Almost every movie has this same hidden message

I watched all of these movies to try to figure out the answer to something that  most of us can feel intuitively even if we can't   explain exactly why it is that there seems to be  a pattern that keeps showing up again and again   in some of the most popular films. Maybe you've  noticed it too. In movies like the Matrix, Wall-E,   The Shawshank Redemption, and even in shows  like Severance, and Black Mirror.

They seem   very different on the surface. And yet, if you  look a little deeper, they share almost exactly   the same meaning. A symbolic message that's  hiding in plain sight.

Here's what we find. First, we're shown a world that turns  out to be deeply flawed. In many cases,   it's revealed to be a kind of  prison.

Then we see the creator   of that world who's trying to control  and manipulate everyone inside of it. And then we find a redeemer figure who shows  everyone how to break free. This is the basic   story arc in all these films.

Now, you might  look at this and say, "Isn't that just the   hero's journey? " Well, there are some elements of  that for sure, but it's actually a lot deeper than   that because there's a very specific symbolism  going on. And what it's hinting at is the idea   that there are dark forces in this world that are  trying to keep us distracted and confused.

They're   leading us onto paths that are harmful not just  to the mind, but to the soul. And whether we know   it or not, they're trying to get us to give  up the very things that make us who we are:   our freedom, autonomy, consciousness. It goes back  to a philosophy known as Gnosticism: a very old   set of ideas that's often misunderstood and it's  been maligned throughout history.

And even today,   there's no shortage of people attacking it  without really understanding what it is.   But I think one of the reasons Gnosticism has  endured for so long and why it continues to be   the subject of so much discussion and debate  is that at its core, it's really a story. It's   a myth that mirrors a lot of the things we still  deal with today.

And like any story, it answers   three basic questions: Where did we come from?  What are we doing here? And where are we going?  

The psychologist Carl Jung saw within these  ideas a hidden process for psychological   change that any of us can use to break free  from our conditioning. And it's how we grow   into who we were really meant to become.  So today we're going to look at what these   teachings are.

We'll look at why these ideas  have found their way into so many films and TV   shows. And we'll look at what it all means for  you. Because once you understand these symbols   and once you see these patterns, you'll never  unsee them again.

Let me show you what I mean. The first pattern we find in these films is the  idea of a paradise. A world that was once perfect   in every way.

But the closer we look, the more  we find that things aren't really what they seem.   In Free Guy, the hero lives in an impossibly  bright and colorful place filled with excitement   and stimulation. "My name is Guy and I live in  paradise," he says.

But the world he's living   in is completely fake. It's a computer game,  a digital illusion that's been programmed by   a powerful corporation to make huge amounts of  money. In the Truman Show, the hero lives in   a beautiful suburb of a place called Sea Haven,  where everyone is wholesome and pleasant.

There's   no crime, no conflict, and nothing ever changes.  But it's a false paradise because the town of Sea   Haven is actually a gigantic TV studio. He has  no idea that his whole life is being filmed and   broadcast to the world as a television show. 

Everybody in town is an actor except him. Even   his wife, his mother, and his best friend are all  actors. His whole life is a lie.

And of course,   the Matrix is probably the clearest example of  the fallen paradise. Agent Smith sums it up when   he says,:"Just look at it. Billions of people  living out their lives.

Oblivious. The first   Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world  where none suffered. Everyone was happy.

But it   was a disaster. No one would accept the program. "  So, what does it mean that so many of these movies   tell the same story of a seemingly perfect world  that is revealed to be broken and corrupt?

Well,   they're all different versions of the same story.  The original paradise in the Garden of Eden. It's   here that God tells Adam and Eve that they can eat  anything they want except the forbidden fruit of   the tree of knowledge, warning them that if they  do eat it, then on that day they will surely die.  

But one day, an evil serpent tricks Eve into  eating it. She shares some of the fruit with Adam.   And for this, God makes them leave the garden  forever.

They can never come back. And the rest of   their lives are painful and hard. Traditionally,  the lesson of the story is that disobeying God   is what led to the fall of humanity.

