The stability of our culture-our language, understanding of being, and modes of living or cultural practices, has depended on our implicit acceptance of fundamental binaries such as inner/outer; spirit/matter; fiction/reality, along with the real appearances they produce (i.e., the way we understand things). An anomaly is penetrating this traditional world, disrupting these logical categories, and disturbing the stable appearances. It is traumatic for individuals and chaotic for society, but it is also a harbinger of another way of understanding reality, another way for the things to appear to us. This book is intended as a guide through chaos and towards this possible new understanding of being.
I hold a doctorate in Consciousness Studies (1999). My thesis concerns the theme of "the end of the world", based on my own personal experiences lasting twenty years. At first it seemed to me that I was undergoing a purely personal psychological crisis but over time I discovered that I was also participating in the historical process of a transformation in the life of the psyche, as reflected in the enormous, even apocalyptic, changes occurring in our culture. During this difficult period of my life, I wrote two books: Living in Uncertainty Living with Spirit and Poems of Making, Poems of Death, as I tried to give voice to the meaning of my experiences. My next three books, Mouthpiece, The Imperative, and Hearing Voices, explore the meaning of "the end of the world" more fully through an autobiographical approach. My subsequent books, including Animal Soul and Manifesting Possible Futures, establish a firm theoretical ground for the claim that the psyche is urging us towards the development of new inner capacities that can help us face the uncertainty of modern life and, as well, address the unknown future. My book, Overcoming Solidity, continues this exploration in terms of our current structure of consciousness and its correlative world of empirical reality. Making New Worlds begins the work of articulating an art form that is emerging in response to the unknown future. I develop this theme more fully in The Coming Guest and the New Art Form. I have also written an unusual book, UR-image, which tells a story of four friends whose lives are interrupted by an anomalous intrusion of four possible futures, while Oblivion of Being is a story of three friends participating in a transformation of being. Since then I have written The Peril in Thinking and Speech of the Unknown Future. A preview of all my books is available on YouTube: https: //youtu.be/DKfiR_K5nps, or you can visit: http: //www.amazon.com/author/johncwoodcock I currently live in Sydney with my wife, Anita Hansen, where I teach, write, and consult with others concerning their own journey through the present "apocalypse of the interior", as it has been called, in my capacity as a practicing Jungian psychotherapist. Anita and I also work with couples in a therapeutic setting. Contact: jwoodcock@lighthousedownunder.com
