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Sunday, February 20, 2011

Egypt, the riots and the soul

A young man is "escorted" by police outside the Peace Cinema in downtown Shanghai during the "Jasmine Revolution" protest.

Large scale events with a strong emotional content inevitably affect the human collective mind. What effect are the curent riots in the Middle east having upon us, including our lives as individuals?

In recent weeks we have been seeing images of unrest in Middle Eastern countries. At first it was Egypt where the riots began to take hold, but now the unrest has spread - to Libya, Morocco, Iran and elsewhere.

As a person currently residing in Hong Kong, and with strong connections to China, I have been very interested to note crowds also gathering in Beijing and Shanghai yesterday. Hong Kong's South China Morning Post (you can see the headline here www.scmp.com but you need a subscription to open the story) has reported that there was an online call for a "Jasmine Revolution" in 13 cities in response to the Middle East democracy protests. Predictably, the Chinese authorities have reacted immediately to disperse the crowds, with tens of thousands of police and state security agents mobilised. Universities in Shaanxi and Jiangsu provinces closed their gates to prevent students from leaving campus. Certain rights groups have stated that as many as 80 Chinese citizens, including human rights lawyers, have had their movements restricted, such as being detained at police stations, put under house arrest or forcibly removed from their homes by police.

Although the protests were dispelled relatively quickly, they appear to be a wake-up call to Chinese authorities. There have recently been rising tensions in Chinese society over a number of issues including high inflation, inequality (especially the rich vs poor gap) and injustice.

It is interesting that this has happened in China, because state media have been ordered to tone down reports of the Middle East protests, and knowledge of them is not widespread. Comments and postings on the internet have also been carefully monitored, with many references removed by moderators; with other pro-government posts posted by the so-called "50-cent army" - an estimated 30 000 internet "police" who are paid a small amount for every posting they make on the net. Nevertheless, it is impossible to block every story in every language, and any internet savvy youngster can circumvent the net censors relatively easily.

All this is relatively standard "analysis", and you can read as much elsewhere in the mainstream media. My focus here however is the effect of such mass emotional disturbances on the collective consciousness field of humanity.

If you have read any of my books or academic articles you will be aware that my perception is that consciousness contains non-local potentials. Your personal awareness is infused with a constant stream of "messages" or information from sources outside your conscious awareness (unless you are a “sensitive”). When there are large-scale emotional events they inevitably affect the subconscious of individuals right across the planet. The more closely connected you are to the region or group affected, the greater the effect tends to be. The earthquake in Sichuan in 2008 affected the collective "Chinese" mind more than, say, the French collective. Having said this, the deaths of 100 000 people in such circumstances will affect even the French (though some cynics might argue nothing would shift the French).

The night before news of the first Egyptian riots first made the media, I had strong images of rioting coming through my mind's eye just as I was drifting off to sleep. I didn't see the location, but I knew there were some disturbances coming up.

It did seem to me as if the people involved were Americans, but sometimes the mind relays information of such things in ways that are slightly inaccurate. In this case the idea of "American" pertains to the collective consciousness of the incident, which is related to rebellion against authority, and the USA was founded on just such a consciousness.

Right now you are being affected by the “energy” of these events.

In my own personal healing journey, I have had certain issues pertaining to my older brother emerging this week. This personal drama of mine mirrors the oppressor/oppressor aspect witnessed in the Middle East and China. With male siblings, the older brother tends to "sit on" the energy field of the younger brother when he is born. At some level the arrival of the younger brother represents a threat to the older, as the younger one gets more of the attention and love, being more needy. Quite often the younger brother will actually carry a part of the older brother’s consciousness field, or his emotional energy. The same can happen in any dominant/subservient relationship.

The essence of all these dramas is the need (or desire) to rebel. The appropriate expression of power is perhaps the single greatest lesson of humanity at this time in its psycho-spiritual evolution. We all give our power away to others, and in many ways. Most often this is an unconscious process, and we give ourselves away because there is a payoff. Commonly we feel helpless or powerless, and we allow someone to control or "possess" us. When we reach a certain level of "maturity" we come to a realisation that the power dynamics we have allowed to unfold no longer serve our spirits. We want change.

Yet those whom we have given our power away to typically do not want to release their power over us. In terms of collectives or groups, governments and the rich and powerful want to retain that power and status. For individuals, those we have given power away to have some vested interest in the control they have over us. That arrangement varies greatly from case to case, but the controller may be afraid of abandonment, may be seeking sexual gratification, or may simply view their subject as "owing" them (such as with their children or those they have "helped").

We all have issues with giving our power away. The key is expressing the rebel impulse responsibly. This includes becoming aware that much of the anger we feel towards groups that have power over us - including governments - are not really the ones we are angry at. Those who have strong anger towards their fathers will tend to project this energy at bosses, corporations and governments. Conspiracy theorists are often driven by an unconscious anger towards their parents. They refuse to acknowledge that they are far more powerful than they realise, and that in many cases they have given their own power away to others and/or the system. Rather than take back their power, they sit around computers and rant an rage against any conspirator they can imagine.

All one has to do is go to another country’s web space and look at the conspiracy theories there to see that most conspiracy theory is nonsense. For example, many Chinese conspiracy theorists like to imagine that western “powers" are behind the unrest or problems in their country. During the Tibetan rots in 2008, a visiting Canadian ice hockey team was violently assaulted with metal bars in Shenzhen in southern China – many thousands of kilometers from Tibet. The motive apparently was revenge for the Tibetan uprisings. The absurdity is obvious. The Canadians had nothing to do with the Tibetans’ grievances towards the Han Chinese.

What then is appropriate action for the rebels? I cannot generalize in terms of collectives, as many protests and uprisings in history have been successful and have assisted in the development of humanity, while others end in bloodshed and achieve little. The one thing I am certain of is that whatever action is taken, it should be taken with awareness of what is the driving force or motive behind the actions. Of course, in the heat of the mob uprising, there is often little chance of this happening.

Whatever you are feeling during the current uprisings, whatever is circulating through your mind, through your dreams and your emotional body, you are being affected deeply by the events in the Middle East, whether you know it or not. Take note of how you give your power away to others, and also to how you blame others for your sense of powerlessness.

What are your feelings?


Marcus

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