Archetypal humanness (ICA)

Description

This is the awareness that not only is the universe one's invention, but what one creates becomes the legacy for many others to inherit. It's like being elected president of the world and suddenly being looked to for a sign to follow, an awesome sense of power coupled with an inward terror at the thought of what one can do. King Arthur and his knights embody this in legendary form as they carve out a code of conduct appropriate to their situation. There is a sense that all of history conspired to bring them to this point and that what they create is setting a precedent for the next thousand years.

A dimension of this experience is a sense of awe, that is fear and fascination. There is painful awareness of being on centre stage and often a yearning for the privacy and insignificance of former life. Danger is not just an abstract idea but a shockingly real possibility. Leaders of social movements such as Martin Luther King and Harvey Milk must have experienced this as they lived each day with the threat of assassination which finally claimed their lives. And yet there is the interior knowledge that the time has come and their cue to go on stage is being given. Dag Hammarskjöld described this poetically when he said: "But this is your path, and it is now, now that you must not fail". The decision is made to walk out on stage and play the role, when a person says to himself: "If I'm going to do this, I'm going to give it all I've got", whether it's a tennis player in the Wimbledon final, a child giving his first public speech in front of a group, or an artisan carving out a delicate sculpture. The clay is in one's hands and humanness comes as sheer open-ended creation. There is a supreme confidence, not in one's self but in the fact that one has set out to do something and it will be done.