Navigating the Storm of Global Change

Part 3b: The Dance of Dark and Light

This is Part 3b of a 4-part essay series. I’m arguing in Part 3 that the current darkness of our global situation can be understood as a collective initiatory crisis that demands we pass a crucial test to graduate to our next level of development.

In Part 3a, A New Angle on Conspiracy Theories, I offered a multidimensional perspective to help explain how so many people from so many different sectors of society seem to be involved (mostly unconsciously) in the development of an oppressive global system of control. The following essay, The Dance of Dark and Light, builds on the argument I developed in Part 3a, so if you haven’t read that one yet I recommend you do so before reading this one.

The first two essays in the series are available here:

• Part 1, Birth of the Aquarian Age

• Part 2, Changes in Technology and Spirituality

---

Part 3b: The Dance of Dark and Light

Paintbrush Warrior, by Mark Henson

When a friend first introduced me to the notion of ‘dark’ energies on the subtle planes, I was intrigued, but found the concept a little foreign to my Western consciousness. Deep down I suspected it to be a fear-based projection. My spirituality up to that point had been centered on the realization of oneness, in which all aspects of reality, however distorted, are recognized ultimately as parts of the whole. In contrast, the framework of ‘dark’ and ‘light’ energies sounded to me at first like a dualistic perspective. I had of course encountered many ‘inner demons’ within my own psyche, and most of my healing process was devoted to the alchemy that would occur through exposing those parts to the light of awareness. But I mainly viewed that work as an inner psycho-spiritual process, rather than one involving contact with ‘external’ or ‘quasi-independent’ subtle energies or entities. In over twenty years of spiritual practice, I could honestly say I had never encountered dark energies or entities on the subtle planes.

But at some point that changed. My spirituality became more Earth-centric, involving work with plant medicines and spending more time in nature. I also participated in a weekly ‘subtle activism’ practice group that focused on sensing subtle energies underlying world events. Whatever the cause, at some point I found myself becoming more sensitive to the energetic dimension of reality. I became better able to ‘read’ the energy of any given person or situation, underneath the words and appearances. It helped that my wife Kate had a strong innate capacity in this regard. We would frequently tune in together to the energies we were sensing in various people and situations in our lives, helping each other to calibrate our perceptions. Very often our impressions would be virtually identical, which greatly increased our confidence in their validity. This would be amplified when the unfolding of outer events would precisely reflect our perception of the underlying energy dynamics, as often occurred. We began to call this way of perceiving ’shamanic sight.’

I distinctly recall the first time we sensed an unmistakably dark energy. It was associated with a man we knew who on the surface appeared extremely affable and loving. Yet occasionally his behavior seemed oddly inconsistent with his outward personality. Tuning into this dynamic one evening, Kate and I perceived the presence of an extremely intelligent, yet powerfully malevolent dark energy that was clearly connected with this man’s energy field. It was so disturbing I got up and locked all the doors of our house. But there was such a gap between our usual experience of this person and the darkness we were picking up that we found it hard to trust our inner sensing. So we asked another energetically sensitive friend for his opinion, and he sensed the same malevolent presence. When yet another friend independently described the energy as psychopathic, we were ready to accept the truth of our own perceptions. We carefully disentangled ourselves from the relationship.

I have been calling this mode of perception ‘shamanic sight’ but I don’t want to make it sound exotic. We all sense energy all the time. We all know the experience of walking into a room or turning down the wrong street where the energy feels ‘off’. It’s an instinctive capacity we have inherited as a means of survival. We see it perhaps most obviously in the response of dogs or small children to people who have strange energy. Dogs and children have not been conditioned to sit on their instinctive reactions, so they respond directly to people with weird energy with aggression or fear. As adults, most of us have learned to suppress this innate knowing through politeness or some kind of ideological overlay. Spiritual people who identify as good and loving and who try to see the good in others, for example, may push down their instinctive capacity to perceive darker energies. Others strongly affected by trauma may tend to see dark energies in places they are not. The more we heal, the less there is in the way of our capacity to perceive the energetic reality as it is.