It's what  introduced sin into the world, and it ruined   what should have been a perfect paradise. But  a lot of people have raised questions about   this interpretation of the story because why is  there an evil serpent in the garden? Why doesn't   God want us to have knowledge of good and evil? 

And why does he punish Adam and Eve for being   tricked? After all, how could they have known  that what they were doing was wrong? Because   they didn't have knowledge of good and evil until  after they ate it.

Well, it turns out there's   another version of this story that answers these  questions in a completely different way. We find   it in an archaeological discovery that happened in  December of 1945 in an upper Egyptian town called   Nag Hammadi. It was here that a farmer was digging  in the desert when he hit a very old jar almost   a meter high.

He broke it open. And inside the  jar, he found 13 very old books bound in leather.   Together, they came to be known as the Nag  Hammadi Library.

And inside one of these books,   there was a text called the Testimony of Truth.  And this text gives us a version of the Adam and   Eve story where the serpent isn't evil at all.  Why?

Because the serpent tells Eve that it's not   true that you'll die on the day you eat the fruit.  What'll happen is that your eyes will be opened   and you'll understand the difference between good  and evil. And that's exactly what happens.

They   don't die. They gain moral understanding. And  so in this version of the story, the serpent is   actually the revealer of truth.

Of course, this is  a controversial idea for a lot of people because,   well, isn't the serpent evil? And isn't the Garden  of Eden a good place? The author Graham Hancock   makes the point that there's a fundamental problem  with any paradise.

If you live in a place where   you have everything you could ever want and you  never have to struggle or make any moral choices,   then there's nothing to learn and nowhere to  grow. There's just endless self-indulgence. And   if you stay there, you'll stagnate as a person. 

The movie Wall-E shows us exactly this kind of   world where in the 29th century, humanity now  lives on a giant spaceship called the Axiom.   It's built like a high-tech vacation resort where  we're told that everyone has everything they need   to be happy. It's an artificial paradise where  the robots do all the work and life is one long,   never-ending holiday.

And yet, because they  have nothing to work towards and no reason to   push themselves, they've all become weak and  helpless like babies. They just jump from one   distraction to another until finally the captain  of the ship realizes that humanity has lost its   way and it's time to go home. What this means  is that symbolically, we have to eat from the   fruit.

Because how else do you grow if you don't  learn to make choices between good and evil? Our   lives are defined by the choices we make. And it's  through those choices that we grow.

Which means   that understanding good and evil is a central  part of what it means to be human. We see the   same choice in the Matrix where Morpheus plays the  role of the serpent and he offers Neo a choice.   "This is your last chance.

After this, there's no  turning back. You take the blue pill, the story   ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever  you want to believe.

You take the red pill, you   stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the  rabbit hole goes. " The red pill is the forbidden   fruit. It's a metaphor for illumination.

It  represents the first step in humanity's awakening,   and it's the initiation to which every seeker  of truth has to take. This forms a core idea in   what would come to be known as Gnosticism,  a collection of teachings that emerged in   the late 1st century among early Christians.  They were looking for something called Gnosis,   which is Greek for knowledge.

But it's more than  just intellectual knowledge. It's experiential   knowledge, the kind of spiritual insight that can  only come from direct experience with the divine.   And they saw Gnosis as the true secret teaching  of Jesus Christ.

And they believe that he came   into the world to awaken humanity by sharing a set  of instructions that were meant to show us how to   free ourselves from our ignorant condition. As you  can imagine, this was a very controversial idea.   And even today, Gnosticism is a very debated  area among scholars because it paints a very   different picture of Jesus than the one we're  used to.

But you might wonder, how do we know   that any of this is true? What reason is there  to think that Jesus even had a secret teaching? Most people agree that the gospels of Matthew,  Mark, Luke, and John all form the New Testament   canon.

And together they describe the life of  Jesus and the things he taught. But let's look at   the Gospel of Mark 4: 11 and 12. Here Jesus says  to his disciples, "The secret kingdom of God has   been given to you.

But to those on the outside,  everything is said in parables so that they may be   ever seeing but never perceiving and ever hearing  but never understanding, lest they should turn   again and be forgiven. " This is a really strange  passage because it implies that Jesus had a deeper   teaching that he purposely held back. But why? 

