Kaleidoscope of Postmodern Life, Part Fourteen: Blind Hope vs. Real Hope … Chiron Is Martyr for The Sins of the Fathers
Prometheus Brought Us Blind Hopes
Another aspect of this is that Prometheus is said to have “caused blind hopes to live in the hearts of men.” Indeed, we are also now seeing how blind was our reliance on technology and the vaunted but vain “rational mind”—which has now been seen to be a rationalizing mind.
For we realize this self-congratulatory thinking has been keeping out uncomfortable truths and building illusory, manic Atman projects of escape from the consequences of our actions. None of which, we are now finding out, are capable of working.
Enter the Centaur: Real Hopes – Chiron
But to jump ahead. There is hope in the Prometheus myth as well. There is shown a way forward for humanity, which at this particular time in history appears to have been prophetic. For Prometheus is saved from his sufferings by the Centaur, Chiron. Chiron sacrifices himself—Christ-like—taking on Prometheus’s suffering and dying in his stead.
Return to The Centaur
Earthy, Sensual, Noble
The Centaur — half human, half animal — does not, like Icarus, paste on wings and try to separate from groundedness in the Earth. No.
Centaur qualities are earthy, sensual, sexual. They embrace the noble qualities of
the horse … reminding us that as primal beings, early humans, we were noble humans … as they say, a bit ethnocentrically, “noble savages.” We once stood, sure-footed and tall, and we walked confidently upon the Earth, knowing we belonged here.
Wounded Healers, Shamans, Gardeners of Consciousness, Poets … Brave and Foolhardy Journeyers Into the Unapproved and Hidden
Traditionally associated with intoxicants and with the bacchanalian, centaurs can see into other realities, nonordinary ones. They are open to altered states of consciousness. They are not averse to looking into their deeper natures, their “undersides,” their unconscious; that is how they came to be
one with Nature in the first place.
Indeed, Chiron is also known as the wounded healer and is associated with the shamanic. Being, like Chiron, healers, centaurs are skilled in both physical and mental health. Thus they are wholistic and psychotherapeutical. They are philosophical. Plato was one. Walt Whitman was one. They are poetic.
Mystics, Scapegoats, Natural … A-mused and A-musing Not Deluded and A-mazed
They are scapegoated, like Chiron was, for the sins of society, and in modern times they have scornfully been referred to as “hippies” and
“beatniks” — but they include the bohemian types of all times. Being rooted in a more fundamental nature or reality they are mystic. Jesus was one. Following a “different drummer,” as it were, they are the Wayseers.
Connected to the real source of truth in Nature and the Divine,
they are in touch with their muse … and are both a-mused and a-musing…but they are not into the maze of culture, the matrix, they are not fooled or a-mazed.
The Centaur is completely in tune with her and his planetmate-nature, the Divine and Natural
order—as in the Jungian and mystic understandings of individuation as being a re-uniting with a fundamental and earlier reality — returning home, humble and prodigal-son like.
The Opposite of Ordinary Folks…Who Build Stairways to Heaven and Towers to Their Vanity
This is the opposite of most folks who spend their lives seeking to vainly build stairways to heaven, Towers of Babel to the divine, to be muscular Nietzchian supermen, or to struggle up Wilberian ladder-style paths for imaginary achievements and to an understandably elusive “enlightenment.”
We Are the Centaurs, My Friends
This self-sacrificing tendency in humans I will be talking about at length at the end of this book where I point out how we need to stop acting out and begin taking back the projections we make onto the Unknown and
thereby stop the Promethean cycles of
suffering going on for millennia. We need to, like Chiron, take upon ourselves the “sins of the fathers.” As Tom Waits sang it, “I’m gonna take the sins of my father (mother, brother, sister), down to the pond…I’m gonna wash them.”
Exactly that. We must make the heroic sacrifice of taking inside ourselves those perennial urges to act out on others what was done to us. In environmental terms we must make the sacrifices of lowering our standard of living
and cutting back on the lavish appetites and lazy indulgences fed
by excessive technology, cultural trinkets, and superfluous commercialism, which other generations were allowed to take to the limits of their times. For if we do not, then there will be very little left for future generations—assuming there’ll be any.