Over time, we can learn to pay more attention to the underlying energy we sense in a person or situation than the words they present. Energy never lies. It is the naked expression of intention. Reading energy becomes an especially important way to navigate reality in times like ours when there is so much deception and manipulation taking place in the public sphere. A movement may espouse noble ideals, yet we can sense it being animated by an energy of divisiveness. An Internet platform like the MetaVerse may look sparkly and enticing yet read energetically like a trap. A policy may sound reasonable in theory but feel like a weapon. We need to be able to recognize the energetic signature of the dark wherever it appears — whether on the political right or left, established socio-political structures or movements of resistance, members of our own immediate family or our own weaknesses and blind spots — and respond accordingly.

It’s true that our perceptions are constantly being manipulated by media and algorithms designed to feed outrage and exacerbate division. We do need to engage our rational and analytical minds to ground our intuitions in empirical reality, more than ever. Yet it is also important at this time that we not override our primal instinctive capacities to perceive that which endangers us.

Of course it’s complex. Everything is a mixture of light and dark, including ourselves. One of the most significant contributions of Western psychology has been its understanding of the dynamics of projection — our tendency to see in others the disowned or repressed parts of our own psyche. Working with our own unhealed parts and their reactions is foundational to recognizing our own filters and staying in integrity.

Yet I want to avoid reducing these forces of dark and light to merely intra-psychic phenomena, which depth psychology, true to its Kantian roots, is wont to do. I understand them more as universal forces woven into every level of a multidimensional cosmos of which we are an integral part. It is the holographic or ‘holonic’ view of reality being comprised of wholes that are simultaneously parts of greater wholes. The dynamic interplay between light and dark forces recurs in fractal patterns at every level. I find this perspective helpful to more easily recognize these patterns at whatever level they manifest, within or without, personal or collective.

---

The mystery of the dance between dark and light has occupied the subtlest philosophical and theological minds throughout history. It is a subject of infinite complexity and nuance, providing endless grounds for debate. At the risk of being overly simplistic, I offer the following basic concepts as a foundation for clarifying the dynamics taking place in our world today.

The forces of light and dark can be seen as complementary polarities inseparably woven together in an eternal, dynamically balanced, cosmic dance. Like the universal polarities of life and death, day and night, masculine and feminine, the forces of light and dark define and complement each other, while constituting together a greater whole. The Yin-Yang symbol elegantly captures this eternal dynamic.

In the state of nature, these forces appear to be seamlessly intertwined and balanced, as in the way wild animals can be both sublimely graceful and ferociously violent, or the way nature Herself is breathtakingly beautiful but also, at times, devastatingly destructive.

As depicted in the Yin-Yang symbol, there is light in the ‘dark’, and dark in the ‘light’. Here we start to peer into the mysterious way these forces dance together in a dynamic alchemy that spurs maturation, development, and evolutionary change. Note, for instance, how the threat of destruction continually drives creative evolutionary advances on both sides of a predator-prey relationship, bringing forth progressively stronger, faster, and more intelligent forms of life. Or consider how forest fires are necessary to trigger the release of seeds from certain trees, spurring new growth.

Indigenous and ancient cultures embodied this understanding in the form of initiatory rites of passage that subjected initiates to intense confrontations with potential suffering and death as a means of catalyzing the development of adult capacities and consciousness. Adolescent males in Maasai warrior tribes, for example, were traditionally required to hunt and kill a healthy adult male lion to earn their place in their communities as adult men. Put yourself in their position. Whatever mix of feelings you might have about the assigned task, if you were to have any chance of coming through it intact, you’d better be damn sure you recognized that, to the lion, you are a source of food. To meet and overcome the challenge of the lion’s ferocity and strength, you would be forced to summon similar qualities within yourself. By passing the test of the deadly encounter, you would graduate to a fundamentally new and more adult level of consciousness.