What is the Secret Kingdom of God? And why doesn't   he want people on the outside to know what it  is? We see it again in the Gospel of Matthew in   13:1 where Jesus says to his disciples, "To you it  has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom   of heaven, but to them it has not been given.

"  So, how do we explain this? Elaine Pagels is a   professor and historian of early Christianity.  In her book, The Gnostic Gospels, she explains   that Jesus would have taught in much the same way  that other Jewish rabbis did in the first century,   which means he had one set of teachings that he  used when speaking to crowds of people in public,   but he also had another set of teachings  that he kept secret.

These would have been   advanced lessons that he shared only with his  personal disciples. They weren't written down.   They were passed orally from teacher to student  because that was the only way you could judge   the maturity of the seeker and see if they were  really ready to be initiated into gnosis, the   secret knowledge.

Pagels points to 1 Corinthians  2: 6 and 7: "We speak a message of wisdom among   the mature but not the wisdom of this age or the  rulers of this age who are coming to nothing. No,   we declare God's wisdom a mystery that has been  hidden. " So Pagels says that Jesus would have   taught in both of these ways.

A public teaching  that was written down in what became the New   Testament of the Bible and a secret esoteric  teaching that contained hidden mysteries that   he revealed only to the mature. Both of these  teachings were meant to complement each other   and many rabbis today still teach this way. We see  the same theme of secret teaching in the Matrix   where Morpheus takes Neo into the construct. 

It's a private simulation room where he gives   him one-on-one training. But why does he keep them  secret? Why not share them with everyone?

Because   "most people are not ready to be unplugged. Look  around. What do you see?

Businessmen, teachers,   lawyers, the very minds of the people we're  trying to save. But many of them are so inured,   so hopelessly dependent on the system that they  will fight to protect it. " So if we suppose that   Jesus had a secret teaching, what were they?

What  did they say? The New Testament Gospels don't tell   us what they are, but Pagels suggests that some  of the books found at Nag Hammadi may hold the key   to some of these secret teachings. One of these  texts, the Gospel of Thomas, identifies itself   as a secret gospel.

What's interesting about  it is that Professor Helmet Koester of Harvard   University has said that although the Gospel of  Thomas was most likely compiled around 140 CE,   it may include some traditions that are even  older than the Gospels of the New Testament,   possibly as early as the second half of the first  century, which would make it as early or possibly   even earlier than the Gospels of Matthew, Mark,  Luke, and John. But unlike the other gospels,   Thomas doesn't tell the story of Jesus's life.  Instead, it's a collection of 114 lessons that   purport to be the secret sayings that the living  Jesus spoke.

In one of his most important sayings,   number 70, Jesus says that if you bring forth  what is within you, what you bring forth will   save you. If you do not bring forth what is within  you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.   In other words, salvation lies within.

It's a  powerful idea that we see in a lot of Gnostic   films, and it's a major theme in the Shawshank  Redemption. In the scene where the warden meets   with Andy Dufresne for the first time in his jail  cell, we learn that the warden is a Christian who   likes to quote from the Bible. "I am the light of  the world," he says.

For almost the whole scene,   he's holding Andy's Bible in his hands. And yet  he totally misses the fact that there's something   hidden inside. A rock hammer that Andy will later  use to dig his way through the wall and escape the   prison.

But what's the deeper meaning of this  scene? Well, the warden represents the kind   of person who studies and memorizes the words  of the Bible but doesn't understand its true   meaning. He doesn't see the hidden mysteries. 

He's ever seeing but never perceiving. He's   ever hearing but never understanding. He thinks  that salvation comes from the literal words of   the text.

And so he misses the secret teaching  that's hidden in plain view. And that's what the   hammer represents. It symbolizes the secret that  will set you free.

And there's a lot of biblical   symbolism in the film. Andy represents  the Gnostic Christ. From the beginning,   he's an innocent man who comes into the fallen  world of the prison, much like Jesus does.

and   his first miracle is making a deal with the guards  so they can all enjoy a beer on the rooftop. It's   a scene that mirrors Christ's miracle of turning  water into wine. Andy's escape from his jail cell   also mirrors the empty tomb of Christ after his  resurrection.

