By Caitlin Johnstone | Waking Times
2020 is the year of Julian Assange’s extradition trials, the Kafkaesque proceedings by which the US government is attempting to imprison the WikiLeaks founder for the rest of his life as punishment for exposing US war crimes. Assange started an innovative leak publishing outlet on the premise that corrupt power can be fought with truth, and corrupt power responded by silencing and jailing him. They’ve proved him right about everything, right in front of everyone.
2020 is the year people began protesting police brutality, and police responded with ferocious and widespread acts of brutality. The massive deluge of video footage from these brutal police responses went viral all over the world. The argument about police brutality culture in the US police state was won clearly and decisively, right in front of everyone.
2020 is the year the most powerful government on earth responded to a pandemic virus with the largest upward transfer of wealth in history, leaving massive global corporations with record-high stocks while killing small businesses and throwing the rank-and-file public to the wolves after handing some of them a paltry $1200, all while failing spectacularly to address the threat of the virus itself. This financial abuse is happening right out in the open, right in front of everyone.
2020 is the year this same government’s electoral process is being exposed in front of everyone for the sham it has always been, as two corrupt racist right-wing warmongering dementia patients who’ve both been accused of rape are placed head-to-head in what will inevitably be the single dumbest presidential race in the nation’s history. Neither of these two men is capable of forming a coherent sentence, and their presidential debates will make them a laughing stock of the whole world, right in front of everybody.
2020 is the year the aforementioned pandemic virus brought more and more awareness to how insane it is that the most powerful nation on earth lacks a normal healthcare system and the basic social safety nets that are afforded to everyone else in every other major country on earth.
2020 is the year increased public consciousness was brought to racism and race relations, as the cultural inertia against actualizing insight humanity experienced decades ago finally begins to truly fall away. The gaping racial wounds caused by centuries of white supremacism are finally being dragged into the light of consciousness before the people who’ve resisted looking at them because they have benefitted from white supremacism. The ugly things our society has kept hidden from itself are getting brought into the light in front of all of us.
2020 is the year of the raging debate about “cancel culture” as a critical mass of people begin to shove hard against injustices and perceived injustices in the world. Some factions shove hard against things they find objectionable, other factions shove back hard against their shoving, and in the back-and-forth movement, long-stuck objects are becoming unstuck as all the commotion shoves more and more previously unconscious dynamics into public awareness.
Everywhere you look, the common thread across all plots and subplots of the story of 2020 is a revelation. The movement from the unseen to the seen, from the unconscious to the conscious.
Even the coronavirus itself seems to be doing this to people on an individual level. Over and over again I’m seeing anecdotes from people who’ve been badly stricken with the virus repeating the same thing: that it has made them seriously reevaluate their lives and where they choose to put their energy and attention during their time in this world. People are forced by the way Covid-19 punishes needless movement to sit still with themselves and reflect on just what they’re doing here on this planet.
It reminds me of the “ordeal medicines” or “ordeal poisonings” in shamanic traditions around the world that didn’t have psychoactive plants. In ordeal poisonings, you receive a toxic but non-deadly substance that puts you through a terrible existential ordeal which causes you to re-evaluate your life, from which you emerge with a newfound appreciation for life and a brand new perspective on things. This same sort of phenomenon is arguably happening around the world on a mass scale right now. Many have long had the thought that the world would be improved if a critical mass of people experienced psychedelics; 2020 may be the year where humanity received something ultimately even better.
What I’m getting at with all of this is, maybe try and relax a little bit. I know everyone’s really scared and stressed out and some are in danger of losing their homes or their loved ones, so obviously this suggestion can only go so far and apply to such an extent. But, to the best of your ability, perhaps try and relax. This might just be what it looks like when a thinking animal suddenly finds itself being hurled into expanded consciousness by forces it doesn’t understand and cannot control.
Anyone who’s done serious inner work knows that it is seldom pretty when things we’ve kept hidden in our subconscious begin moving into consciousness. But it’s also the only way things can heal since you can’t fix what you can’t see. It’s always awkward and uncomfortable to uncover things you’ve kept unconscious; that’s why you kept them there in the first place. But it’s also the only way forward.
This may be all we’re seeing but on a mass scale. It ain’t pretty, but it’s what’s needed for healing to take place.
So, maybe just try and relax. Maybe invest less energy in stressing and bickering about masks and cancel culture and the US election and if the left or the right are going to get us all killed, and see if you can enter into a state of deep listening. The world is undergoing a transformation, and it’s taking us in a direction that none of us can predict because we can only see what we can see. Maybe relax as much as you can and try to enjoy this weird and exhilarating tumble from the unseen into the seen, from unconsciousness into consciousness.
May all be revealed. This is the authentic human being’s foremost desire. May all be revealed, from our own innermost subconscious dynamics to power structures that affect the whole world. Let it all come out into the light.
About the Author
Caitlin Johnstone – Rogue journalist. Bogan socialist. Anarcho-psychonaut. Guerrilla poet. Utopia prepper.
The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff she publishes is to subscribe to the mailing list for her website, which will get you an email notification for everything. Her articles are entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking her on Facebook, following her antics on Twitter, checking out her podcast, throwing some money into her hat on Patreon or Paypal, or buying her book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.