Discerning the difference between natural forces of death and destruction from those we might call ‘anti-evolutionary’ or ‘evil’ brings us into an immense realm of theological speculation. Here I will simply suggest that the distinction is related to the rejection of the natural balance of light and dark, and the drive to suppress, control, avoid, or eliminate the principle of death and destruction itself. We are confronted with a profound paradox. On the one hand, our efforts to minimize the destructive elements of life arguably create the very conditions of safety and leisure that allow the flourishing of civilization and culture. Yet the more we try to remove ourselves from the natural laws of death and destruction, the more these forces tend to resurface in grotesquely exaggerated forms.

Consider in this regard how violent encounters were, by all accounts, a much more integral feature of the lives of most indigenous peoples (in the form of hunting for food or skirmishes with other tribes) but took place on a relatively human scale. In contrast, many modern humans spend their whole lives largely insulated from direct forms of violence, yet the slaughter of animals in industrial abattoirs and human beings in modern warfare occur on a scale and in a manner that can only be described as monstrous.

We can arguably trace this arc of development back to the earliest human impulse to leave our dependence on the provisions of nature and to store supplies as the foundation for more permanent settlements, leading to the emergence of civilizations. (Though there are many theories regarding the origins of our move away from nature, from the anthropological to the theological to the esoteric.) With modernity, human faith soared in the ability of science, reason, and technology to eradicate disease, eliminate oppression and tyranny, and end human drudgery, even while new horrors arose on an unprecedented scale. And in our times, the dying days of the modern era, the drive to transcend nature and inoculate ourselves from all forms of harm or even inconvenience has reached obsessive levels.

Consider, for instance, the increasingly ubiquitous and intrusive medical and pharmaceutical interventions at every stage of life, including the dramatic rise in Cesarean delivery rates, the overprescription of antibiotics and antidepressants, the ‘over-medicalization’ of aging, or the elaborate medical procedures at the end of life that in many cases result in prolonged but arguably less humane dying processes. Or consider the culture of convenience and instant gratification to which so many of us have become accustomed, enabling us with the click of a button to have whatever we want instantly downloaded or delivered to our doorsteps in a matter of days. Or the obsession with safety that has come to dominate modern parenting and education, involving phenomena such as ‘helicopter parenting’, participation trophies, safe spaces, and trigger warnings, in which children are increasingly protected from every imaginable danger or emotional discomfort, no matter how unlikely or trivial the potential threat (see Jonathan Haidt’s The Coddling of the American Mind). No one is arguing with the virtue of protecting children from genuine harm or alleviating suffering in the sick. Taken to the extreme, though, the impression is one of human life becoming progressively cleansed of all challenge, one long Magic Bouncy Castle Ride with no sharp edges, no bumps or bruises, no possibility of harm, and no real risk.

And all the while a new and grotesque global threat looms in the form of a growing digital cage of centralized control, into which an increasingly depleted, de-vitalized, de-sexed, and dissociated humanity is being both lured and corralled.

As mentioned earlier, most ancient and indigenous cultures incorporated rituals of initiation that required initiates to encounter dangerous aspects of life as a way of catalyzing their development and preparing them for adult responsibility. Such cultures typically made a point to ‘honor all the gods,’ including those who presided over the realms of death, war, and chaos, to preserve awareness of the natural balance and to guard against human hubris. Although certain counter-cultural traditions have sought to keep this wisdom alive, in the dominant rational-scientific culture of modernity we dispensed with such practices and perspectives long ago. Instead, we have largely proceeded on the assumption that we are cleverer than nature, and can engineer technological solutions to insulate ourselves from every danger.

But rather than bemoan our lack of wisdom, or view our situation merely in tragic terms, we might consider the possibility that something more profound is taking place. As others have argued, the modern journey into separation may not represent simply an evolutionary wrong-turn but a crucial stage in a longer arc of development. From this perspective, the archetype of initiation is seen as having been sublimated rather than lost, and as now re-surfacing primarily at a collective level. Humanity itself is being initiated into a fundamentally new level of power, and perhaps into a vastly expanded playing field in the cosmic drama.

