The salvation of the dark place.

The new age-ascendance movement has come to liken a souk; a fantastical bazaar that diminishes, effortlessly, into a chiaroscuro of courtyards. Romanesque arches herald uncertain passageway - conduits along which skeins of tantalizing aroma unfurl. All around, the air is a mite overburdened, laden with the fragrance of weltanschauung, the ever-diverting notes of whimsy.

The spiritual lives of many in the west are caught up in the cacophony of this marketplace, this new age capital. We sell, we sample and we haggle. Disparate practices are sold by the measure, alongside ostensibly complimentary unguents. Some claim a panacea status, while others are modestly piecemeal. Channeling, bodywork, astral projection, re-birthing, depth astrology - the octave of choice seems almost endless.

The ascension / 2012 movements are one such spice stall: a panoply of every spiritual hue and philosophical shade imaginable. There are the big hitters who, armed with their Okudagram/ Star Trek influenced websites, promulgate a ream of a priori cosmic certainties; they tantalize us with depictions of our soon-to-be realized Übermenschen status; assuage us with vignettes of our eventual – senatorial - position, alongside our galactic brethren.

Conversely, there is that contingent actively dowsing the planet for an optimum place to bug out. For these individuals, change is definitely coming from without (yet not on a dulcet, edifying super wave, but on a universal-scale Thor’s Hammer.) They are the get out of Dodge lickety-split brigade: the axis –shift, coronal mass ejection sleeve pullers. However, unlike the Peak Oil ‘doomers’ or the hell-in-a-hand basket climate change prognosticators, the light is still extant with these folks; it is just that it is way over yonder, to wit, wherever their cob-construction yurts are wont to break sacred ground. The geographic ‘sweet spot’ chosen by these groups differ - the one delegation may emphasize a liking for a certain aquifer over another - yet they all seem to share a common liking for higher ground (preferably away from the tidal surges they envision pummeling coastal areas.)

On filtering the blogosphere, two things seem certain: unsurprisingly, the new Eden will not be in Burkina Faso. And - regardless of where, exactly, utopia may effloresce - there will, no doubt, be a dearth of plumbers once you get there.

To complicate matters even further, the twenty-twelvesters are now faced with an entirely new set of individual-cum-generational distinctions. Ones that are wont to germinate throughout the (above) ideological spectrum, diversifying the masala mix ever further. In the latter part of the twentieth century, a meme around a group of so-called ‘indigo’ children sidestepped into the cultural fray, the new-age newspeak. These fledgling individuals are ascribed with certain psycho-behavioral traits which are supposed to make them unique – a meta-generational cadre apart from the hollow, overly-ascribed Generation Y moniker.

Everyone likes to feel special, and by extension, it is entirely plausible that a generation of parents, who, after becoming acquainted with the psychic Nancy Ann Tappe’s ruminations on a new evolving spiritual vanguard, decided that, in an act of subjective validation (once-removed), that their little darlings were, indeed, a cut-above the norm. However, now that these individuals have all grown body hair and are bopping to Lady Gaga, yet another clairvoyant critter has emerged: to wit, the crystal child – a classification-cum-salve that some hawkers are using to re-frame the ADHD and autism epidemics of recent years.

What’s more, as we go chuffing down the paradigm line, at each and every station, we are being constantly regaled with spiritual newbies: wave after wave of intuitive empaths, star-seeds and walk-ins (the latter of which, according to the signs, are particularly welcome - especially in your average, suburban hairdressing salon.) Consequently, it would seem that the New Age movement has, like P.T. Barnum, ‘something for everyone’; now that we are all sporting new ‘handles’ and monikers, we are assured that the Forer Effect will leave no spiritual warrior behind. Anyone who is ostensibly ‘fleece-able’ – whether tender lamb or sinewy ram – can now catch forty-winks within its soma-esque embrace.

For many caught in the New Age amber, it would seem as though there is an innate need: to wit, a longing for a diverse, muddling system of psychic taxonomy that would make Carl Linnaeus proud. Moreover, it is an innate tendency that, in my mind, needs to undergo a gentle redress. If we are to spend all our time scrutinizing the quarks and the neutrinos, we surely lose sight of all larger matter; moreover, precisely the matter at hand: that is to say, that we are all one – pink or indigo, plaid or polka-dotted. These sub-groups (such as those mentioned above) are well placed to create psychical dichotomies; in doing so a sizeable proportion of the human spirit would find itself sequestered and placed within the metaphorical iron-lung of ego-identification. It brings to mind the scene from the Monty Python motion picture, The Life of Brian; the one delineating the petty antagonism between The People’s Front of Judea and the Judean People’s Front.

