At critical moments in the life of individuals and of societies, it is not necessarily the facts that are needed as much as a profound narrative that makes sense of life’s conflicts and misunderstandings. When all seems to be falling apart and becoming less rational and more chaotic, it is usually a different story that is needed to make things whole again. Mythic imagination can break the spell of time and open us to a level of life that remains timeless. Myth is not about what happened in past times; myth is about what happens to people all of the time.
Each young person is a poet of sorts, trying to sort out the poetics of their inner life and its relation to the great world around it. Each elder is a philosopher of sorts, trying to sort out the meanings and gleanings of a life as well as the necessary implications of the presence of death.
Mentoring is an archetypal activity that has timeless elements which can connect us to the universal ground where nature renews itself and culture becomes reimagined. Youth and elder meet where the pressure of the future meets the presence of the past. Old and young are opposites that secretly identify with each other for neither fits well into the mainstream of life.
Sometimes, the greatest safety can be found in taking the right risk. Whether it be an individual, a community or a country, when faced with tragedy or fearful uncertainty, we either become bigger and enter life more fully, or else we accept a diminished life and resign ourselves to a smaller way of being.
At critical moments the veil between the little-self and the deep self thins and a meaningful self-adjustment becomes possible. If a person does not become paralyzed with fear or frozen in hatred, the wise self hidden within will rise to the occasion.
In the end, what we fear will not go away, for it indicates what we must go through in order to awaken, become more genuine, and live more fully. The problem is that we tend to be most afraid of what our own souls require of us. Often our deepest fear is that we might become who we are intended to be, who we already are at our core. For becoming who we truly are requires the greatest amount of change.
Many people believe that eliminating the apparent causes of fear will eliminate it, but fear, like beauty, is part of the world. The fear of fear results in the growth of terror as well as a loss of the beauty and wonder of the world. By fearing fear, we create the room for terror and panic to grow. People become blinded by fear, driven by anxieties, and increasingly ruled by phobias and obsessions. When we fail to recognize how fear works in the world, we become ruled by it. The point is not to become paralyzed with foreboding or be caught in the panic that can grip the collective and cause people to run blindly in the wrong direction. The point is to willingly go where most fear to go, to follow where the fear might lead and face the ways that the world roars at us.
Each soul lives on the verge of remembering the forgotten agreement and original dream that it carries; yet each moment can be another point when the dream of life becomes lost again. Each meaningful step we take on the path of life involves some tension between the needs of the common world and the dreams of the soul. This inherent tension can stop us in our tracks, yet can also be the source of vital energy needed for the soul to grow. Each time we remember a piece of why we came to life we pull the seeds of eternity farther into the world of time. The inner seed keeps trying to sprout, but often our fate must place us in a crossroads or nail us to a cross before we pay proper attention to it.
The divine is at the edge of our awareness and vision, but it is also within us as the first seeker found when all seemed lost completely. In order to find the dream of life again, we must first find the way that the dream exists within our own souls. We may be daunted by the surfacing of all the dilemmas and trouble of this troubled world, but the deep self and soul within us already knows how we are intended to swim in the blessed turmoil of the waters of life. For humans exist to bring meaning to the surface of life and awareness to the dream of existence.
Life roars at us when it wants or needs us to change. Ultimately, change means trans formation, a shifting from one form to another that involves the magic of creation. The trouble with entrenched oppositions is that each side becomes increasingly one-sided and single minded and unable to grow or meaningfully change. In the blindness of fear and the willfulness of abstract beliefs, people forget or reject the unseen yet essential unity that underlies all the oppositions in life.
In these dark and uncertain times, there can be great value in imagining a bit of star in each human soul. Not just that it gives some hope for humanity at a time when man’s inhumanity to man seems ever on the increase; but also because it points to an inner brightness that can light the way in dark times.
To become nobody but your true self and to struggle against the tide of sameness and the false security of simply fitting in is a fight worth having. To become oneself by contributing one’s native gifts and talents to this troubled world: that is the job to keep applying for and a work worth spending an entire life doing.
One of the open secrets of life on earth is that the answer to life’s burning question has been inscribed in one’s soul all along. The soul is a kind of ancient vessel that holds the exact knowledge we seek and need to find our way in life. Each life is a pilgrimage intended to arrive at the center of the pilgrim’s soul. From that vantage point, the issue is not whether we managed to choose the right god or the only way to live righteously; such notions fail to recognize the inborn intimacy each soul already has with the divine.
In the end, as at the beginning, the divine turns out to be most interested in the unique life of the individual soul. That’s what was meant by the old idea that “inside people is where god learns.” This is not a religious notion, but more of a spiritual insight. For this conversation god is simply the shortest way to refer to the divine. When a unique life becomes fully livedeveryone involved learns something and it becomes clear that god was involved all along.
Something watches over us and we know it when we follow the little voice inside or heed the warning or inspiration that arrives as if on wings. We need the intermediaries that keep us close to the spirit of life, to the wonders of nature and to the subtleties of our own inner nature.
The hardest thing in life may be to learn to truly trust that there is something noble and generative in ourselves. This is a greater sense of the notion of believing in our self; to truly believe in oneself means to uncover the inner core of imagination and authenticity that can also be called the genius within us. When we connect to the inner resident of the soul, we also learn how we are woven to the Soul of the World.