As in most traditional initiations, humanity as a whole confronts an antagonist that represents a genuine threat to its survival. With our multi-faceted global metacrisis, humanity faces a modern day Hydra, an encounter with any of whose monstrous heads threatens to trigger widespread systemic collapse. But in addition to such long-recognized dangers as nuclear annihilation or ecological unraveling, we must now sharply emphasize a new and even more perverse threat in the form of a trans-humanist ideology — openly acknowledged as the default belief system of the Silicon Valley elite and explicitly incorporated into the World Economic Forum’s vision of a “Fourth Industrial Revolution” — that holds that evolution inevitably entails humanity’s fusion with, or replacement by, artificial intelligence. When considered alongside the many other ominous signs of attempts by power elites to build a global network of centralized control, we face the dystopian prospect of becoming ensnared within a totalitarian system enforced largely by artificial intelligence.

The trans-humanist agenda represents the apotheosis of the human impulse to remove itself from the natural balance of light and dark and to try to transcend, through technological means, the principle of death and decay itself. Rather than leading humanity to literal extinction, however, the trans-humanist vision threatens to effectively colonize the human species by progressively welding human bodies and minds to the apparatus of the machine. From a multi-dimensional perspective, I believe we can recognize in this vision the maneuverings of a dark, anti-evolutionary force whose ultimate aim is to subjugate humanity in an automated global system of totalitarian control.

As horrifying as it may be to confront this possibility, summoning the bravery to do so will almost certainly constitute an integral aspect of humanity’s initiation into the coming era. Like primal humans banding together to take down a giant wooly mammoth, we are being asked to awaken our collective intelligence and courage to meet and overcome this new threat. Except instead of spears we need eyes — millions of eyes — to see the danger, and the guts to choose a different path. And, like the Masai warriors, if we are to have any chance of making it through this passage intact, we better be damn sure we recognize that, to this force, we are a source of food.

Modern humanity has been conditioned by countless dystopian sci-fi movies to think that our colonization by machines is inevitable. From a multi-dimensional perspective, this kind of messaging can be understood as a form of dark propaganda, transmitted via the greed and cynicism of power brokers in the entertainment industry. Like all forms of propaganda used by armies throughout history, the intention is to weaken and demoralize the population targeted for invasion. “Give up now, resistance is futile.”

This is not true. Resistance is not futile. The truth is that, in our depths, human beings are not separate from the creative mystery that birthed the entire universe. We have the power in every moment to make choices in alignment with our deeper nature of freedom. We can design technologies that support our core human values and enhance the wellbeing of the entire community of life on Earth. Indeed, through the innovation of blockchain, a global technological infrastructure with revolutionary implications for human liberation is already well under development.

The path we will choose will be determined largely by the quality of our collective consciousness. And we have arrived at a crucial, albeit dangerous, inflection point: a breakdown in our familiar order that could precede a breakthrough to a new level, a creative awakening no longer inspired merely by a spiritual dream but now compelled by the force of humanity’s survival drive.

For the insight into the dynamic balance between light and dark cuts both ways. As dystopian as the threat of digital totalitarianism may be, it is serving to awaken a primal creative force from deep within the human soul, encoded with the integral solution patterns of the future. In this way we can start to see how the forces of dark and light conspire in a deep, hidden, and complex way to advance the cosmic drama.

The Eternal Battle of Good and Evil, by TheIllusiveManX

I see a digital cage being built around the hierarchical structures of the dying Piscean Age. It is an attempt by many at the helm of these structures to create a system of control whereby access to the benefits of society is made conditional on compliance with a singular, narrow worldview and its demands, enforced increasingly by artificial intelligence. Whether the mechanism is vaccine mandates, Internet censorship, ideological purity tests in mainstream institutions, programmable government-issued digital currencies, or imminent digital IDs and social credit systems, the pattern is the same: increasingly coercive tactics by central authorities that demand the relinquishing of individual sovereignty as price of entrance to participation in society.

