© jcestnik/Flickr
On February 22nd, 2011 a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck the center of Christchurch, New Zealand. The force from the earthquake popped glass from windows, leveled buildings and laid waste to almost half of the city. New Zealand's former premier, Helen Clark, has even remarked that "[t]he building damage [she's] seen compared with Haiti." People are now evacuating the city in droves, with thousands forced to relocate, and the remaining citizens are without water and sewerage in some parts. Unspeakable tales have found their way into the media of people, trapped under buildings, sending text messages in desperation to the outside world, pleading for help, help that was ultimately too late. At this point all hope is given up for finding any more survivors; the families of the missing are just looking for closure now. The citizens of Christchurch are beat, shell-shocked, and some are only able to cope in the lowest possible ways. The situation in Christchurch is beyond tragic.
According to geologists, the fault that set off the Christchurch earthquake had laid dormant for thousands of years and only recently awoke last September when a magnitude 7 earthquake struck the outer regions of the city. This initial jolt caused considerable damage, but nothing on the scale of what was experienced recently. These earthquakes in Christchurch have caught geologists by surprise, since the major New Zealand fault, the Alpine faultline, is nowhere near Christchurch. Something is definitely going on here. The planet seems to be in the grips of a veritable pandemic of earthquakes occurring all over the globe - in places we never thought possible before. It's as if this recent earthquake in Christchurch sprung from the shadows of the past: a traumatic past that humanity has largely forgotten.
Now when it comes to traumatic events, it's not uncommon for an individual to push such episodes out of conscious memory. As humans, we seem to have this uncanny ability to forget the sting of natural disasters, wars and other personal traumas experienced during our lives - sometimes to the point of amnesia. This ability is a very good defense mechanism to keep us functioning at a basic level - a little too good, in fact, because it leads to PTSD, personality fragmentation, and other mental disorders. These traumas, whether inflicted by an individual psychopath, a ponerized government, or even natural disasters, often stay with us, haunting us if left unprocessed. They act as shadows on the soul, distorting our very perception of the world, and even the memory of the original traumatic event itself.
But while as individuals we may carry these shadows of trauma - these emotional wounds - so too does humanity harbor shadows of long forgotten cataclysmic and apocalyptic events in the collective subconscious. This was a primary point made by Immanuel Velkovsky in his book Worlds in Collision. In the chapter titled 'Collective Amnesia', he writes:
© UnknownWorlds in Collision by Immanuel Velikovsky.
It is an established fact in the learning about the human mind that the most terrifying events of childhood (in some cases even manhood) are often forgotten, their memory blotted out from consciousness and displaced into the unconscious strata of the mind, where they continue to live and to express themselves in bizarre forms of fear. Occasionally they may be converted into symptoms of compulsion neuroses and even contribute to the splitting of the personality.Velikovsky believed that these terrifying events that ancient people experienced are recorded in our myths and folklore, but are largely misunderstood. He believed that a certain collective amnesia had a way of distorting these artifacts of history into mere allegory, delusions of the primitive mind, or even the inventions of pure fiction. To bring the reality of these stories to life would take something of a monumental effort, he claimed. And the truculent attacks on his work by establishment science later proved him correct in this regard. Nobody has succeeded, to this day, in making the collective traumas of history fully conscious to the milieu of our times. We still live in a vexed world controlled by the shadows of our traumatic past.
One of the most terrifying events in the past of mankind was the conflagration of the world, accompanied by awful apparitions in the sky, quaking of the earth, vomiting of lava by thousands of volcanoes, melting of the ground, boiling of the sea, submersion of continents, a primeval chaos bombarded by flying hot stones, the roaring of the cleft earth and the loud hissing of tornadoes of cinders.
[...]
It is a psychological phenomena in the life of individuals as well as whole nations that the most terrifying events of the past may be forgotten of, displaced into the subconscious mind. As if obliterated are impressions that should be unforgettable. To uncover their vestiges and their distorted equivalents in the psychical life of peoples is a task not unlike that of overcoming amnesia in a single person.
