A Shift in the Collective Unconscious?
From Margo Stebbing
Jan. 2, 1999
In response to Where's the Juice... I was really quite amazed to read this,
as I was using almost the exact same words speaking to my husband an hour
ago. We are organizing y2k events in our community in Eldorado, N.M. and
I was saying how I just can't seem to get back in the groove with all the
preparedness stuff and reading yet more info on y2k. I was saying how I
wasn't sure if it was burnout, or what.
After reading your article- I was reflecting that perhaps many of us are
all feeling a collective shift or "regrouping" in the realm of
the collective unconscious. Perhaps there are some major shifts happening
on deeper levels that many who are participating in this y2k "conversation"
are feeling.
In the early 80's I was doing a 6 week Vipassyna retreat on the east coast
with about 150 other people. This retreat was done in silence, and it was
amazing how I felt I came to know people without ever talking to anyone.
You can become so highly attuned in a silent retreat. Then one day, I
noticed that everyone seemed very restless. It was quite noticeable. That
evening when we usually were given a dharma talk, Jack Kornfield announced
that Anwar Sadat had been assassinated. It was such a potent reflection
for me of the interconnectedness of all life and how -- here we were on
retreat, with no newspapers or t.v., across the world -- and yet how we
could feel a ripple of disturbance in the collective unconscious of mankind
in Sadat's assassination.
I don't know what's happening, but I know that lately I have been feeling
a shift. I was wondering if I was going thru another layer of denial, in
that I have been feeling as of late that the scenarios I was considering
6 weeks ago, I recently don't feel like those are the scenarios that are
going to happen. Like things are not going to be as completely devastating
as I was thinking 6 weeks ago.
We just started to explore the whole Y2K issue in September of '98. My
husband and I were on our way to Bali for a month in October. The enormity
of Y2K implications were staggering to us both and we were having doubts
about taking so much time off to play, considering we have such a short
time left to 2000. Then the transmission on our car blew up, and my husband's
back was slow in recovering from a summer gardening injury; it was a pretty
loud, unignorable message coming from the universe not to go to Bali.
Stayed home, and jumped into the whole Y2K realm; going into overwhelm.
My husband and I jokingly called this phase "Fear and loathing in
Y2K'sville." It's that phase of preparedness where survivalism makes
sense, until one reads the co-intelligence site and Awakening.
Still, we personally find ourselves trying to define our preparedness needs
and abilities against unknown future scenarios. At first it was exasperating
trying to make plans against an unknown future; but we find that the more
we take the time to sit and be still, the more comfortable we are becoming
with the unknown. It's actually a comfort. In the beginning of all of
this, I was convinced that I knew what was going to happen and it wasn't
good. Now, I see the wisdom in not knowing, not projecting and also not
being in denial either. Perhaps realizing the devastating possibilities
of Y2K has pushed many of us toward a more substantial and sustaining conscious
contact with the Soul. Perhaps this is part of the collective shift many
of us are feeling as we deepen our conscious contact with spiritual resources.
Perhaps all those catastrophic pictures of future scenarios are melding
into a field of unknowing, of deeper possibility .... You know that potent
place where the depths of one's heart is really asking... And how could
the universe refuse the fragrance of that prayer, of that asking? I can
just imagine a very large field of fragrant potencies wafting through the
collective conscious/unconscious, shapeshifting our future. What stance
to take? Forgive my poetic indulgences on Y2K but you know Rumi is the
man:
Stay together, Friends.
Don't scatter and sleep.
Our Friendship is made of being awake.
The waterwheel accepts water
and turns and gives it away,
weeping.
That way it stays in the garden,
whereas another roundness rolls
through a dry riverbed looking
for what it thinks it wants.
Stay here, quivering with each moment
like a drop of mercury.
Sincerely,
Margo Stebbing