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Disaster Psychology
Why We Must Go Within
Engaging in the meta-crises that threaten our survival.
Updated June 29, 2024 Reviewed by Ray Parker
Key points
- The global dark night refers to all the crises humanity faces today.
- Our political, economic, social, religious, and environmental global crises are interconnected.
- We must go deep within and discover our true nature to deal with all our global crises effectively.
What is the global dark night? To comprehend this concept, we must understand the individual dark night of the soul. Everyone, no matter how happy or successful they are, eventually faces challenges in one or more areas of their life, be it their health, relationships, career, or finances.
Often, these challenges can derail us when we do not understand their significance and do not know how to deal with them. When our challenges overwhelm us and take us off course, we can enter the dark night of the soul. This occurs when our thoughts and emotions around our challenges become too difficult to bear and cause deep existential anguish and strife.
Just as individuals can go through the dark night of the soul, this can also happen on a larger scale, and it is happening to humanity at this very moment. The global dark night takes the form of the multiple crises that humanity faces, including political instability, economic uncertainty, racial discrimination, child slavery and trafficking, the devastation of our delicate ecosystems, and climate change. This causes disenfranchisement and alienation of those of us who are witnesses to the turmoil and disorder and feel helpless to do anything about it, perpetuating the global dark night.
All the pain, angst, and turmoil that we carry inside become externalized and manifest as the global crises that we face today. What we see in the world reflects the collective inner state of humanity, which speaks volumes to the degree of anguish and torment we are all experiencing.
The conventional approach to tackling our global problems is to deal directly with the issues at hand. For example, political instability is often handled by changes in leadership, which may work for a time until the new leadership is engulfed by the same dysfunctional environment that created it.
Ecosystem loss and climate change are often dealt with through governmental environmental policies, which are not effective. This is because you cannot enforce regulations on people who do not realize the value of protecting the earth. This can only happen by changing our relationship with the earth and realizing that we are intimately connected to the land and nature and rely on her, not only for our survival but for our conscious evolution.
The only way to get through the dark night of the soul on an individual and global level is for more of us to take the conscious journey deep within and rediscover the true nature that we were born into when we first incarnated on this plane. This is one of pure consciousness, being, energy, and unconditional love. This is also the nature of the universe we live in. Until we do this, we will continue to suffer. This can only be done if we have the courage to face our inner demons and purge ourselves of negative thinking, limiting beliefs, and suppressed negative emotions. If enough of humanity takes this journey, we have the potential to rise through the global dark night.
Evidence that our collective inner state affects the external environment is supported by the Washington Peace Study, which took place from June 7 to July 30, 1993.1 Even though this is an older study, its results are still relevant today.
For this study, a 27-member project review board comprising independent scientists and leading citizens was established. Their task was to ensure objectivity and research rigor by reviewing and approving the research protocol and then subsequently monitoring the research process.
Washington’s immediate history at this time showed that during the first five months of the year prior to the research project, violent crime had been steadily increasing. This increase continued into the first two weeks of the project when homicides actually continued to increase.
The intervention involved having a number of practitioners of transcendental meditation (TM) engage in meditation practice daily during the study period. The number of these practitioners started at 800 and grew to 4,000 by the end of the study period.
The results showed a 23.3 percent drop in violent crime over the study period, with the statistical probability of less than two in one billion that this result could reflect chance variation in crime levels. In addition, the researchers tested their findings for other possible causes of crime reduction, such as temperature, precipitation, weekends, and police and community anti-crime activities. They found that the drop in crime could not be attributed to any of these other possibilities.
In fact, 49 research projects conducted in numerous countries around the world over the last 40 years show that regular group meditation reduced war deaths, reduced terrorism, reduced crime rates, resulted in fewer emergency calls, fewer suicides and accidents, and less alcohol consumption. This is concrete proof that our collective inner state affects our external environment.
The question is, will enough of us clean up, grow up, wake up, and show up before it is too late for humanity?
References
Hagelin JS; Orme-Johnson DW; Rainforth M; Cavanaugh K1; Alexander CN; Shatkin SF; Davies JL; Hughs AO; Ross E; "Effects of Group Practice of the Transcendental Meditation Program on Preventing Violent Crime in Washington, D.C.: Results of the National Demonstration Project, June–July 1993," D.C.Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy Technical Report 94:1, 1994. Social Indicators Research 1999; vol. 47 issue 2: 153-201.