But as traumatic as this recent earthquake in Christchurch was for the citizens there, this is not the sort of collective trauma that Velikovsky referred to - he was talking about something much worse. To put things in perspective, this recent earthquake in Christchurch was a mere muscle twitch compared to the epileptic spasms of the Earth that Velikovsky believes were recorded in myth. These myths describe global catastrophic events, the kind we have no real context for today. Nevertheless, these small wounds - these isolated natural disasters of our time - may still trigger a memory or two from the collective subconscious of some moment in history when there was no place on Earth where the ground didn't shake.
Anyways, enough beating around the bush. Is it me or does anybody find this Christchurch earthquake a tad symbolic? While the state of the Western (i.e. Christian) world appears to be shaken to the core from recent crop failures, food shortages, signs of economic Armageddon, and protests consuming the Middle East and elsewhere, the town of CHRISTchurch experiences a devastating earthquake, shaking half the city to the ground. Even the spire of the iconic Christ Church Cathedral toppled over burying 22 tourists under the rubble. Keep in mind that this all happened on the 22nd day of the 2nd month of the year 2011. Yes, the two's do get a bit dizzying. Does anybody find this beyond coincidental, as if the Universe was trying to send a message to humanity, and specifically the Western world, about the direction we're headed? I find this just a bit perplexing.
Then again, maybe I shouldn't. If we live inside of a conscious Universe, why wouldn't it at least try to warn those people of Western nations, specifically America, who spend their days locked in a corporate prison; who come home to an equally barred world of Reality TV, MSG laden foods, and psychotropic medications. The majority of those in Western nations have long become immune to the suffering of the world whether by choice or design; no small peep from the plundered nations of the Third World or anywhere could reach their blackened souls at this point. It would certainly take something much bigger to make people realize that Nero is already getting out his fiddle. As Laura Knight-Jadczyk has often said:
Sometimes the Universe whispers in your ear. If you don't pay attention, it then sends you a telegram. Then, if you don't listen, it sets up a billboard in your life. If you still don't listen, the billboard often falls on your head.Well, for those citizens of Christchurch the proverbial billboard appears to have landed on their heads in a very real sense! But will the rest of the world take heed at this sign showing that civilization's days are numbered? Probably not, but at least the Universe can't say we weren't sufficiently warned. So what else is in store for us? As it turns out, there may be a "deeper" meaning to this message of Christchurch than what we've already supposed.
While I must warn this is all quite speculative, Robert Felix of Iceagenow.com recently posted an email from one of his readers who put together a pretty strong case for Christchurch sitting atop a budding volcano. Take a look at the image below of the three dormant volcanoes forming the Banks Peninsula to the south of Christchurch. Playing connect-the-dots, one can see that the founders of Christchurch may have picked a really bad spot to build a town from a geological perspective!
© Neil Love/IceagenowBanks Peninsula, New Zealand, showing "extinct" volcanoes. Christchurch appears to be next in line.
© Nathanael Boehm/FlickrSand liquifaction from the 22 February earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand.
While there may be nothing we can do to stop the coming onslaught of cosmic mayhem, in whatever form it takes, we can still learn to process our own emotional traumas so as to see the world, objectively, as it is. By clearing the clutter of our inner landscape, only then can we truly see our way out of this mess. This is the first step. Without this ability to see things as they are, the world will always appear as a devil, monster, or some adversary to overcome; we will continue to misunderstand science, history and even our own path of evolution - both individually and collectively. This is what the psychopaths in power want: to keep us trapped in a carnival world of illusions and learned helplessness, which buffer our traumas as Rome burns and the sky falls. So while our situation may be dire, it is certainly not hopeless. As many of us have discovered, one of the easiest ways to process old trauma is to learn how to truly Breathe again.
Try it... you might just change the world.
Just to let you know of some beautiful things happening in Lyttleton, close to Chch: [Link] & [Link] & [Link]
People taking their destinies in their own hands, doing what positive they can in the moment. Some don't even need to know about the grand scheme of things (even though that does help) to do what's right!