Yet as the boundary lines are drawn, it is forcing the most creative and vital energies out of mainstream society. The stifling ideological conformity increasingly characteristic of mainstream organizations is resulting in a purge of creative talent and a hollowing-out of many once rightfully revered institutions. Consider in this regard the growing contrast between the scripted, formulaic presentation (and dwindling audiences) of most legacy media platforms today versus the innovative content and strikingly authentic tone found in many of the long-form podcast shows currently exploding in popularity on Youtube, Spotify, and other sites, or in much of the writing available on independent platforms like Substack. Although this trend raises new issues (such as reliability of information and quality control), it’s clear that the creative energy is flowing toward the decentralized structures of the future.

Recall that from an astrological perspective we are just at the very beginning of a more than 2000 year era governed by the Aquarian archetype. (See Part 1 of this series: Birth of the Aquarian Age.) Aquarius is associated with individual creative freedom and genuine equality for all. Its core organizing principle is horizontal, peer-to-peer, decentralized networks, not vertical hierarchies of centralized power. Aquarius is power to the people, not elites.

In this context, the attempt to build a global system of centralized control can be seen as a final grasp for the ring of power by the elites of the dying Piscean Age. Notwithstanding the very real and imminent dangers of authoritarian use of AI, I find it improbable that any centralized top-down power structures will survive for long in the Aquarian era. These structures have already become highly dysfunctional. As we move deeper into the Aquarian Age they will likely come to be regarded as relics of the past, as irrelevant to the humans of the new age as the institutions of the once all-powerful Catholic Church were to us moderns. Indeed, one of the main (albeit hidden and unconscious) evolutionary purposes of these efforts seems to be to strangle the remaining life out of the dying Piscean Age systems, ensuring a mercifully rapid demise.

The dark has one major disadvantage. It cannot rest on reality. It is constantly working against the natural unfolding of the whole. It has no existential ground of support. It must therefore engage in a continual activity of deception, a perpetual manipulation of the real. This way of being is inherently exhausting and unsustainable. Left to its own devices, it becomes a victim of its own incoherence. It always ends in ruin. It will be no different this time.

Pragmatically, navigating this passage entails two essential steps.

First, we need to be able to recognize the energy signature of the dark well enough so that we don’t get caught in its traps. For me this includes taking whatever steps we can to place ourselves beyond the reach of the developing digital control system. This requires us to access our courage to NOT COMPLY with its demands — to cancel ourselves before it cancels us. We have to grow beyond our identities as good boys and good girls, quietly cooperating whilst digital manacles are being fastened to our wrists and ankles.

Practically, this may mean: getting off Big Tech platforms and onto alternate systems that keep us out of the all-seeing eye of centralized AI; expanding our sources of information beyond traditional media; developing income streams independent of mainstream sources; investing in digital assets like bitcoin; moving out of the cities and closer to the land; proactively boosting our physical, mental, and spiritual health, and so on.

Of course, to the extent that your livelihood is invested in the mainstream system, it will be harder to take a stand. Yet the apparent security to be found in the disintegrating structures of mainstream society is increasingly illusory. Many current jobs will soon be replaced by AI. And the ever-tightening grip of technocratic control is rapidly suffocating whatever remaining creative-life force is left in these institutions. Better to get out sooner on your own terms than forced out later on theirs.

Last one out’s a rotten egg.

I see this first step as the masculine aspect of the initiation. The healthy masculine, in both men and women, is needed to recognize in no uncertain terms the emerging totalitarian threat, and to bravely stand up to it.

This step is necessary to create space for the feminine aspect of the initiation, the birthing of the new structures of the coming era. The healthy feminine, in both women and men, is needed to listen to the creative intelligence of the Earth, to nurture the embryonic forms of the emerging Aquarian consciousness, and to unleash the power of birth.

