Stanislav Grof: “The Opening of the Collective Unconscious”
While I agree this is occurring, there is also a loss of rootedness and a degree of cultural (mis)appropriation. I believe the best spirituality and in some cases the place where most healing is needed is directly through one’s own genetic lineage and in this way through one’s own body – embodied spirituality in connection with one’s own near and ancient ancestors, all the way back to the original source of the universe. This is the healing the world requires, we cannot escape who we are beneath all the contemporary disparate thought, and it is that which will surface from the unconscious, as our ancestral myth remains in our cells.. A dialogue for this connection is found through art, myth, dream, cultural ritual and spirituality, and pilgrimage – among other ways.
Myth as the art and richness of direct experience of life comes about through an open receptivity to one’s own existence in relation to the universe around oneself. A solely rational mindset that blocks the flavours of imagination, open emotional exchange and creative energetic interaction cannot comprehend myth through experience, but may only formulate an abstraction of it in relation to what such a mind already comprehends. Myth expands beyond the scope of the typical contemporary conscious mind; it requires a revelationary interactive experience of it to understand.
In the image of our contemporary thought, myth can appear wonderful or can be very frightening when experienced as a living experience, and no doubt was to ancient peoples too, but in current times we do not always have the openness and groundedness that more earth-based cultures have, and so it is less likely that mythic experience will be fully integrated with our bodies, hearts and minds. Mythic experience will not fit in its entirety through the tiny gaps of the psyche, and so may be less understood. Yet if the soul is in enough desperate need for such deeper vital energies, it may burst open the ordinary mind. Better to prepare for what swims in our own unconscious through natural lifestyle, personal healing and spiritual disciplines like meditation and other practices from one’s own traditions. Mythic experience is both the food and the substance of our soul. Once myth is fully understood, it is seen in everything, every process and part of the Universe as a deeper perception of natural reality, and we return to the eternal dreaming that we never left but in our personal and collective fantasy of regimented isolation towards the greater life process around and within us.
