The Free Radical

The lines have been drawn.

We live in a society now that the phrase “drop and rebuild the tranny” means radically different things to different groups. To the geniuses on the socio-political left this is beyond the pale of micro-aggression, expressing ignorance and bigotry, having to do with insensitive terminology surrounding gender-reassignment surgery: “Unacceptable!” But even for the dimmest rednecks on the right, “drop and rebuild the tranny” simply refers– as it always has– to getting greasy, and fixing the damn car.

How has it come to this?

From my unique and novel vantage ensconced in the emerging noosphere (collective consciousness– which is the evolution of Jung’s Collective Unconscious), trends in human consciousness development have become rather easy to discern. At the dire risk of oversimplification– and I do love literary risk– our known history thus far, or at least throughout that portion of it referred to as the history of civilization, the collective unconscious of humanity has succumbed to a singular overriding trend: centralization… and so too, naturally, has the society we’ve built.

As a species, we have continually tended toward group-think.

Human individuals have a strong inclination, or even need, to belong to identity groups, to be part of a herd, or many different herds. Our psychological security seems to heavily depend upon identifying ourselves as belonging to certain ideological classes and sub-categories. Historically, these various groups within the human collective have structured themselves as hive-minds. The net result of group-think is a voluntary transfer of personal power from the individual to the herd.

Hive-minds exhibit a uniformity of thought through shared values, ideas and activities. They very strongly tend to demand a hierarchical internal structure, where leaders and exalted individuals occupy high-ranking positions and are primarily responsible for rigidly defining the ideology adhered to by the rest of the group members, and thus wielding their aggregated power. Hive-minds are extremely cultish, and indeed they are predominantly responsible for what we term “culture” in our modern society. Hive-minds have dominated the subconscious terrain of humanity for at least the last ten-thousand years (if the chronology of conventional history is reliable– unfortunately, it’s not… but that’s a different essay).

And now, suddenly, that’s changing– at least, for many.

We’ve recently turned the blind corner of history. The hive-minds are breaking down… mainly because they don’t offer the same (false) security that they once did. This breakdown in the false sense of security traditionally offered by group-think is due to persistent wrongheadedness.

“But which ones, specifically, are wrongheaded?”

All of them. But how can that be? Someone, or some group, surely, must’ve gotten it right! No. In order for that to be true we would need to ascribe to a meta-belief in the One True Belief System. It doesn’t exist; it can’t exist. Simply, there is no one, or no group, who is in possession of the One True Belief System which completely and consistently describes reality as it is. Each and every last one of us is wrong to some degree in what we believe about reality. And that is the true nature of belief.

Allow me to return now to my opening statement: The lines have been drawn.

Humanity seems more divided now than ever before. Ironically, as the lines of diversity have become rather blurred in recent times, due largely to cultural melting pots in western society by design and imposition, there seems to persist an ever-deepening divide between various ideological camps. And the divide appears more and more to be irreconcilable.

But the line which divides us– today– is not drawn along ideological fissures. Differences in ideology is what separates us superficially, but the real underlying difference is something much more basic than that, more fundamental… and more far-reaching.

Our population is divided primarily– fundamentally– between open-mindedness and closed-mindedness… along the entire social spectrum.

It is not the content of our beliefs which determines our open-mindedness. It is not even the quality of those beliefs. Rather, it is the degree to which we are personally invested in a specific belief structure or system which inversely determines the openness, and indeed the health, of our minds.

Closed-mindedness is heavily invested in a particular set of beliefs… quite often for an entire lifetime. Closed-mindedness asserts that it has accurately apprehended the One True Belief System. Because closed-mindedness claims to already know, it does not seek out new and challenging information. And when such new information crosses the path of a closed-minded individual, he will either reject the new information outright without any meaningful investigation, or he will distort the new information in order to fit it into his already-existing belief structure– even when that new data is logically incompatible with the old structure.

Open-mindedness is ever-expanding into the realm of possibility and potential. An open mind is characterized by the only sure knowledge that ultimately it does not know. Open-mindedness recognizes the Infinite Mystery of this human existence and embraces its unsolvability. All incoming data to an open mind is held in potential and evaluated in terms of the probability of its being true.

An open mind is naturally inclined toward ‘Big Picture’ awareness, wherein it is accepted that the Big Picture will never be completely fleshed out. A closed mind believes that its well-defined big picture view– already complete– is the only possibility.

The limited creativity of a closed mind will be imitative and repetitive, whereas an open mind is capable of great originality and startling creativity.

