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This episode of Living Myth begins with the fragmentation and breakdown of political parties and social lives currently happening in countries around the world. Michael Meade then takes the issues of upheaval in both nature and human culture to the deeper levels of psyche and soul where archetypal energies of transformation and healing try to enter the world though each of us.

To be alive at this time is to be a witness, willingly or unwillingly, to the upheaval of the world. To be alive now means to be caught between the opposing poles of existence as many things polarize and conflicts multiply. All the great questions about life and death and all the fears of dissolution and destruction, now hang in the polluted air and troubled waters all around us.

The chaos we witness in the outer world repeatedly stirs the unconscious within us. On a collective level, that leads to a psychic overflow of fears and resentments that threatens to swamp whatever is left of civil society and the social contract. Even if we are willing to face the facts, the facts themselves keep changing as radical change at all levels of life may be the fact that most needs to be faced.

The scope and complexity of problems that face every government and every citizen are so great that an increasing fragmentation of parties and politics is also part of the reality we are challenged to witness and absorb. We are increasingly governed by insecure majorities and threatened by extreme minorities as patterns and institutions that may have provided a sense of wholeness in the past can rarely do so now.

To be alive at this time means being called to become consciously aware of more aspects of reality than most would choose to be. It means to be challenged to undergo an awakening of the soul, a shift of imagination and an expansion of identity in order to avoid being overwhelmed by the flood of changes surging through both nature and culture.

At this time it is not simply a change in political perspective that we need, but rather a shift in archetypal understanding that we must find. In order to make such a fundamental change of awareness, it is helpful to know something about how archetypes work. An archetype is an original pattern that exists on a universal level that can affect human thinking, imagination and behavior. When activated, archetypes can connect the primordial, generative forces of life with the pressing issues of the world.

Archetypes are the original forms of life that continue to carry transformative power and boundless potentials. If we can recognize and assimilate an archetype, it can change our lives, help us grow and have a healing effect on the world. Although commonly associated with images of the final end of the world, it turns out that apocalypse refers to the initial phase of a greater archetypal process. The first phase of the archetype involves apocalypse, which has the sound of collapse in it. While the subsequent phase, termed ‘apocastasis,” carries the sense of restoration by virtue of a rebalancing and renewal of the world.

Archetypes carry intentions as well as powerful potentials and a restoration of the world is part of the intention and aim of the archetype of apocalypse. In this ancient way of imagining, the world renews by returning to its origins and reactivating original potentials. Thus, the new world that comes out of all the chaos and upheaval is the old, original world, renewed and reinstituted.

Amidst all the upheaval and uncertainties we face, it becomes easy to fall into despair about the future of the earth. Strangely, just as so many things in the world become divided and polarized, scientific theories and religious beliefs now seem to parallel each other. As both statistics and scriptures predict apocalyptic scenarios, science and religion, seemingly opposed for so long, finally find agreement in a fatalistic sense of the impending end of life on Earth.

Rationalists as well as fundamentalists can both miss the point that the exaggerated images and fears of apocalypse refer not simply to facts about the outer world, but more meaningfully to psychological conditions affecting the inner world of psyche and soul. By contrast, the archetype of apocalypse presents a paradoxical situation of dissolution and re-creation, rather than a predetermined or preordained outcome. In mythological terms, the world can end, but not completely as the end of one era secretly leads to the beginning of the next.

In accepting that we are in the midst of a great turnaround that involves a shift of the underlying archetypes of life, we become more able to tolerate and understand the tragic events that threaten both nature and human culture. The question becomes whether the pattern of collapse and renewal takes place simply through the raw energies of the unconscious or does a transformation of life on earth develop with the conscious awareness and assistance of people living at this time.

In times of radical change, a different kind of courage is required, not simply the courage of our convictions, for that can contribute to the polarization of opposites that grips the daily world. Rather, what is needed is the courage of our imagination, which is considered to be the deepest power of the human soul and which secretly is connected to the original potentials of life and the living Soul of the World.

The archetype of apocalypse is related to the archetype of wholeness and to the sense of creation as an ongoing force of life. According to the old traditions, the original energies of creation try to enter the world through us, especially in times of crisis. As human beings capable of being conscious and aware, we are called and challenged to be a part of a transformation of life on earth that is already underway.

The wholeness that is missing in the outer world at this time cannot be found through a political process or be created through an agreement of ideas alone, but must be found in the depths of the individual soul. The fragmentation and polarization that troubles the outside world is deeply felt and experienced within us. And that which is missing in the outside world must be sought for and be found within us as well.

The way we survive the chaos is to find the creative energies and healing potentials within our souls and live with the courage of our own dreams, pulled on by the threads of our inner destiny. When enough people do that, the deep archetypal energies of restoration and renewal can find their ways into the world. Without anyone having to be overly heroic, we can assist and aid the archetypal dynamic through which the world falls apart only to renew and restore itself again.

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