With so much light being worked, it seems to me that we are rapidly losing our sense of the innate value of the dark. A flashlight has little luminosity if one so happens to be standing under a noonday sun; by extension, the corona of a given light-source can only be accurately determined by a contrasting lack of light. An overabundance (or misuse) of the wrong light vibration can be fashioned into a mantle that may, in turn, be detrimental to personal and societal growth. Oftentimes, the fallout is a tendency to obviate necessary person introspection and any subsequent acknowledgement/ integration of the shadow archetype.

As we enter the second decade of the twenty-first century, the elephant in the room is rapidly transmogrifying into a hirsute behemoth. Egregious tectonic stresses are, like it or not, tugging our psyches – resource depletion, runaway climate change, overpopulation, water scarcity and food crises, to name but a few. These challenges are all-to-real, concrete phenomena; physical limitations that are not to be diminished by wishful thinking alone - whether by techno triumphalism or mellifluously chanting in a circle. Not to be deterred, however, some New Agers are wont to view environmental Armageddon as illusory, the result of an emergence of collective negativity. Others (like the twenty-twelve, get out of Dodge contingent –above) believe that catastrophe can be avoided by the judicious use of a passport. Lastly, there are those among us who believe that a cosmic, gene-altering super wave is somehow going to enable us to miraculously ascend our species’ collective responsibilities to our planet, our karmic debt to our terrestrial mother.

Now, I do not doubt that over-utility energy technologies may exist and that, as a consequence, the hallowed laws of thermodynamics may be in for a tweaking or five. However, rather pointedly, on the spiritual plane there can be no such free lunch. There never can be as there is little utility in avoiding the consequences of our actions - whether collectively or individually. Like so many maxims, there is an essential, gnomic reality in the phrase you reap what you sow.

It is posited that an overwhelming majority of the world’s mythologies are but off-shoots of a singular stamen, a central story, if you will. The writer Joseph Campbell used term monomyth to circumscribe what also came to be known as The Hero’s Journey. It is a tri-partite quest, delineated by the departure, initiation and return stages, respectively. The titular hero embarks on his adventure by leaving the mundane world behind. A series of edifying initiation challenges lie in wait – the ultimate mastery of which enable him to return, to go back to whence he came.

I posit that, as a species, we are at the threshold of the final stage in the departure phase, entitled “The Belly of the Whale.” It is a juncture that marks a nadir for the hero, who must endure the enveloping, crepuscular shadow of death, of nullity, to be reborn – and thus start his journey proper. The belly of the whale is ‘a sphere of re-birth,’ something that Campbell asserts is a ‘worldwide womb image.’ This is especially meaningful due to its birthing association. It would seem that, to continue on our way, we must acquaint ourselves of the void and utilize the strength that comes from brushing against the tapestry of melancholy. Endure we must what the Spanish mystic, Saint John of the Cross, named the La noche oscura del alma (the long night of the soul.) Astonishingly, this darkness may shortly cease to be merely a spiritual metaphor; indeed, it would seem as though it is about to bleed into the societal and civic realm.

We must steel ourselves. A concrete power down is inching its way towards us whether we like it or not. Already, throughout the western world, city councils are turning off streetlights in order to save a modicum of cash. It is conceivable that, before too long, we may get to gaze on our cityscape skylines and apprehend an altogether different vista - one devoid of usual interpolating signatures of light; one where dark, obsidian structures, evanesce into equally dark skies.

There is a re-ordering that needs to take place before we may transition to the more expansive realm of universal or cosmic consciousness. We need to learn the lessons of the biosphere before we may attune to a galactic super wave. When the salmon runs diminish and become naught but a memory, there is a chance that we may finally emanate a truly planetary harmonic for the first time. The fact that it will be an anthem born of grief will not diminish it one iota. Indeed, it is starting to seem that only by grieving may we finally exceed all previous limitation.

Contrary to the expectations of the many in the New Age movement, what we need is descension. All else is tantamount to spiritual chicanery. Rather, instead of soaring, Icarus-like, to a new tomorrow, we must prepare to sink to the psychical abyssal plain – that unforsaken place, frequented only by the strange and the unfamiliar. Then – and only then, in that density, in that absolute darkness - will our own light-working devices begin to attain some functional value. Like the angler fishes congregating thereabouts, our lights will at last be a thing of intrinsic worth, enabling us to discern the light of another.

It will matter little whether we are crystal child or indigo, intuitive empath or walk-in: when we see that pin-prick of luminescence coming towards us - that faint light, of another spirit, in the darkest of all possible darks – only then will we realize that we are one.