MYTHS

If you live with the myths in your mind, you will find yourself always in mythological situations. They cover everything that can happen to you. And that enables you to interpret the myth in relation to life, as well as life in relation to myth. ~ Joseph Campbell

I have been inspired by my life-long love of, and learning from literature. I contemplate the widom, like gold, mined from both world literature (including mythology and sacred texts) and from what people tell me of their lives--all sources of inspiration and wisdom.

    Most influential has been the work of Joseph Campbell, and Carl Jung, who speak of the subconcious. Campbell suggests we think of our "being" as the image below: A circle, the dot at the center, is our self or soul. Above the line is our waking consciousness; below it is our subconscious.

   

    Josesph Campbell's twelve-year study of global mythologies, The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology confirmed that there is: “...unity of the race of man, not only in its biology, but also in its spiritual history, which has everywhere unfolded in the manner of a single symphony.”

    This unity is expressed are common world-wide themes, such as “fire theft, deluge, land of the dead, virgin birth, and resurrected hero…appearing everywhere in new combinations….No human society has yet been found in which such mythological motifs have not been rehearsed in liturgies; interpreted by seers, poets, theologians, or philosophers; presented in art; magnified in song; and ecstatically experienced in life empowering visions. ” 

    This"deep, deep well of the past” is in our cultural/geographic roots, in our biological, psychological and even prehistoric origins. Wired into our psyche and physiognomy is our ability to both create and respond to images, symbols and stories--which, in essence, are the metaphors and allegories of our experience of being alive.

How do we become more aware of the archetypal, subconscious realm wherein that ancestral memory exists? 

    By living our own story with an open mind and heart. 

    Each life "is a hero's journey," as Campbell has noted, comparable to those in the great epics. We all participate in this heroic "quest" which can move us toward consciousness and conscience, as we are initiated through life's vicissitudes, challenges, trials, loss--ultimately coming to terms with our own mortality. 

    Spirituality and psychology weave together when we realize that archetypal images and ideas exist both in us and apart from us. The more we are aware of that realm and explore it, the more we may awaken and begin to be guided to "translate" what we find and be comforted to know we are interconnected--past, present and future with everything that is.

Is this the goal of life? In great part, yes, I believe so. To the extent we are able to think expansively, imaginatively, without boundaries, we may enter that part of the circle which is both individual and universal in wisdom and mystery. In this way, we refine and define our  individuality—seeing and becoming who we are and wish to be.

I have learned so much through what is revealed in story, through the ages, my own, as well as others' stories, and in the works of Campbell and Jung. I am inspired by and in awe of how we may travel back and forth across that line, a thin veil, between waking consciousness and the subconscious to discover that, from time immemorial, we have been, are and will be connected, unified in our humanity, sharing this one precious and fragile planet and infinite cosmos.

  

    I am striving not so much to live by story and myth, but to live with them, allowing them to live in me.