Apocalypse, Bomb, Explosion

The word apocalypse means, “uncovering Of what has been hidden.” Psychologically, the apocalypse means the coming of the Self into conscious realization. It is a momentous, world-shattering event that is followed by greater wholeness. This apocalyptic event is already taking place right now. If one has eyes to see… one can perceive this unfolding of consciousness is already taking place both in the outer world and within the inner world of the individual psyche. The possibility of an encounter with extraterrestrial intelligence is more and more a reality than science fiction. Apocalypse spells catastrophe only for the rationalistic, stubborn, non-spiritual ego because of the refusal to allow for a greater psychic authority other than itself. The enlargement of the personality and of the world begins with upheaval and darkness, then a widening of consciousness… a broadening of humanity into wholeness.

How the Archetype of the Apocalypse Relates to the Individual

            There are times in the lives of spiritual seekers when dreams arise of global annihilation, wholesale destruction, or interior landscapes of wastelands and wilderness, usually accompanied by feelings of dread, fear, gloom and doom.[26]Sometimes these dreams take the form of images of fire or nuclear explosions, in the alchemical operation known as the calcinatio.[27] At other times dreams show us “holding the tension of the opposites,” enduring the separatio until the transcendent function, or reconciling “third thing” appears.[28] In other dreams we may see our world or situation from a higher perspective, in the sublimatio.[29] Frequently we encounter repellent figures, threatening figures, people not at all like us, as we wrestle with our shadow side. No one who has stayed on the path of deep personal growth has escaped such visions, because the archetype is universal.

Throughout this process we are discomfited, and face a choice: We can resist the work, live in denial and dismiss our dreams as “trivial” or incomprehensible or inconsequential Or we can go with the flow and begin to change. This latter choice is not appealing because it entails allowing the ego to be confronted by the Self. This is not something the ego welcomes. Jung noted that “the experience of the Self is always a defeat for the ego.”[30] The ego doesn’t like facing its own frailty. It wants to think it can run the show and be in control of life. It does not like being forced to confront its limitations. The feelings of anxiety, helplessness, despair and overwhelment that accompany our dreams when the archetype of the apocalypse is activated reflect just how much the ego is out of its depths. A key part of spiritual growth is coming to recognize how limited and inferior the ego is, compared to the wisdom and power of the Self.

            When apocalpytic dreams arise spontaneously in our lives, what are we being asked to do? What is the meaning of the archetype for us, as individuals? First, we are being asked to recognize that the Self is coming into conscious realization.[31] When it does, the inner landscape created by the wiles and worries of the ego is threatened, devastated, or shown up as inadequate and limited. We come away from these encounters feeling as if our world has been destroyed. We are being asked to recognize our limitations, see our mistakes, feel the pangs of conscience and come to sense the need to find more authentic and meaningful ways of being. Our world and worldview are shattered and this is precisely what the Self intends.[32]

            Only by losing our old world and ways of living can we experience the apocatastasis, the reconstitution or renewal that is at the heart of the archetype of the apocalypse.[33] The Self is ever making “all things new.”[34] It seeks our renewal. It enters consciousness—the world of the ego’s making—and shatters its conventions and images decisively, so as to permit a new inner reality more appropriate to our soul and the spiritual growth we have achieved. When the apocalypse shows up in our dream life, we must transition from our old ways of thinking and being into a more enlarged and authentic way. This process takes time (months, if not years) but the Self is patient. It is implacable, however: While it never lets us down and never lets us go, it also never lets us off! Best not to dig in one’s heels and refuse to cooperate with the Self at such times! Doing so usually forces the archetype to manifest in outer life, and then all manner of unfortunate things show up in life. The Self will not be gainsaid. If we don’t accede to the intentions of the archetype to renew and reconstitute our reality, it will force us to do so through loss of health, job, family, friends, or other painful experiences. While such experiences are terrible to endure, they pale compared to the manifestation of the archetype on the collective level. We consider that level next.

 

How the Archetype of the Apocalypse Relates to the Collective

 

            On the collective level the archetype of the apocalypse seeks to reorient humanity away from the illusions of a civilization that has grown stale and inappropriate, so as to permit a new, more viable way of life.[35] Since “civilization” is generally something about which we are unconscious, such a reorientation is a painful process, calling into question the host of assumptions we have about reality and how things are. These assumptions can be thought of as “paradigms”—unconscious beliefs, attitudes and mental constructs—that provide the bedrock of how we function in the world.[36] In the next essay I will consider in detail some of these paradigms and how we are being asked to replace them with other models more suited to the next evolutionary stage of humanity as we look toward the future.

            The shattering of paradigms is not an easy process. It presents the most severe challenge to life as we know it. We tend to think of Western Civilization as the apogee of human development and we revel in our high technology, sophisticated arts and culture, and the virtues of “modernity.” Rarely do we recognize that, in our lust for scientific progress and ever-more effective forms of control over nature, we have lost all connection to the sacred.[37]

The collective Self is not amused. Nature will not tolerate such abuse much longer. We are seeing more and more evidence of this all over the planet. Just how the archetype of the apocalypse is showing up in our reality now is the subject of the next section of this essay.

https://jungiancenter.org/jung-and-the-archetype-of-the-apocalypse/

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Published by Professor P

My name is Paityn Masters, my friends call me P. I am queer, Pisces, & an ENFP. I am trained as a psychotherapist, and my roots were as a youth pastor. As a psychotherapist, my specialty is in trauma and complex PTSD. I met my best friend and my cosmic partner, Jenni McCullum in graduate school. Together, we began discovering the spiritual world and the psychic gifts that had laid dormant in our psyche. We both went through a wild initiatory process that joyfully and sometimes even painfully expanded our capacity to both SEE and to HEAR, beyond the limits of the five senses. We are both intuitives, and Jenni is also a medium. As traditional psychotherapy frowns on the mystical modality, we had to start our own practice, and sacrifice licensing in order to answer the Call. Fortunately, we found our theoretical home in a branch of psychology known as Depth Psychology, that has its roots in the discoveries made by C. G. Jung, and seeks to study the soul rather than behavior, and sees the whole person on a spiritual level first—then works down to personality, family influence, upbringing, biology, heredity, physicality, status, image, and complexes. We see symptoms as more than something to eliminate, we see them as messages from the Soul. Psyche means Soul, but not many people know this, because our culture can’t seem to get beyond its dependence on the “safety” of the logical/rational mind. “Whenever you are in the realm of Soul, things will always go over your head. The statements of the conscious mind may easily be snares and delusions, lies, or arbitrary opinions, but this is certainly not true of the statements of the soul: to begin with they always go over our heads because they point to realities that transcend consciousness.” (C.G. Jung, Answer to Job). Healing means “making whole,” and many either think they are already whole, or fear they’re broken beyond repair. Healing involves the courage to look at the wounds that caused the brokenness to begin with. Symptoms are a huge help in identifying not only the injury but also the gifts one possesses. Marion Woodman said, “the wound is where the God enters.” So, we look at pain and trauma from the standpoint of Soul Making. I speak of God in my writing quite frequently, and like Soul, God is something that transcends our ability to conceptualize what that means. When I say God… I mean the God that I have discovered within… the same one that is within you. Folded up within each of us is the entirety of the cosmos. How we relate to our inner world determines how we will relate to everything. Our primary wounds and our deepest wounds are in the realm of relationship—beginning with the way we relate to our own inner selves. We are wounded in relationship and so we must be healed in relationship. That’s one of the things that we hope to do in our work here in this earth school. We hope to hold up a mirror so you can see your true nature, the image of your soul; reflection brings about insight, knowledge, and Wisdom.

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