The ever-rising intensity of the global crisis — and the widespread confusion in how to make sense of it — is driving many to turn to deeper sources within to access the stability and guidance needed to navigate the storm. In this liminal period between eras, the breakdown in collective sense-making is transforming the public square into a Tower of Babel. We are increasingly being forced to choose between psychosis and gnosis. This dilemma can be understood in terms of the transition from the Piscean Age system of knowledge mediated via top-down structures to the Aquarian Age paradigm of direct knowing for everyone.

But while there are many transpersonal sources of wisdom we might turn to for guidance, I believe one has special relevance for our times: the Earth. Contrary to our modern disenchanted perspective, the Earth is not simply a mute, passive backdrop for the human drama. Nor is the Earth a mere victim to the onslaught of the machine. What I sense in my deepest inner listening is that something new is arising from within the Earth herself, as though she is stirring from a long slumber. She is waking up, starting to stretch, slowly spreading her limbs and opening her wings. She is mobilizing, becoming aware of her own agency. This process is not merely connected to, but indeed the profound source of, the deep feminine awakening that has been taking place in humanity over the last hundred or so years.

The Earth innately knows the way to the next level of her and our evolution. By attuning to the Earth, we become receptive to creative inspiration about our own next steps. To follow that inspiration is to walk our path of greatest service and deepest joy. This path of joy-filled service is unique to each of us but, because it arises from a unified field of creative intelligence, is also in harmony with the guidance given to others. Just as we are seeing an organic convergence of ideas sourced from the dark conspiring to develop a global system of digital totalitarianism, so too is there developing (albeit mostly under the radar of mainstream attention) an organic convergence of ideas sourced from the light, quietly laying the foundations for a new era of unprecedented creative expansion and freedom.

No matter how fast or comprehensive the processing power of AI becomes, it will always be a step behind the spontaneous movements of creative joy. AI may be able to predict and therefore control the mechanical functions of our conditioned mind but, not being connected to source consciousness, it will never be able to replicate the joy of authentic creativity itself. The threat of colonization by the machine therefore represents a profound evolutionary catalyst for humanity to align more deeply with Earth’s creative intelligence. Only an eruption of creativity carrying the infectious frequency of genuine joy will ultimately be powerful enough to disrupt the control of technocratic totalitarianism and attract the allegiance of humanity’s soul.

From a purely pragmatic perspective, with AI slated to soon take over most of the mechanical functions in the economy, the quality that will most distinguish human activity from AI is authentic originality. This will create an economic incentive for more and more people to focus their efforts toward actualizing their unique creative gifts, as these offerings will be the ones most valued.

At the same time, one of the great promises of the blockchain economy, or Web 3.0, is its potential to bring financial sovereignty to billions of people in the Global South who have traditionally been excluded from the central banking system. Consider the creative explosion possible when these populations suddenly gain access to financial instruments and resources. Because of this (and other reasons), many believe that Web 3.0 has the potential not only to radically disrupt our current centralized systems of control but also to empower, catalyze, and fund creativity on a global scale.

Do you see the pattern, the dance of dark and light?

As the Piscean Age draws to a close, anti-evolutionary forces are making an audacious play for power by attempting to install an AI-powered system of authoritarian control. Yet every move they make to gain greater control tightens the leash that chokes the life out of the very systems they seek to lead, accelerating their collapse. This increasingly compels the creative forces to abandon the dying hierarchical systems and invent new decentralized ones that represent the exact inverse of totalitarian control.

These new systems, working together, have been called by some the Synarchy. The Synarchy describes a self-organizing system based on the natural synergy between people and groups acting from creative inspiration, rather than coercion. To me, the concept of the Synarchy sounds like how I imagine humanity would self-organize if we were living in resonance with the organic wisdom of the Earth.

Thus we arrive at the conclusion that the dark threat of digital totalitarianism is, at least in potential, an initiatory catalyst for the awakening and flowering, through us, of Earth’s own creative intelligence. This is the promise of the Age of Aquarius.