The True Nature of Myth and how it Atrophies into Lifeless Ideology
I was listening to a talk a while back in which it was said that people who have no personal or universal myth will latch onto advertising, trends, lifeless ideologies as a substitute.
And that myths can actually atrophy into lifeless ideologies.
Seems pretty pertinent to our current time if you ask me.
A myth is not just a fable or fairytale, and it’s certainly not a lie in the way the word is used today.
A myth speaks to the way in which meaning constellates and emerges as a patterned coherent message from within our life’s experience, through a transcendent function between the conscious and unconscious mind.
The myths of the ancients were supposed to be universal representations of this kind of transcendent, constellated meaning making. Meanings that emerge from deep within the collective unconscious and serve as guide posts for the human experience - Through all the rights of passage that are necessary on the path toward wholeness and Individuation.
It’s not just ego centered meaning making though, it’s an intelligent creative impulse that breathes into us if we let it. So these universal myths that point to rights of passage are living creative impulses that drive personal meaning making.
Myths are not merely dead frames, or lifeless conceptual narratives. They are not imposed by the conscious ego, but rather, emerge from deep within the psyche, from the Self or Soul. They are symbolic - metaphorical representations of the living archetypal intelligence contained in the collective unconscious - in the “field”.
Myths are living vessels - Vehicles for archetypal messengers.
Symbol and metaphor point to that which is “unknowable” to the ego or conscious conceptual mind. Myth is an organized/constellated collection of symbols and metaphors, and becomes the intermediary, the bridge if you will, between the conscious and unconscious mind.
Working with dream images is a great example of how a symbol - metaphor or a collection of symbols and metaphors that become a myth actually point at the “unknowable”.
An image can arise in a dream which has no literal meaning to us. Once we follow that image and nurture a conscious relationship with it through the transcendent function, it becomes a symbol in the 3D realm. This symbol points at the original image, which points at the “unknowable” information contained in the unconscious mind, that is normally incomprehensible to the waking ego.
An image can be a person, (not a person you know but a dream character), place, or object, it can be explored through feeling and sensation as well, it is not just just visual.
The unconscious mind can speak to us through many different channels of perception. And when we practice embodying the messages of the dream image in our waking experience as I outline in the above newsletter, we essentially heal from the inside out by way of integrating the transcendent wisdom from the Self through the body-mind.
Over time we can organize what is symbolized through this process into our own personal embodied mythology. In fact I think quite a few of us are here to realize and communicate the “unknowable” through our own personal myth making. We are here to be channels for - to be tangible co-creators of - to give birth to formless into form.
This is why many feel so lost here at the moment. They’ve lost touch with their own inner transcendent function, become disconnected and dismembered from within, latching onto various lifeless ideologies as a poor substitute for the living creative impulse.
