
It is like a computer program has gotten implanted in their brains to automatically react to stimuli, turning them into automatons.
To quote Arendt,
Refusing to be a person,
the person so afflicted becomes more like a zombie than a human
being.
The executive function of their psyche, which is supposed to be working for the best interests of the organism, has been co-opted and is secretly in service to the shadowy force that has, in Philip K. Dick's phrase,
The people so programmed are oblivious - they literally have no idea - about the insidious nature of the situation that they have fallen into, oftentimes convincing themselves that they have come to their viewpoint through their own volition.
Not realizing how their perceptions are being manipulated and managed by outside forces, they can easily convince themselves that they have done their own independent research and analysis, while in fact they are simply parroting the very point of view that the Powers-That-Be - the very powers that are behind the evil that is playing out in our world - want them to have.
When this is reflected back to them - a situation which one would think would get their attention - they typically react,
People who have internalized the propaganda within their own minds have a smug certainty that they are right:
Most people can't wrap
their minds around the pervasiveness and extent of the propaganda
that we are swimming in 24/7, all designed to psychically massage
our minds into the desired viewpoint that the Powers-That-Be want us
to have.
It is a horrifying
realization to take in that those closest to us - oftentimes our
siblings, parents, children and close friends - are actually out of
touch with reality and aren't interested in hearing about it.
They have unknowingly fallen under the spell of "the counterfeiting spirit" 11 of the Apocryphal texts, which "puts us on," (i.e., fools us), as it impersonates us - we then become impersonations of what it is to be a human being.
People who have been sufficiently propagandized are living in the self-reinforcing echo chamber of their own programmed and stunted imagination, a limited, self-blinding and crazy-making scenario which they themselves are unknowingly buying into and thereby perpetuating in each and every moment.
In essence,
Jung refers to this process of,
...as nothing other than "black magic", 12 a form of this darker art-form that one is ultimately perpetrating on oneself.
We have then tricked ourselves out of our own (right) mind.
It is noteworthy that when we fall under our own self-deception, we necessarily lose contact with the real world.
Jung repeatedly warned of the great danger that when a sufficient number of people fall prey to their own unconscious in this way, the result is invariably a psychic epidemic - a collective psychosis 13 - which is exactly what is happening in the world today.
This process, as Jung
endlessly points out, starts with - and can only be resolved -
within the individual.
He points out that "if you think you are separated" (from others, as well as the universe itself), you are suffering from "a neurotic imagination," 16 which once sufficiently identified with, becomes self-generating, supplying all the evidence needed for proof of its own seemingly real existence.
This mistaken notion of who you are implicitly brings with it the assumption of the corresponding abstract, supposedly rational (but actually flawed) worldview of scientific materialism, which further supports, feeds into and reinforces our sense of existing as a separate self, a process which can't help but to further alienate us from our authentic self.
This whole process is
morbid beyond belief. It can't be repeated often enough - No one
else is doing this to us, we are the ones who are ultimately doing
this to ourselves.
To introduce them to another viewpoint that questions their way of seeing is experienced as an existential threat to their very sense of self or identity, which can activate their unconscious psychological defense mechanisms as if their ego - and more than that, their very life itself - is being put at risk.
The root of this whole process is to be found within the psyche and nowhere else.
...theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about his experience of encountering such people.
In describing someone taken over by the wetiko spirit, he characterizes such people as suffering from a form of stupidity, by which I imagine he means people so afflicted are disconnected from their natural intelligence.
Bonhoeffer writes,
Bonhoeffer recognizes that the person so possessed, by allowing themselves to be a conduit for unconscious forces to work through them, can easily become an instrument for evil, all the while believing they are on the side of truth, justice and goodness.
The person so afflicted, completely unaware of their depraved circumstance in the slightest, becomes a puppet on a string - what Jung calls "the devil's marionette",
Bonhoeffer is speaking
from direct experience - he was executed by the Nazis - about the
incredible danger when a sufficient number of people become mindless
tools of the state.
It is a well-known psychological phenomenon that,
People under the spell of
the unconscious continually reinforce each other's deluded
viewpoint, creating an impenetrable psychic bubble around themselves
that deflects self-reflection at all costs.
Jung comments,
Not just stupefied by fear (where people react based on unconscious conditioning, instead of consciously responding out of their own volition), people who have fallen under groupthink have become, to coin a new word, "stupidified" by fear:
Fear, it should be remembered,
Jung emphasized that, due to our species' suggestibility, we all have the potentiality to become taken over by and possessed by the unconscious such that we become stupid and act out - and hence, embody - darker aspects of the collective unconscious that we all share.
This insight can open us up to being able to perceive the revelatory nature of what is happening in our world.
The darker forces, by subsuming and incorporating people into itself, enlists them into becoming cogs in the wheel of a dehumanizing machine:
In this situation,
however, the darkness is becoming potentially transparent, as it is
openly showing how it covertly operates.
This is to say that,
Everything depends upon whether or not we recognize the light that is being revealed through the darkness.
The inner workings of darkness are usually hidden under the cloak of darkness itself, which is why seeing the undercover operations of darkness is such a game-changer.
We normally think of illumination as "seeing the light," but seeing the darkness - in Jung's famous words, "making the darkness conscious" - is also a form of illumination.
This revelation, however,
needs our conscious participation in order to unlock its gifts - we
can call this a "participatory form of revelation," as it requires
our active and conscious engagement in order to fulfill its
revelatory function.
As is well known,
This is because,
People don't like to realize they've been fooled, but when you have been taken for all you're worth, if you want to step onto the road to recovery, there's no way around realizing to what degree you have given yourself away.
It is the necessary first step in getting back to yourself.
Similar to having the strength to leave a cult, it is an extraordinary moment that takes incredible courage when we take off our blinders and snap out of the spell we've been under.
Instead of seeing through the imagined eyes of others, we start to see through our own eyes, which is to connect with our intrinsic agency and the creative power of the true Self within us.
We are then beginning to heal the self-induced blindness of wetiko within ourselves and the world at large.
Seeing how the darkness
covertly operates within us is the necessary step which empowers us
to more effectively deal with the darkness that is wreaking havoc
throughout our world...
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