Anyone who has comes to terms with an addiction knows a great deal about awakening. In fact, many of the translucents I have interviewed have been, or still are, involved in Twelve Step programs. Addiction is progressive. It is possible to cruise along for years managing a state of socially acceptable addiction. There may be outbursts of anger, occasional loss of control or collapse, but the addiction exists within the parameters of a “normal” life. People close to the addict may overlook or even endorse the creeping malaise. Most addicts have to bottom out before they begin to wake up. Many have to lose their health or their marriage, or face bankruptcy or a nervous breakdown before they are able to address what has been happening for years. Bottoming out is actually the beginning of a healing process. Those who understand addiction see this painful dead end as a very healthy sign, the essential prelude to being honest with oneself and real change.

Some of the most celebrated translucents today had to reach rock bottom before a radical shift: Byron Katie had her awakening in a halfway house, Eckhart Tolle hit the depths of despair before his awakening. First comes a free fall into darkness, a total immersion in Iago’s universe. Then sudden freedom. When we reach the end of the road, we find deliverance.

Many translucent visionaries believe that this is now happening to humanity as a race. James O’Dea, the president of the Institute for Noetic Science, calls the symptoms of extreme Iago expression the “death throes” of a paradigm we are now abandoning. As we exhaust every possibility of lack-based, desire-based, separation-based living, we have no way out but to wake up and take an evolutionary leap. O’Dea feels that those who can recognize the process have a specific responsibility. Their job is to hospice the death of the old ways, with dignity, with compassion, with patience, and to midwife the appearance of the new human being.

Those skilled in facilitating transition know how to interpret the signs. When people buy fewer goods, the Iago mind labels this “weakened consumer confidence,” which creates panic. To the translucent midwife, this same trend indicates that we are growing out of our addictions. The breakdown of the World Trade talks in Cancun in 2003 was seen as a setback to the Iago merchants, but as a victory for the voice of Civil Society to the translucent midwife. Everything looks different when you welcome death and rebirth rather than resist them in terror.