But more importantly, Andy reveals   the Gnostic secret. He teaches the other prisoners  that the way to become free is by bringing forth   what's inside them. It's why he helps them build  and expand the prison library.

It's why he teaches   people how to read and why he helps them develop  their inner world. Gnosis is doing the things that   cultivate the soul, the part inside all of us that  no one can touch or take away. When we experience   it through beauty, art, or music, it gives us a  glimpse of the divine.

This is how we transcend   the pain and suffering of this world. It's how  we hang on to hope. And it's really what keeps   him going after 19 years of wrongful imprisonment  to finally escape.

So you might ask at this point,   why don't Christian churches teach any of these  Gnostic ideas today? Why is their portrayal of   Jesus so different from the Gnostic one? Well, if  we go back to the time of early Christianity after   Jesus died in the first century, we find that  there was no single organized church authority.  

Early Christians had many and radically  differing religious beliefs and practices.   Each group practiced Christianity in their own  way, and each followed their own interpretation   of Jesus's teachings. But this began to change  with figures like Irenaeus.

In his massive work   "Against Heresies", he tried to argue for a  single universal church that followed one set   of doctrines and rules. He claimed that this  church alone was the true Orthodox church and   that any other kind of teaching was heresy. And  yet gnostic theologians didn't see themselves   as heretics.

They saw themselves as Christians.  But in the 4th century, after Christianity became   the official religion of the Roman Empire  and the Orthodox gained military support,   the penalty for heresy was severe. Just having a  book that was denounced as heresy became a crime.  

These books were confiscated and burned, which  is why hundreds of years ago, someone living in   Upper Egypt took their books and hid them in  a jar to save them from being destroyed. They   buried that jar in the desert at Nag Hammadi,  where it stayed hidden for almost 1,600 years.   But why were the authorities so threatened by  these Gnostic ideas?

What made them so dangerous?   Well, some of the texts found at Nag Hammadi  show us that the Gnostics had a radically   different story for why the world is the way it  is. And they offer very different answers to a   lot of the questions that are often asked  in Christianity.

For example, if God is a   good and all powerful being, why do we live in a  world with so much suffering and tragedy in it? So, let's look at the traditional explanation for  human suffering. According to the Orthodox view,   suffering was introduced into the world because  of Adam and Eve's disobedience in the Garden of   Eden.

This was the original sin. Before that,  the world was a perfect paradise. After they   eat the forbidden fruit, God says to Eve,  "I will make your pains and childbearing   very severe.

With painful labor, you will give  birth to children. " And then God says to Adam,   "Cursed is the ground for your sake. In toil, you  shall eat of it all the days of your life.

" And   so according to this view, disobeying God is what  led to the fallen condition of our world. And this   is really the root of all our pain and suffering.  "Just as sin entered the world through one man and   death through sin, in this way death came to all  people because all sinned.

" But the gnostics give   a very different reason for human suffering. They  say it's not because of any act of disobedience.   We suffer because of what our bodies are made of:  matter.

If you think about why we feel pain or why   we get sick or grow old, it's because our bodies  are made of flesh and bone, cells and tissue. By   nature, these things don't last forever and so  we die. It's why our lives are temporary and it's   why we experience tragedy and loss.

But if that's  the case, why did God make the world out of such   an imperfect material? Why did he use matter to  create the world? Well, according to the Gnostic   myth, he didn't.

They imagined the creation of  the world in a very different way. Here's how   they saw it. In the beginning, there was a perfect  divinity called the Monad.

This is the one God of   the universe and the source of everything. The  Monad then starts emanating other divine beings   in pairs called dyads. And with permission from  the Monad, each of these pairs then creates more   divine beings.

And soon there's a whole spiritual  realm called the Pleroma, which literally means   fullness. One of these beings is Sophia, and  she decides to create a being on her own. But   she doesn't get permission from the Monad.

But  in doing this, she makes a terrible mistake. She   creates an ignorant and malformed creature known  as the demiurge. She's ashamed of what she's done,   and so she falls out of the Pleroma, taking the  demiurge with her, and hides him in a separate   reality.

