Shamanism for the Age of Science: Awakening the Energy Body - Kenneth Smith 2018

Ethical Models
Building a Creative Life

Models emerge directly from the collective consciousness, and some may say they are archetypal forms within the unconscious waiting to emerge into the light of day. For example, Jung offers a viewpoint whereby symbols with universal relevance exist in the collective unconscious. Archetypes are rarified forms rather than something “. . . stiffened into mere objects of belief.” While personal unconsciousness is part of the collective unconsciousness, it only “rests upon a deeper layer.”²⁰

As we have access to the unconscious, bringing this into personal and collective consciousness is the work found in using imagination and learning. That is, the collective unconscious is universal human imagination, to use shamanic reference. The deliberate use of imagination allows personal and group consciousness to become more aware of the unconscious realms. This provides the opportunity to express the archetypes into our daily, conscious world.

Even if inspired by an individual, a model must have some type of relationship to the world outside the individual for it to have pragmatic use. Group consensus is an effect, or even a use, of collective awareness. At the same time, don Juan considers group agreements to be “skimming” as we forget our constructs are arbitrary arrangements and consider them to be reality itself.²¹ This also applies to ethical standards.

There are ethical divisions between the major religions and within each one individually. When values clash, so do people. Wars have started over very simple things: the color of skin, the shape of eyes. These days, the topic of abortion often lends itself to a heated environment. Based on differing views, Right to Life activists have killed Right to Choose adherents. That is more than ironic. And mud-slinging, arm-waving, and epithet-calling galore can result from putting someone who thinks physician-assisted suicide is ethical in the same room as someone who doesn’t.

There is also a growing ethic in some circles that holds high the value of non-interference. People may then avoid taking action in the attempt to let the entire world be free and to allow the infinite to be just that. However, non-interference can be a horrid distortion of deautomatization in which anything is allowed to occur. All too often what has been learned is cast aside. While the effects of global warming on this finite planet may be just one experience of an infinite variety of experiences of all creation, we need to be responsible creatures while we are trying to be open.

What is the intrinsic human value of allowing genocide? Perhaps non-interference reflects an innate recognition of the need to avoid abuses of power but somehow is subverted into something else. Staying locked open seems to be an exotic form of fundamentalism. These concerns make it clear that both the open and closed positions of consciousness are part of ethical conduct.

The Toltec model is a warrior ethic. Ethics are shaped by the perception that we are in a constant struggle. But the struggle isn’t against people; it is continuous engagement with the barriers that keep us from freedom, from reaching core and, perchance, from traveling beyond the human dimension.