Humanity's Rite Of Passage: A World Tended By Adults (Carolyn Baker)

For one who has perception,

A mere sign is enough.

For one who does not heed,

A thousand explanations

Are not enough

Hajji Bektash Wali

13th Century Persian Mystic,

Oct. 12, 2009 (CarolynBaker.net) -- During the past twelve months, it has been reassuring to see vast numbers of individuals in the United States awaken to the reality that life on this planet has profoundly shifted and will never be the same. Many have radically altered their career goals, spending and saving patterns, and their long-term priorities. When I witness such changes in human behavior, I am encouraged, and I become cautiously optimistic about our ability to read the signals and respond wisely.

At the same time, however, the majority of citizens, greatly enabled by mainstream media, remain clueless about what is happening around them, or even adversely in their personal lives. Marinated in denial and entitlement, they naively await a "return to normal" and persist in doing more of everything that hasn't worked, isn't working, and never will. So I must ask, how is that humankind, supposedly "the measure of all things" can behave with such recalcitrance and oblivousness to reality?

For the past two decades, alongside engaging in exhaustive research on empire and all that has brought us to civilization's collapse, I have been a student of myth and archetypal psychology, as well as indigenous traditions. The fact that for the most part, these topics are foreign to our culture as a result of Western civilization's inculcation, speaks volumes about our behavior toward ourselves, other humans, and the earth community. So-called "civilized" humanity has been exiled from its rootedness in nature and the organic process of human development so conscientiously observed and nurtured by indigenous peoples. Consequently, the culture of modernity is not only disconnected from the earth, but in a large sense "developmentally disabled". An integral aspect of the disability is modern humanity's disavowal of the initiatory process in the care and training of children.

As I have explained in my book Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse, most indigenous cultures have elaborate initiation procedures for their young people during the age of puberty; however, in the modern world, one does not have to be a member of an indigenous community to experience initiation. In fact, Carl Jung asserted that initiation is an archetype or fundamental motif inherent in the human psyche. That is to say that something in us wants and expects engagement in the initiatory process, not only at the age of puberty, but throughout our human experience. The process is so fundamental, Jung believed, that even if we do not participate in a formal rite of passage ceremony as we transition from youth to adulthood, our human journey will provide us with initiatory events for the purpose of deepening our humanity and our connection with the cosmos and something greater than the human ego.

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