The demiurge has no idea that there's  another divine world. He looks around and sees   that there's no other gods. And so he assumes that  he must be the only god in the universe.

Demiurge   means craftsman or artisan. And so he starts  building the material world as we know it. And   then he takes Sophia and splits her into billions  of tiny pieces and puts each of these fragments of   the divine into human beings.

And so each of us is  really a divine spark that's been sealed inside a   material body. But the demiurge doesn't do this  alone. He creates lower beings to help him.

The   Archons, these are his agents and they become  the rulers of the material world. And because   they have no divinity of their own, they feed off  the divine sparks of humanity, creating a system   of control. Sealed inside this world, our sparks  have fallen asleep.

We've forgotten our divine   origin. And most of us don't realize that the  soul is the only thing that's real and enduring,   that our bodies are temporary. And as long as we  can't remember who we are, we stay in the material   world.

Which means that for the Gnostics, it  wasn't God who made the world out of matter.   It was the demiurge. And it's the demiurge who  put Adam and Eve in the garden.

And the reason   he doesn't want them to eat from the tree of  knowledge is to keep them ignorant of the truth.   But there is a way out. The Monad sends a divine  being into the material world to help set us free.  

This being is Christ and his true teaching is  to show us how to free ourselves, to transcend   the physical suffering of this world, and to  awaken the spark within. This is gnosis. And so,   according to the Gnostic point of view, salvation  isn't found by believing in a set of doctrines   or following a church authority.

It's found  through gnosis, the direct revelation of divine   experience, which means that anyone at any time  can access it. And you do it by bringing forth   what is within you. That's the source of your  real power because the kingdom of God is within   you.

Now, these are very controversial ideas, I  know, but this is what the Gnostics believed. It's   the Gnostic story and it's the symbolic myth we  find in so many films today. We see all the same   elements.

the demiurge, the powerful figure  who is trying to control humanity and keep us   ignorant of the truth. We see the false world he's  built that turns out to be an illusion designed   to keep us trapped here. And we see a Gnostic  Christ figure who comes into the world to set   us free and to help restore our connection to the  divine.

So why is this same myth being told over   and over again in so many different movies? And  why does it seem to resonate so much with people? Psychologists tell us that we all have a  storytelling mind.

We naturally tell stories   about ourselves to explain who we are, why we do  the things we do, and where we're going in the   future. Dan McAdams calls it narrative identity.  And whether you know it or not, you're living out   some form of story.

Some people are living out  the story of the tragic hero or the misunderstood   rebel or the wounded healer. But let me ask you  a question. If we imagine that our society itself   is living out a kind of story, what would it be? 

Well, let's look at the architects of our world.   Oligarchs, corporations, big tech, and government.  They're all trying to shape the world in their   image.

And whether it's through the media,  technology, the monetary system, or military   conflict, they see themselves as the gods of the  modern world. And so whether they know it or not,   they're acting out the story of the demiurge.  Because symbolically, the demiurge is really   a way of looking at the world.

It's a mechanistic  worldview that sees people not as free autonomous   beings with their own value and dignity, but as  cogs in a machine, as resources to be extracted,   replaceable parts in a much larger system of  control. These forces have never been more   powerful than they are today. And yet, no amount  of power ever seems to be enough.

Graham Hancock   says that the Gnostic myth is really a metaphor  for our time. It's an allegory for the idea that   there are forces in this world that are trying to  keep us ignorant and docile. It's trying to snuff   out our divine spark and stop us from figuring  out the real source of our power.

How do we know   this is happening? Well, what would you say is  the philosophy that pretty much every student   is taught to believe in almost every school and  every university? It's materialism.

Not just in   the consumer sense, but philosophical materialism  is the idea that the primary thing in the universe   is matter. And it's made up of four main beliefs.  One, all of life came into being by accident.  

Every living thing we see in the world today  can be traced back to a random interplay of   chemicals and molecules. And through millions of  years of evolution, we came into the world. Two,   as human beings, we are nothing more than the  physical parts of our brain and our body.

