Living Myth

Myth is not history, nor fables, nor imagination, nor fantasy, nor teaching stories, nor lies. Myth is the transcendent coming into manifestation, the collective dreams of the people becoming manifest as the personal lives of individuals. Myths are the transcendent energies of the Unconscious determining the patterns of experience we live, the tragedies we live, the births and rebirths we experience, and the stories told by our lives. It is no suprise that ordinary people, busy with their lives, unaware of the forces which shape their experience and worldviews, view myths as children's tales. But they are not.

In this column, we will write about these stories which we live, what purposes they serve, who we become as we live the mythic epics of our cultures, and how the myths we live bring meaning to our lives. Myths, and the deities/archetypes who live them, serve as models of character, show us our strengths and weaknesses, tell us what is right and wrong, give us life roles, show us our frailties and dependencies, clarify our self-serving lies to ourselves, and show us how the transcendent interacts with the mundane. Myth leads us into realizations that our lives do have meaning, even where life itself is full of tragedy and sorrow; even when it seems incomprehensible or without purpose.

Joseph Campbell often spoke about his studies of mythology. He identified four purposes for myth. He told us:

(1) The first function of mythology is to reconcile us to our fates and ultimate death in an apparent reality where life feeds on life, where we can live only if other living beings die. As Campbell says, "the only way to affirm life is to affirm it to the root, to the rotten horrendous base." One learns to say "YES!" to everything in life; one accepts life with all its sorrow and incomprehensible events as a mystery and an ecstatic experience.

(2) The second function of mythology is to generate a vision of cosmic order which explains the world and our places in it, and which fills society and the individual with mystical awe. Only if this function is fulfilled does the individual have the sense of having a relationship to the Divine. Only when this function is fulfilled does society hold up its spritual values as a guide for the ethical treatment of its citizens.

(3) The third function of mythology is to validate social relationships and maintain order within society; creating shared perspectives on what is right and what is wrong; defining which behaviors are taboo; defining common law and social mores; and giving moral legitimacy to the rights of each individual within the tribe. Such agreements hold societies together and help people know what the rules are for relating to authority and demanding their freedom.

(4) The fourth function of mythology is to guide each individual through the stages of his life--from birth to death--in accord with society, family and clan expectations. It is by living one's myth that one becomes an individual, that takes a child through childhood, out from under parental control or protection, into young adulthood with all its challenges, into maturity with its disappointments and achievements, through the crisis at mid-life when one discovers the meaninglessness of material gains and social success, and feels the loss of lifetime dreams and hopes, and then into one's senior years, when new challenges to meaning are encountered, and finally into confrontation with and acceptance of death. Myth has the job to make it all worthwhile and acceptable. Myth has the job of making the journey meaningful.

There are two ways by which the individual may make his psychological journey through life. One is by the tribe crushing his individuality, his rebeliousness, his ego to press him into service and conformity with the requirements of the tribe. This is the way of duty, service to others, repression of individuality, imposition of guilt or shame as social control and education into group consciousness.

The other way is the way of the hermit, isolation, separation, antisocial attitudes. Here, the individual believes that there is no freedom within society and no being "himself" under the authority of tribal organizations.

In fact, these two ways are not polar opposites, but are often sequential. Moreover, usually neither is entirely true, but holds both truth and falsehood. At first, youth follows the way of the tribe, but comes to a crisis in which the tension of mental and emotional neuroses can not longer be maintained by the individual. Then, the individual goes into crisis. He can fight and refuse to change, clinging to the hopes of security and group support from the tribe. Or he can surrender to the crisis, realize that he has lost himself and the meaning he had pursued within the tribe. And so the individual becomes a seeker.

Here, all journeyers must choose whether to stand alone or to turn outward seeking an outer authority. Many--probably most--choose spiritual 'paths' which simply turn them towards other tribal values. Some will choose another religion. Some western seekers will turn to Eastern spiritual traditions, occasionally Eastern religious adherants abandon their heritage and seek out Western ideas. Some agnostics will turn fanatical spiritual seekers. But the Way will be the way of the tribe, another tribe, another authority to which one must submit.

Few will turn within to find a way to live by their own authority. This is the Quest for the Holy Grail, the Journey of the Hero, like Galahad and the Knights of the Round Table, each seeking his own way, alone, into the forests of the Mind in search of the thing that is missing in life, each going a Way no other has taken: the way of the individual with only the Great Mystery to guide. If the quest is successful, the journeyer returns from the forests of the mind. If the quest is a failure, the seeker may lose himself in schizophrenia or madness, or else run back to the security of the past.

If successful, the seeker having rediscovered his own power and uniqueness, may choose to remain alone, outside the controls of the social order, or return to society as one's own "man" or "woman". Returning, the individuated person no longer is attracted to the old lures or threats which kept him in servitude and subject to the authority of the tribe. He can not be threatened, or seduced, or silenced, or ignored. He is a power of one, and is content with that. This is living one's myth, becoming God, learning to be content with one's own story and life.

Western society at least appears to be emerging into a new social order--one in which society is disposed to support the independence and development of individuality. This new myth is evolving, changing old mythic themes, but is yet unfinished. We are in our age making a new mythic theme, of loving self-regeneration, of living in a social order without need to be in control, but of living from one's own power and authority without domination, and of loving without need to be loved.

Meanwhile, Americans and other business-oriented societies are living without a contemporary mythology which links the way they live their lives to the mythic stories of their gods. In fact, we are spiritually isolated by a spirituality which looks back into history rather than to Nature and the Universe-as-Spirit. Science has de-spiritualized our Universe, and we are without a sense of Divine Presence in our lives. Religion has been reduced to following rules in a book, without direct gnosis by each individual, in hopes of being rewarded with 'eternal life' by a god who does not show himself to man. The sense of abandonment by a loving parent is overwhelming in our Western cultures, and the corresponding desire by individuals to give themselves away for love and recognition is powerful, if unconscious. The result is religious fanaticism, cultural infantilism, and intolerance of those who do not follow our religious rules.

Until a new mythology arises to take individuals into gnosis, a mythology which spiritualizes society's relationship to Nature and cosmos, Americans are indeed in spiritual pain--evicted from the Garden of Eden where once we knew God. And so we are a nation of seekers. We mosttly give ourselves away to tradtional spiritual traditions which hold up a tribal consciousness rather than support or tolerate individual spiritual autonomy.

The East lies by another archetypal process of spiritual maturity than the Quest. Older, spiritually more mature, and more mythically conscious that the West, the Eastern spiritual traditions just sit down and watch their minds, stop seeking, and wait for their minds to grow quiet. Losing ego is the goal of these traditions, while we in the West seem determined to keep our egos. Perhaps we'll find time to delve into those spiritual tenets as well before we're through. Many in the West are being pulled by those traditions because they, at least, hold out the potential for personal gnosis.

Here, we will hold to the tradition that Earth is Man's Heavenly Garden, that we may live here in hell or in heaven. It is up to us.