The issue is not simply one of needing to save the world, but also of needing to solve the problem of the loss of soul throughout the modern world. Part of what has been lost in the reckless rushing of modernity is the sense that each life has an authentic interior that shelters important emotions as well as inherent purpose, and that the dignity of existence includes a necessary instinct to unfold the unique story woven inside each living soul.
Living myth is about the experience of the waters parting again in the here and now. As a critical moment opens before us the spirit of life and genius of the soul speaks to us and through us. What was about to crush us suddenly parts before us and we shoot forward with the sudden vitality of life, fueled by the living imagination needed to survive.
If we meet a myth with our lives and deepest concerns, the mythic oracles speak directly to us. Myths are oracular in the sense that each person can receive a message or an insight that relates to their life circumstances. The point has never been to “believe” in myths or to simply accept what others have said they mean. The key issue with mythic images is to let them speak to us, wherever and whenever we find ourselves seeking guidance, permission, or understanding.
Everyone experiences pain and most suffer from patterns that continue to make life miserable unless something or someone intervenes. The pain we feel comes from the cross-wise energies that keep curving back and cancelling the wise self and the good word that wait to be expressed from within us. Persistent pain is usually the indication that we have become trapped in a life too small for our true nature. That is the usual human fate and the common predicament where the little-self obscures the greater nature behind it. Until people realize what harms them and limits them from within, they are unlikely to call out for someone to help stop the pain. The remedy may be nearby, but until the pain becomes unbearable most remain caught in the agony of one form or another of self-inflicted wounds. As Rumi said, 'The cure for the pain is in the pain.
The ability to be tough-minded remains useful; but by now, the fact that we are all in trouble in terms of both nature and culture can only be denied by those who become overly conservative and blindly reactionary. The more tender-hearted imagination that suggests we are all in this together and that there must be an underlying unity in life may be the only way to survive.
In order to understand the conditions we are in, we must place ourselves not in the mainstream of life but in the timeless stream of myth. As the fabric of life loosens, the veil between this world of hard facts and the otherworld of great imagination also becomes thinner and more permeable. Just as time seems to be running out, timeless things try to slip back into human awareness.
As people used to say, “What the heart loves is the cure.” The cure for healing the wounds and conflicts between faiths and systems of belief involves awakening to the unique ways that each heart carries devotion and love. When followed far enough, simple belief can transform into wisdom; raw passions can become a greater compassion that trusts what resides in one’s heart and even in the hearts of others. Until the heart opens and the eyes begin to see there is always the danger of blindness and narrowness and the tendency to hold onto narrow ways of being.
Once a person falls in the fields of love, all the rules are already broken; the lover becomes open and exalted in ways that transcend the local issues as well as the commonly held beliefs. Love, like genuine devotion, will find a way. Where duty becomes replaced with love, a greater and deeper faith will blossom forth. For the deepest meaning of “belief” refers to being loyal to what the heart already loves. As people used to say, “What the heart loves is the cure.” The cure for healing the wounds and conflicts between faiths and systems of belief involves awakening to the unique ways that each heart carries devotion and love. When followed far enough, simple belief can transform into wisdom; raw passions can become a greater compassion that trusts what resides in one’s heart and even in the hearts of others. Until the heart opens and the eyes begin to see there is always the danger of blindness and narrowness and the tendency to hold onto narrow ways of being.
Something ancient in us bends us toward the origins of the whole thing. We either drown in the splits and confusions of our lives, or we surrender to something greater than ourselves. The water of our deepest troubles is also the water of our own solution. In surrender, we descend down to the bottom of it and back to the beginning of it; down into what is divided in order to get back to the wholeness before the split. Healing, health, wealth, wholeness: all hail from the same roots. To heal is to make whole again; wholeness is what all healing seeks and what alone can truly unify our spirit.
There will always be the facts of life to contend with, and there are times when the facts can become overwhelming. Yet, there is a poem at the heart of things and a mythic story in the heart of each of us. At certain times it is the poetry of life and the mythic imagination of the soul that become necessary in order to heal the wounds inflicted by an excess of reason or an overuse of force. When we unfold the story wound within our souls and untie the knots within us, we add presence to the world and contribute to the spirit of life in a specific and authentic way.
Hearing a story awakens the mythic story living in each of us. It places us in a “mythic condition” that reconnects us to the core imagination and living story at the center of our soul. Being touched by myth carries us to the center where the world is always ending and always beginning again.
Something deep in the human soul awakens as things fall apart. Something in the soul knows that everything in this world can become lost. And something in the soul knows how to survive periods of devastation, disorientation and loss. Descent and falling is the way of the soul from its beginning. We each fell from the womb of life when the waters of the inner sea broke and it came time for us to breathe on our own.
Run towards the roar,’ the old people used to tell the young ones. When faced with great danger and when people panic and seek a false sense of safety, run towards the roaring and go where you fear to go. For only in facing your fears can you find some safety and a way through. When the world rattles and the end seems near, go towards the roar.
Our deepest longings and the question of who we are intended to be cuts us in half, dividing us within ourselves. At critical stages and significant moments in the course of life, we sink with the weight of our own questions; we drown in our own psyche in order to reach a subtle ground that secretly sustains our every breath. In that sense, all separations, splits, and conflicts are evidence of a unity we long to find, both individually and collectively.