We're   a collection of selfish genes, and we have  no purpose other than to reproduce, survive,   and then replicate those genes. Three, matter is  the only thing that's real. Some even argue that   consciousness is an illusion, which reverses the  order of what almost every spiritual tradition   tells us, that the soul is the only thing that's  real and the material world is the illusion.

Four,   there's no such thing as the divine, and so after  we die, the brain stops working and everything   about who we are disappears along with it. I've  argued against these points in other videos,   so I won't do it again here. But the point is that  when the modern world tries to convince us that   we're nothing more than our material bodies, it's  doing exactly what the demiurge does.

He makes   their sparks fall asleep and so they actually  forget that they're divine beings. And this   materialist view is now so widespread that most  people don't even recognize it for what it is,   a story. Because it's not a fact, it's an  ideology.

It's just one possible explanation   for the world and how we came to be in it. And  it happens to be a very disempowering one. The   psychologist Victor Frankl said that the legacy  of philosophical materialism is that many people   today experience what he calls an existential  vacuum where the average person struggles with   a feeling of alienation, meaninglessness, and  disconnection from the world.

I think that's why   movies like The Matrix feel so relevant even today  more than 25 years after it was made, because the   architect of the Matrix is such a clear example of  the demiurge and the materialist worldview. He's   the god-like figure who tries to reduce all human  experience to a mathematical equation. He's trying   to build an algorithm that predicts everything  we do so he can control and steer the choices we   make.

But he's not God. As intelligent as he is,  all of his power is derived from a system that's   built on rules. He's a machine, and so he has no  choice but to obey those rules.

It's a lot like   the AI and the large language models we use today.  They're fast and impressive in what they can do,   but they aren't thinking. When you ask it  a question, what it's doing is taking huge   amounts of information from the internet, and  then it uses statistical rules to try and predict   what the next word in the sentence will be.

And  it's all based on the words that came before it,   which means that they aren't reflecting or  discovering meaning in any way close to what   a person would do. They're using algorithms and  rules to rearrange information that people have   already made. And this is why the architect is  doomed to fail.

Because he's ignorant of one   very important fact. His formulas will never  capture what it really means to be human:   our consciousness. This is the spark of the divine  that gives us the power of choice.

We can choose   what rules to follow and which ones to break.  We can make up our own rules. And the history   of humanity is filled with stories of people who  fought and died for what they believed in.

And   this is what's so threatening to the demiurge.  Because as he tries to control and suppress   humanity, he's also bringing about its opposite,  the Gnostic Christ. Jesus represents the awakening   of a higher consciousness.

And so just as there  are forces outside of us that are trying to snuff   out the divine spark, there's a force inside of  you that's working towards your own reawakening.   And it points to the single most important thing  you can do in this lifetime. So what is that?

The psychologist Carl Jung was really  interested in Gnosticism and it was the   Jung Institute that acquired one of the first  books at Nag Hammadi which came to be called   the Jung Codex. He saw within the gnostic story,  a metaphor for the different parts of the mind,   a kind of symbolic map that shows us how to awaken  our higher consciousness. In his book Aion, Jung   says that: "the myth of the ignorant demiurge who  imagined he was the highest divinity illustrates   the perplexity of the ego when it can no longer  hide from itself the knowledge that it has been   dethroned by a superordinate authority.

" What does  that mean? Well, in Jung's model, if we imagine   the ego as a circle, then it would be one small  part inside a much bigger circle that represents   the self as a whole. The ego is the conscious  part of who you are, the part that's aware of what   you're thinking and feeling right now.

But there's  this whole area outside of it that's unconscious.   These are the parts of yourself that you don't yet  know about. The problem arises when the ego makes   the mistake of thinking that it is you, that it's  the entirety of who you are.

When it does this,   the ego is acting in a similar way that the  demiurge does when he makes the mistake of   believing that he's the supreme authority. This  creates an imbalance in the mind. Because as long   as the ego believes that it's the whole of who you  are, it sees any challenge to itself as a threat.  

And if that's where you are, then there's nowhere  for you to grow or develop as a person. So, what   can you do about that? Here's how Jung explains  it.

