THE EMPTYING OF PANDORA’S BOX

The Eruption: The Underworld Surfaces
Low vibrational, fear-based beliefs and emotions pop up from the subconscious into the conscious mind and we re-experience them. We contract away from the negativity or penetrate into it to dissolve it. As the vibratory rate of the emotions and physical body increases, subconscious blocks, which are fear-based and low-frequency, can no longer remain suppressed in the high-frequency environment. They respond like popcorn to heat, exploding from their hiding places one by one up into the conscious mind. As they do, old memories surface and personal dramas and traumas may occur as beliefs in limitation and negativity are unconsciously re-enacted.

Since fear beliefs are always based on polarization (eg, “I have to be quiet because loudness causes punishment” or “I have to be loud because quietness causes me to be steamrollered”), we experience an increase in dualistic thinking, conflict, name-calling, us-vs.-them scenarios, and a teeter-tottering destabilization of things that used to be in balance. Secrecy is a thing of the past. Scandals, taboos, sexual and physical abuse, and skeletons in the closet are revealed in public. Pessimism increases. We experience shame, grief, terror, hatred, and the darkest corners of our psyches. Societally, we experience literal explosions of various kinds in the world—from corporate greed to acts of terror—as the lid comes off the pressure cooker.

We can penetrate into the old patterns to understand them and release the fear—make the hero’s journey through the underworld—or we can stall and resist the process and contract into fight or flight tactics, which eventually exhausts us, and THEN we work to understand and release the fear.

Fight or Flight Tactics
Just as it looks like we might relieve ourselves of some of the fear we’ve carried for lifetimes, our ego steps in and screams, “I’m not ready to die!” And it fights for preservation of the old way and vehemently avoids letting go and trusting. We plunge into survival behaviors, the ingenuity of which is staggering. If we’re fighters, we retrench, refortify, make ourselves seem invulnerable and large in our SUVs and big homes, and we take on the world with aggressive workaholism and fixed mental belief systems. We seek security through callous domination of the environment and others; patriarchal power structures like government, the military, business, and religion desperately and cleverly exert influence to maintain familiar controls.

We champion the ego, rugged individualism, and patriotism, become self-righteous, boastful, bullying, and narcissistic. When we start to realize that we can’t control everything, we just act tough, cynical, sarcastic, and belligerently apathetic and disrespectful, making it cool and right to be the dispossessed. We’re interested in angry music and street talk, being  famous and powerful, drinking strong coffee, looking good, having extreme makeovers and flashy possessions, making big money, and saying and doing inappropriate, amoral things if we want to.

If we’re conflict-avoidant, we resuppress threatening ideas, resist change, crave safety, drink herbal tea, and retreat into our cocoons, food, perfectly decorated homes, and relationships with mommy and daddy or parental surrogates. We pretend there’s no problem and avoid upsets by maintaining cheery pollyanna views, seek direction from gurus and strong authority figures, or escape into nostalgia for the past, future trends, or fantasies of other realities and worlds.

If we’ve chosen avoidance, as we see that passive victim behaviors don’t work, we may develop addictions, fall into depression and various kinds of mental, emotional, and physical paralysis, or even commit suicide. We can experience ailments with themes related to aggression, visibility, rigidity, witholding, failure, and explosive release, like OCD, skin conditions, strokes, aneurisms, bone disorders, arthritis, Alzheimers, organ failures, and heart attacks.

Disillusionment, Disintegration, and Chaos
The old fear-based way of knowing the world is breaking down and along with it, outworn, fear-based habits, constructs, and institutions are crumbling and dissolving. Old methods now fail to produce results. This is the death part of the death-and-rebirth cycle, and it means ego death for the individual—the way we identify ourselves is changing from a limited self to a very expanded one. It also means that anywhere society acts egotistical—dominating politicians, outrageously paid CEO’s, or the church protecting pedophile priests—must give way to new soul-based systems.

Many people panic, thinking this is the end of the world. Yet it is not—it’s just the snake shedding its skin. As the old forms dissolve, we experience disillusionment. We don’t know with certainty who we are or what we can rely on. We experience fuzzy boundaries which leaves us open to invasion of all kinds—by germs, viruses, allergens, dominating friends, thieves, stalkers, illegal immigrants, terrorists, and nonphysical entities. We experience a rise in all forms of insanity, as we look outside for meaning and find none. External rules are dissolving in favor of living by inherent universal principles of natural harmony and order. We are interested in themes like chaos theory, armageddon, death and life after death, the rise and fall of past civilizations, reincarnation, transformation, and evolution.

Facing Fear and Dissolving It
We can resist the inevitable only so long. Eventually, we must face our underworld and walk through it. As we do this, we seek to penetrate into the subconscious and the unknown to find understanding. We often look for help at this point, whether from a therapist, healer, minister, guru, twelve-step program, or the angels. As we clear our fears, many of the things we thought were important and the ways we made life meaningful, pale and become useless, even boring, and we let go of them.

Whether we become more superconscious willingly by eliminating fear, or unwillingly by exhausting ourselves and surrendering to a higher power, we must now drop into a state of stillness so we can permanently transform fear into love. We’re interested in themes like the hero’s journey, monsters and otherworldly creatures, ghosts, angels, forensics and crime-solving, archaeology, ancient mysteries, forgiveness, psychotherapy, spiritual healing, and a return to religion and morality.

The Revelations: Fear has been ruining my life! Fear is just twisted-up love! I can clear the fears that have been paralyzing me.

The Choice: I will not live in fear in any part of my life. I will face fear, enter it, understand it, release it, and receive the love that’s been blocked from flowing.

Copyright by Penney Peirce