These cultural “achievements” — wrought of burning of fossil fuels, release of fiery energy from the atom, and despoiling of natural resources — all of them in some way rooted in the theft of fire long ago,
which started it all, must be let go of. We
must refrain from being driven by these addictions and substitutes for actual felt experience, take the “fire” within instead of burning it up without.
So in
physical terms we must bring those excessive urges home within ourselves and ground them in Nature, bring them back into our physical bodies, we must be Centaurs. And within our bodies experience the discomfort of such a monumental millennial turnabout.
So, no. This is not easy or comfortable.
Continue with Real Hope Lies in Pandora’s Jar and Return of the Centaur … Since the Last Time Was 1961, It’s None Too Soon: 21st Century and Its Discontents, Part 15
Return to A Re-Visioning of “Civilization” in Light of Impending Apocalypse … Prometheus Made us “Civilized” … And Doomed: 21st Century and Its Discontents, Part 13
No. Not easy or comfortable.
Continue with Real Hope Lies in Pandora’s Jar and Return of the Centaur…Since the Last Time Was 1961, It’s None Too Soon: 21st Century and Its Discontents, Part 15
Return to A Re-Visioning of “Civilization” in Light of Impending Apocalypse … Prometheus Made us “Civilized” … And Doomed: 21st Century and Its Discontents, Part 13
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Today, May 17, 2012, this article below confirms what I’ve been hearing…and from a reputable source:
excerpt: “…The nuclear disaster that would result is beyond anything science has ever seen. Calling it a global catastrophe is no exaggeration….
“If this catastrophe occurred, regardless of policy and politics, all 440 nuclear power plants throughout the world would be forced to shut down, yet our descendants no matter what will have to carry the risk of radioactive materials in the nuclear waste repository for 100,000 to 200,000 years.
“This is a long amount of time to conceive of, so let me put it in context. It is said that our anscestors might have made their journey to the rest of the world from South Africa about 100,000 years ago, and crafted our first tools of the Stone Age about 20,000 years ago. We will need the same amount of time that our human species has existed for in order to safely deposit radioactive material! How come do we envision the poison to be transferred on to our descendants for so long and how will we find a way to indicate the location of the radioactive repository? Are we sure that the hundred radioactive repositories throughout the world be protected from severe seismic events for this incredible period of the time?”
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/303-211/11472-fukushima-daiichi-it-may-be-too-late-unless-the-military-steps-in
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Hello micheal,your analysis of apocalypse is tremendious.however how does Early life begeath present reality?how would your ananlysis and or information help in averting obnotious prevalance in the society.
Hmmmm. Well that question would require an entire book to answer. Luckily I’ve written a few that do address that. And others in my field of psychology have as well. I think my book says the most about helping with the ignorance in society, though, as being an anthropologist, political activist, as well as psychologist, I find I’m one of the few that’s addressing what might actually be done…as well as explaining why it hasn’t been done so far. My book, Primal Renaissance: The Emerging Millennial Return addresses your questions the most directly. It’s available for free on-line…I think if you click this link and check the chapter titles, you’ll be able to narrow in on some of the answers you’re seeking. Let me know if you have any more questions. Here’s the link and thanks for you comment. http://www.primalspirit.com/primal_renaissance_book.htm also in another book, I just realized, I have written a more direct answer in one chapter and what follows it — http://www.primalspirit.com/falls_thesis_chapter1.html
Ok, thinking more about it — the link I just gave and the chapters that follow explains how early life affects present reality. The end chapters of this book and that of Primal Renaissance go into how this understanding might change society.
However, if you’re talking about the early life of humans, that would be another question.
My dear man, you have out done yourself on this one!!! Thank you so much for sharing it with ME! Kudos Michael!
Thank you, my friend. It’s good to hear that you’re seeing this too, and its importance. Gotta tell you, though, this cluster of ideas was supposed to be one post, but it ended up being three. I think the next two are more important, with the next one being more specific about where there is hope. Stay tuned: Next — Return of the Centaur and Open the Jar, Pandora! and after that — What We Look Like to the Gods .. Icarus Is Flapping and the Gods Keep Laughing. I think you’ll like them. thanks again for you comment.
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