The Dark Knight of Our Collective Soul

And now the dark­ness of these times brings a recog­ni­tion. It is a time for reck­on­ing, or as my friend would say, a “come to Jesus.”

Boys and girls, you and me, all of us, each of us, we have reached a crit­i­cal moment in our story. We’ve come to the part where the would-be hero is faced with a cri­sis, and we know that means there is both dan­ger and oppor­tu­nity ahead.

We’re faced with many crit­i­cal and impor­tant choices, but let’s just pick out two of them and call them Choices A and B. Choice A rep­re­sents the dan­ger part of the equa­tion. Choice B, the opportunity.

Choice A takes us far­ther down the path we’re already on. We know this path well. This is the path of the Drift, that name­less face of the col­lec­tive, pri­mar­ily the aspect that is still asleep in con­scious­ness. This would include the major­ity of us. Most of us are still asleep. How do we know? Look around. What have we got? What are we doing to the planet? What are we doing to each other?

A gifted young man who traces his roots back to the Mayflower, whose fam­ily back­ground and cre­den­tials are ster­ling, a scholar, a seem­ingly “nor­mal” human being, allegedly com­mits a heinous crime by killing a dozen peo­ple and injur­ing sev­eral dozen more. We wake up for a moment and make some noise about gun con­trol leg­is­la­tion, feel the hurt col­lec­tively, feel our con­nec­tion to one another for a moment, and then we fall right back asleep again, and noth­ing changes.

What hap­pened in Aurora was only one inci­dent in a world of inci­dents equally tragic and sense­less. War is tragic and sense­less. Star­va­tion, rape, tor­ture, child abuse, “man’s inhu­man­ity to man” is tragic and sense­less. Tragic and sense­less things are hap­pen­ing all the time, every­where. Because we are asleep. Because we’ve for­got­ten who we are.

And there­fore, we haven’t cre­ated a crit­i­cal mass of awak­ened ones to gen­er­ate a shift in the con­scious­ness of the col­lec­tive. Yet. And so this les­son keeps com­ing back around and will con­tinue to do so until we get it. There will be more tragic and sense­less things hap­pen­ing in the world and in our lives as long as we stay asleep.

Choice A takes us far­ther down this path of the Drift, where we’re asleep and there­fore uncon­scious. Here’s the dan­ger­ous part: In this state, we <em>appear</em> to be sep­a­rate. In our illu­sion of sep­a­ra­tion, we see all the pain of the world and we think it’s hap­pen­ing “out there.” We think it’s about “them” or “those peo­ple” or “you peo­ple.” We don’t get that we’re con­nected; there­fore, we also don’t get that this is about us.

“What­so­ever you do to the least of my peo­ple; that you do unto me.” (Matthew: 25:40)

There are no “you peo­ple.” We are all descended from the same source. Carl Sagan was right. “We’re made of star stuff.” We all trace our ances­try back to Africa, where human­ity was born. And some believe we came from Adam and Eve, hence was born the story of our sep­a­ra­tion, the story of Adam and Eve and their fall from grace. We have lived out that alle­gory for mil­len­nia. Per­haps it’s time for human­ity to write a new cre­ation story.

What we see hap­pen­ing in the world today is the prod­uct of our col­lec­tive con­scious­ness. Together, we are weav­ing the tapes­try we call “life.” And yes, there are those who exer­cise more “power,” at the mun­dane level, than oth­ers in the world. They appear to have the power to destroy or to build. They appear to have the power to bring war or to bring peace.

But don’t be mis­led into think­ing this power to destroy or cre­ate does not also apply to you. We all have and we all exer­cise that power every day. A young man walks into a the­ater and allegedly uses his power to destroy life, and the col­lec­tive is impacted by that choice. What we do with that expe­ri­ence, how we respond, who we become because of it will also tell the story of our col­lec­tive intel­li­gence. When do we become the expres­sion of our high­est nature, of the “all good”? Now would be a good time.