Readers of Carlos Castaneda may recall don Juan’s explication of the Tonal and the Nagual. The Tonal is ego-based consciousness, wrapped up in identity and self-importance, and can be likened to a tiny island in a vast sea (of consciousness). The Nagual is more akin to undifferentiated consciousness– though it has structure, it is much less rigid and loosely defined. It is the vast ocean of All Possibility. A shape-shifting shaman is more identified with the Nagual, the vast ocean, while most civilized modern humans identify themselves with the tiny island of the Tonal.

As don Juan explained to his apprentice Carlos, the inventory of the island (Tonal), the specific items it contained (thoughts, ideas, beliefs, ideologies, etc.) were of little importance… and they could be exchanged and replaced throughout one’s lifetime without any significant consequence. Possibilities, potentials, and probabilities however, were like a mist hovering above the oceanic womb of creation. By identifying oneself with the items of the Tonal, only repetition was possible. Only by self-defining oneself through the nebulous potential of All Possibility is a warrior free to create, enter and inhabit a new realm of human endeavour.

And that’s where we are, right now, on the cusp of a new realm of human endeavour. Its manifestation in the immediate future will fall to the open-minded among us.

We will first witness and accelerate the collapse and unravelling of the old order. We have entered the age of the Breakdown of Centralized Authority. We will witness the disintegration of all the hive-minds established and populated during the preceding millennia. Those who are able, once freed from the false security of group-think, will immediately begin to place tremendous value on their own ability to think critically, independently… becoming sovereign in their mentality, and reclaiming their long-estranged personal (creative) power.

The times immediately ahead will be rough. It may be helpful to remember that there is little to be gained in arguing over the inventory of our respective islands (specific beliefs). The content of our beliefs is secondary to our ability to hold multiple possibilities in mind as we enter these revelatory times. Ideally, we are to become the embodiments of All Possibility. And it is the degree to which we are each successful in this quest that we may accurately measure our mental health.

Closed-mindedness will be the criteria for culling the herd– the entire herd. After these tumultuous times, especially this upcoming year of 2017, only free thinking sovereign individuals will be left standing to carry the human race forward. The rest will be stranded on their own self-selected islands of stubborn self-importance, arrogance and self-righteousness… as the rising tide of new possibilities drowns them.

It is extremely important to understand this critical distinction and to cultivate immediately the ability to hold all of reality in mind as potential and possibility, rather than choosing to reject it piecemeal unexamined and unconsidered from a place of arrogant certainty or from the petty fear of gullibility. The hardest thing for the closed-minded is to see their own closed-mindedness. Many are affable and tolerant in their attitudes and behaviour, but the times that are now upon us will test that tolerance and attempt to pierce the closed bubble of non-awareness. Beware! (Especially be wary of the appeal to authority, confirmation bias and false dichotomies– more on that later.)

The most difficult thing for a closed mind to perceive is its own hypocrisy. For example, the closed-minded will attempt to meet the challenge of propaganda through imposing censorship, utterly failing to see the blatant hypocrisy of this. The open-minded will immediately see through the whole farce easily. The old control mechanisms will no longer work… yet every attempt will still be made to contain the awakening. It will not be contained.

We have entered a unique moment in time. Events on the global stage will proceed now with an unstoppable momentum of their own. No person or group will be able to stop or even significantly slow the unravelling we are to witness. Society, as we have known it, is collapsing. Those who take the most superficial view (i.e. the one presented on CNN) will perceive only unmitigated destruction, whereas those who’ve learned to see beneath the surface of things will perceive the dawning of a new renaissance.

In this first essay, I have offered a very simple lens through which to view the enormity of what is immediately coming. Open-mindedness versus closed-mindedness is the simplest reduction I can offer that gives insight and direction for those who would keep their eyes and hearts open. It is a theme to which I will return again and again in future essays in this series… for, the health of our individual minds is of paramount importance.

So, for now, please remember that it is not the specific content of our minds that matters most (what we believe in any given moment); rather, it is the basic quality of our minds’ own structure– its openness to new, unexplored possibility– that will determine our individual ability to move forward. Try not to expend yourselves in surface arguments; just try to acknowledge the possibility of what your ‘opponent’ may be suggesting. The Big Picture will necessarily require the participation of many, and even then it will take an eternity.

Be in wonderment, awe, inspiration and follow your natural curiosity. It’s time for us to stop living like cows and to embrace our full humanity.

We’ll talk again soon.