Article: Preparing for the Collapse of Western Civilization: The Work of Author and Life Coach, Carolyn Baker

Dare we say "No More!"? Can we heal from the abuse of our addicted mindsets conditioned by the Corporate and Government elite?

Carolyn Baker is a psychotherapist whose writings and practices lead us towards healing from this enslaved abuse. These are important writings because if we don't wake up to how we've been conditioned, we aren't going to heal. We will simply stay stuck in the same destructive and enslaving pattern. But, we are scared of letting go. Because of our fears, we escape from freedom as psychiatrist Eric Fromm hypothesizes. Staying stuck in the same pattern means we remain dependent on that which has been documented to be sociopathic (see the movie Corporation). We are like abused housewives feeling dependent upon an abuser for her life. But we must let go of our abusive spouse for our own sake, as well as the sake of future generations.

As Carolyn recognizes in her work, the Earth will not heal until we heal. The healing of ourselves is through seeking empowerment within ourselves. We must commit ourselves to BE ourselves, feel our feelings, take on our responsibilities, relate intimately to our fellow beings, and evolve as true Humans. What we create inwardly will be manifested outwardly. Our health and the health of the planet are one.

We need to create a new paradigm in relationship to ancient Wisdom. According to Carolyn, Western science went off track when it excluded heart and body. She also feels that we need to descend into the dark depths of the Self, where we will find our inspiration and creative magic. It is interesting in that regard that Soul and Soil are but one vowel apart. Could it be that the Soul is our Ground of Being? Dare we go there?

To help cultivate the Soul, Carolyn places heavy emphasis on the arts. As such she uses drums, storytelling, and natural, contemplative walks in wilderness areas to help entice well being and connectedness. Her process helps us to get out of our heads and into our hearts....or, perhaps more appropriately, our entire body. Hers is not a transcending upward movement, but rather a diving deep into the dark depths where we find inspiration and creative magic. Or, as the Hindu Ramakrishna once put it, "Dive deep into that never ending Ocean and you'll find a gem at every instant."

As the vagina gives birth to babies as well as receiving penis and semen, we must surrender ourselves, our substance, to to the dark depths of Mother Nature in order to create anew. As one psychoanalyst described the act of intercourse, it is a death to the "little man." Indeed, the intensity of the orgasm is a death of sort, for we lose all sense of ourselves. This is a sweet surrender for it is through this death that we can conceive a new life. By analogy, to save ourselves and our planet for future generations, we must die to what we are now and surrender ourselves fully so that the new can emerge and shine forth a new day.

It is from within itself that a fetus grows. Once the egg marries the sperm, the egg divides and forms into a fetus, and eventually emerges as you and me. The egg does not take form based on external Gods. Rather, it takes form from within itself. The fetus unfolds from center to periphery with the uterus functioning as its atmosphere and the mother's body as a source of nutrition. Wisdom saturates the process not from on high, but from deep within. (We blinded ourselves to this obvious truth when we gave the power over childbirth over from the women--mothers and midwives--to the Man, surrendering to the authority of the doctors.)

The baby does not receive its commands from an authority above. Rather, he develops from within himself in relationship to his mother's body. This is important, for our development is from within ourselves in relationship to the Earth. What has happened, though, is that our dependence on atmosphere, food, and our true Mother has been replaced by a surrogate mother, the sociopathic corporate state. Anybody who could be led to believe that Nestle's infant formula, sold for corporate profit, was better than mother's milk could be sold any bill of goods! (For instance, that bottled water, selling for more per gallon than oil, for heaven's sake, was better than well water.)

This surrogate Mother is not human and has a disastrous effect on human development. This was illustrated in Harry Harlow's classic monkey experiments, where monkeys were raised either on a terry cloth mother or one that was composed of exposed wire mesh. It turns out that the monkeys raised on the wire mesh mother were not as healthy as those raised on the terry cloth. (It should be needless to say, both did poorly in comparison to monkeys raised by their real mothers). This means a lot to us in our mechanical, boob tube society. In our concrete, metallic and computerized culture, we are raising children who are more neurotic and physically not as healthy as children raised in more natural mothering conditions.

As a fetus is not separate from his mother's body, we are not separate from the Earth. While our function in relationship to our mother is to eventually move out on our own and have our own children, our relationship to the Earth is always dependence. If the Earth dies due to our over-reliance on wire mesh mothers (technology), we will die.

We have gone seriously wrong. Is it because of the alignment of the stars? Who knows? The point is, we have become cancerous in that we see our growth as being without end. In this desire for never ending growth, we are destroying our host's body. Yet, we can orchestrate a spontaneous recovery if we awaken to what we have become. Our task is not easy: to admit we have become a cancer cell. But admit we must in order to grow in a healthy fashion. Or shall we continue in our growth without end mentality and nuke ourselves to death with our destruction of the planet that feeds us?

I prefer the spontaneous recovery for it places power in our hands. Thus I believe Carolyn's works are a goldmine to our healing.