Let's say you have a hidden artistic talent,   but your ego doesn't know about it. As long as  this talent is unconscious, nothing will happen   to it. It might as well not even exist.

It's only  when your ego notices it that you can then bring   it into reality. This is true of every part of  the self that's unconscious. And so, this is how   we grow.

Little by little, as the ego notices more  and more of the unconscious parts of the psyche,   it expands. And so Jung says that the proper role  of the ego is to act like a light that illuminates   the whole mind which allows it to become conscious  and thus to be realized and fully lived. The thing   is most people don't do the self-reflection  that's needed to bring these unconscious   parts of themselves to the surface.

Most of the  time we go through life on a kind of autopilot,   just chugging along. But then one day we're hit  with something unexpected. A crisis that derails   us from the path we're on.

Maybe your health takes  a hit or you lose a loved one or you lose your   job. Symbolically, these events are a lot like  the Gnostic serpent in the Garden of Eden. They're   the unforeseen elements that come into your life  and disrupt everything that's happening.

They're   painful, but they also bring the possibility  of awakening. Because like the serpent,   every crisis is also offering you a choice. You  either stay where you are, protecting your ego,   falling into the same patterns and doing the same  thing you've always done, or you try something   new.

You explore the undiscovered parts of  yourself. You find all kinds of undeveloped   talents that can help you expand beyond the old  ideas of what you thought you were supposed to be.   In other words, if you bring forth what's inside  you, what you bring forth will save you.

If you   don't bring forth what's inside you, what you  don't bring forth will destroy you. And this   is why Jung considered Christ to be the ultimate  symbol of the self. Christ came into the world to   heal the divide between heaven and earth, to bring  unity to the divine and the material.

And so,   he's the total timeless person who stands for the  mutual integration of conscious and unconscious.   Jung saw within the gnostic myth a metaphor for  the ego's psychological journey toward wholeness.   A way of integrating all the different parts of  who we are.

It's a lifelong process he called   individuation. The gnostic awakening that frees  humanity from the ignorance of the garden of   Eden is really a metaphor for the individuation  process that lifts us out of unconsciousness and   sets us free from our social conditioning.  These ideas feel especially relevant today,   a time when we're facing all kinds of threats and  challenges we've never seen before.

What can we   do about a world that seems to be falling further  and further into chaos every day? Jung dealt with   these same questions. He lived through two world  wars and witnessed the rise of the Cold War,   which brought the West and the Soviet Union  dangerously close to nuclear conflict.

For the   people who lived in these times, it felt like the  world could end at any moment. These were problems   that seemed impossible to solve. But Jung saw that  the greatest and most important problems of life   are all in a certain sense insoluble.

They can  never be solved, but only outgrown. This consists   in a new level of consciousness. It's not solved  logically in its own terms, but faded out when   confronted with a new and stronger life tendency. 

This is why he saw the work of raising human   consciousness as the most important thing you can  do. And as overwhelming as it seems, this is where   it starts. As any change must begin somewhere,  it is the single individual who will experience   it and carry it through.

The change must indeed  begin with the individual. It might be any one   of us. Which means that when you do the work of  finding your talents and cultivating your soul,   it's not a selfish act.

Because as you raise your  own consciousness, you also raise the collective   consciousness as a whole. And as you do this work,  you're not alone. You become a powerful strand in   a vast tapestry of souls, a legacy of generations  of people who've brought insight and illumination,   each in their own way.

Humanity is both darkness  and light. But history is shaped by those who   bring the light forward and somehow find a way  to hold on to hope and optimism even when going   into the darkest places. And that brings us to the  second way of becoming more conscious.

You do it   by confronting the darkest parts of who you are.  The things in yourself that you're most afraid   to look at. It's one of the most crucial things  you can do because" knowing your own darkness is   the best method for dealing with the darknesses of  other people.

" It's called shadow work. And if you   haven't seen it yet, you can click on the video  on the right side of the screen. I also want to   invite you to join my free email newsletter where  I share original, never-before-seen content and   videos you won't find anywhere else.

And you  can find that link in the description of this   video. As always, thanks so much for watching.  Take care and I'll see you in the next one.