Episode 464 - The Importance of the Otherworld

This episode brings a focus to the importance of recognizing that we live in more than one world. Before modern times, it was commonly understood that there was another world next to the daily domain of facts and figures and that this other world is real in its own way. What traditional societies called the Otherworld turns out to be the primordial center, the place of origins and the essential source for changing and healing the daily world. Thus, the problem is not simply that damaging things have been done in the course of history. Rather, the greater issue is the fact that so much has been lost and forgotten over time.

By insisting on seeing reality as only those things that are measurable and provable, modern societies have lost the subtle connections and hidden threads that secretly tie the time-bound world to all that remains immeasurable, timeless and capable of renewing life. The sense of the Otherworld as the endless source of imagination and ongoing creation allowed ancient people to accept the fact that things do fall apart, but also have the understanding that life can be renewed by being in touch with the sacred center and secret source of all existence.

The Otherworld, that keeps being lost but can be found again, has always been the source of the unity that is lacking in the common world. It cannot be scientifically proved, but can intuitively become known, that what we most need when everything is falling apart and time is running out on us is not simply more time, but importantly, more timelessness and the redeeming touch of the eternal. We may increasingly feel that we are but tiny, frail beings who are insignificant in the great expanse of an accidental universe. Yet, we have always lived in two worlds and as the fabric of life loosens, the veil between this world and the Otherworld thins and we are called to be witnesses of the collapse, but can also become again the soulful vessels through which the daily world of the time bound and the redeeming realm of the eternal can meet.

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