When those first imaginal cells appear, the caterpillar’s immune system immediately kills them. But as more imaginal cells show up, the immune system can no longer fight them off. When the cocoon is finally closed up, caterpillar soup begins bubbling inside. That little living being is neither here nor there…another fine metaphor to help us grasp why our contemporary culture seems amorphous and incoherent, the backlash more vicious to our calls for transformation.
But we humans can transform ourselves. We’ve done it countless times before during our two legged history to achieve the fully functioning rational minds and scientific technological savvy we enjoy today. Along that evolutionary way, however, we have had to diminish our intuitive and spiritual capacities, forget our ability to dream while awake. We’ve adopted a set of modern assumptions about how life works that may be our undoing:
the world is a soulless machine
the planet’s resources are limitless
non-human life has no feelings, no intelligence
we humans stand alone separate from nature
creativity belongs only to the gifted few
human health has no connection to a healthy environment
our brain lives only in our head and rationality is all that matters
we have nothing to learn from our ancestors
community celebrations are trivial, unnecessary
we are in control and can invent a technological solution for every mess
money equals happiness. . .
. . .these assumptions have led to a perilous situation in which our life support system – the planet – has been brought to her proverbial knees.
But these assumptions are simply that. My son says, “Mom, you know assumptions make asses of you and me, don’t you?” So rather than be an ass, we can make fewer assumptions, but assumptions, like stereotypes, are sometimes useful. We might need a few.
The South American prophecy of the eagle and the condor sheds light on some new possibilities. This prophecy says that cultures run in 500 year cycles – or thereabout – and that around the time of Columbus, the paradigm of the eagle
took precedence over that of the condor. The condor represents a spiritual, intuitive, heart centered and creatively connected way of living. The eagle represents an intellectual, rational, analytical, technological and scientific way of living which, though rich in many respects, also supports domination and disconnection from nature. The prophecy suggests that this is THE time when the eagle and the condor MUST FLY in the same sky for the human species to save itself.