There are 7 bil­lion peo­ple on the planet, and each of us mat­ters. You mat­ter. Your con­scious­ness mat­ters. It’s that sim­ple. It’s that com­plex. It’s com­plex because the major­ity of us still believe in the illu­sion of sep­a­ra­tion. In our sleep­ing state we have momen­tar­ily for­got­ten the truth, which is that we’re all connected.

This is a dif­fi­cult con­cept for human­ity to grasp. It cer­tainly doesn’t look like we’re all con­nected when we go around hurt­ing each other. Nor does it feel like we’re all con­nected. But the truth is, we are. It’s time to become more skill­ful in help­ing our human fam­ily get this one.

In the illu­sion or the dream of sep­a­ra­tion we’re dri­ven by fear, which pro­duces the expe­ri­ence of scarcity. Scarcity and insuf­fi­ciency appear to be the pre­vail­ing winds of our time. This is not the truth. This is part of the dream of sep­a­ra­tion. Out of this dream of scarcity, greed is born. And out of this greed, more scarcity is pro­duced. And if our indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive con­scious­ness accepts this as the way it is, then that becomes the way it is by right of consciousness.

Wel­come to the Drift, home of the fear­ful and the not so brave. And here’s the thing, we all live in the Drift. We are not sep­a­rate from it. But — and this is a big but — we still have a choice about how we’re going to be in it. For we can wake up in the Drift and make dif­fer­ent choices. Every time some­one wakes up in the Drift and inspires some oth­ers to do the same, the Drift trans­forms. And that’s Option B.

Trans­form­ing the Drift 

It’s time for human­ity to write a new cre­ation story. This is the oppor­tu­nity part of the dan­ger and oppor­tu­nity equation.

Let’s step up and admit this is a cri­sis point for human­ity and then be about the busi­ness of sav­ing our­selves. It’s time for our col­lec­tive slum­ber to be over. We get to choose how this thing is going to come down. You get to choose how it’s going to come down for you. And so do I. Based on the choices we make col­lec­tively, this thing is going to evolve or devolve.

We’re at the Dark Knight of the Soul, the inter­sec­tion of Choices A and B, the point where we choose what kind of future we’re going to live into and pass on to the next generations.

What will it be? More of the Drift? More fear, greed and scarcity? More wars and killing? Or will enough of us awaken to form a crit­i­cal mass of awak­en­ing, trans­form the Drift and bring the dark­ness into the light?

The light is already here. There’s noth­ing to do but embrace it, accept it, real­ize and rec­og­nize it as the essence of who we are. Rec­og­nize and embrace our one­ness with all things, see what’s really going on here.

At the level of the truth, it’s all good. It’s the “all good.” Lean for­ward into it. Fall back into it. Get it all over you. Take a bath in it. Eat it from a spoon. Pour your­self into it and drink heartily of it. Drink from our col­lec­tive cup of kind­ness, equa­nim­ity, com­pas­sion, gen­eros­ity and love. It is the very nature of abun­dance, and it’s all ours. There is enough for everyone.

And let us pray for each other. And if pray­ing isn’t your thing, do what­ever is. If activism is your thing, get active. Do what makes your heart open. Do what needs to be done to heal your soul. Do what makes you know the truth about who you are and there­fore who every­body else is. Con­nect. Love. Give. Open. Receive. Be grateful.

And keep doing it until you and the Drift wake up, for it is only by bring­ing the dark­ness into the light of our own love and accep­tance, that we can pos­si­bly begin to trans­form the dark­ness of human­ity. It is time to pass through this col­lec­tive “dark knight” and emerge as the real­iza­tion of our high­est selves.

We send our love and prayers to those who suf­fered loss in the tragedy last week­end and to those still heal­ing from its wounds.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Do leave a com­ment below. For per­sonal con­tact, reach me at judith@judithrich.com

Tagged as: batman, choice, choices, dr. judith rich, journey path, Rx For The Soul, Soul, Spirit, spiritual journey, spiritual path, The Dark Knight, The Journey, the Path