Off and on I feel as if we’re living in a movie.
It seems surreal at times because most of us never imagined this pandemic, or this racial revolution, or this political divide, or this level of climate emergency, much less all of them occurring at the same time.
The word apocalypse kept coming to mind. So I looked up the origins of the word.
From www.etymonline.com: apocalypse (n.) late 14c., “revelation, disclosure,” from Church Latin apocalypsis “revelation,” from Greek apokalyptein “uncover, disclose, reveal,” from apo “off, away from” (see apo-) + kalyptein “to cover, conceal,” from PIE root *kel- (1) “to cover, conceal, save.”
The Christian end-of-the-world story is part of the revelation in John of Patmos’ book “Apokalypsis” (a title rendered into English as pocalipsis c. 1050, “Apocalypse” c. 1230, and “Revelations” by Wyclif c. 1380).
Its general sense in Middle English was “insight, vision; hallucination.” The meaning “a cataclysmic event” is modern (not in OED 2nd ed., 1989); apocalypticism “belief in an imminent end of the present world” is from 1858.
As agent nouns, “author or interpreter of the ‘Apocalypse,'” apocalypst (1829), apocalypt (1834), and apocalyptist (1824) have been tried. So from the Greek: “apo” means “un” or “off”. Kalyptein (the root of “calypse”) means “cover or conceal”.
Apo = un. Calypse =c over. UN-COVER.
So that rings true, right? That we are in a time of “un-covering”.
What is being uncovered? On the outside?
– our centuries-long intentional global racism oppressing many people of color.
– our deep political corruption.
– the Covid-19 pandemic laying bare the epic contrast between what we thought of as
“the American Dream” and the tragic economic inequality we see now.
– We have been told by a 2018 UN report that the world has only a few years left (about 10, now) to deal with climate change – or face blistering heat waves, rising seas, and a ‘shocking rise in hunger.’
Sounds like end-of-the-world stuff, on a third-dimensional level. Maybe it is. No one really knows. On emotional and spiritual levels things are also being uncovered.
In this apocalypse, many I know are uncovering their own depths, including past unprocessed traumas, outdated thoughts, and feeling patterns.
There is a less habitual distraction, more conscious thought available in each choice, more observation of our own experience (unless we are in addiction or mental illness processes).
What is being uncovered is our souls, what I call our Sacred Selves. Our “original instructions”, our spiritual GPS. That is a gift of these times.
We are in such external uncertainty that we’re more likely to turn within for guidance.
That is the great opportunity of our times. To connect maybe more deeply than ever before in our current lives to our own divinity, and hear all the guidance therein. It’s a good thing because we need our highest guidance now.
