Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Ahead of Print.
The present era is a particularly unique time in the history of the human species: The next glacial phase of the earth’s climate cycle should be beginning, but instead a manmade crisis of global warming is intensifying, a global viral pandemic is underway, and an archetype of awakening and wholeness is activating. Here, I focus on the origin and meaning of this archetype, as well as on my own experience with it. I conclude that it was created during the birthing process of the human species, which took place during the ongoing 2- to 3-million-year-old cycling of the earth’s climate. This traumatic birthing left an archetypal trace that was always forgotten yet is ever remembered in the collective unconscious. Now, this archetype is activating, creating a powerful alteration in consciousness similar to a peak experience, but which is often mistaken for a call to prophecy. The mounting anxiety that accompanies this, together with converging crises that threaten survival needs, makes individual and collective progress toward greater wholeness and psychological maturity difficult in these last days.