Awakening to the Dream of the Earth, Part IX
by Bill Plotkin
Friday, November 12, 2021
This is the ninth part of an eleven part Musing (one per week).
Cultural Therapy and the Dream of the Earth
Speaking bluntly, Thomas Berry, a lifelong student of world cultures, referred to the current, near-universal commitment to industrial progress, unlimited growth, and a consumer society as “the supreme pathology of all history.”[1] A valid response to such a pathology, he says, must include remedial treatment:
The entrancement with industrial civilization...must be considered as a profound cultural disorientation. It can be dealt with only by a corresponding deep cultural therapy.
...At such a moment a new revelatory experience is needed, an experience wherein human consciousness awakens to the grandeur and sacred quality of the Earth process. This awakening is our human participation in the dream of the Earth....We probably have not had such participation in the dream of the Earth since earlier shamanic times, but therein lies our hope for the future for ourselves and for the entire Earth community.[2]
I hear Thomas saying that the cultural therapy we need springs from revelatory or visionary experience, an awakening to the dream of the Earth. The Earth’s dream is what Thomas describes as “a mutually-enhancing human-Earth presence.” To realize this dream, he tells us, we must individually journey into the mysteries:
More than any other of the human types concerned with the sacred, the shamanic personality journeys into the far reaches of the cosmic mystery and brings back the vision and the power needed by the human community at the most elementary level....Not only is the shamanic type emerging in our society, but also the shamanic dimension of the psyche itself. In periods of significant cultural creativity, this aspect of the psyche takes on a pervasive role throughout the society and shows up in all the basic institutions and professions.[3]
What Thomas refers to as “the shamanic dimension of the psyche” is what I call the Dark Muse-Beloved, the West facet of the Self, the dimension of our psyche that revels in night, dreams, destiny, death, and the mysteries and qualities of the underworld. This is the facet of our human wholeness that guides us on the Descent to Soul — the facet also known as the Guide to Soul, Magician, or Psychopomp. As explored in chapter 2 of The Journey of Soul Initiation, this “shamanic” dimension of the psyche is one of the two (along with the South facet) that are least developed in the contemporary world and that must be cultivated if the Descent is to be fruitful.
Given that our awakening to the dream of the Earth calls for a journey into the mysteries, our cultural healing requires a means to facilitate that journey. Thomas suspects we have not had such a methodology since “earlier shamanic times,” but he is not advising us to return to or recapitulate the methods of older traditions but rather to generate our own contemporary ways. This, precisely, has been our goal at Animas Valley Institute: to create a never-before-seen Western and nature-based way to participate in the dream of the Earth by way of the Descent to Soul (and the journey of soul initiation, more generally).
I spent much of the first half of my adult life as a psychotherapist, but our core work at Animas does not offer a new or old form of therapy, at least not for individuals. Rather, what we offer is a form of what Thomas called a “deep cultural therapy” — for societies that have crumbled, folded into themselves, and become traumatized due to the loss of the practices and ceremonies that create true Adults and Elders.
The distinguished environmental lawyer Gus Speth, founder of the World Resources Institute, also spoke to the need of what amounts to a deep cultural therapy:
I used to think the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and climate change, I thought that with thirty years of good science we could address those problems. But I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy...and to deal with those we need a spiritual and cultural transformation, and we scientists don’t know how to do that.[4]
Adapted from Bill Plotkin, The Journey of Soul Initiation: A Field Guide for Visionaries, Evolutionaries, and Revolutionaries (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2021).
