We do well to choose our metaphors wisely.
—Parker Palmer
Life as Myth
We are myth makers.
We are symbol eaters.
Myth is the container of consciousness within which we choose the boundary of our lives.
If you wish to change your life, change your myth.
If you wish to change the world, change the myth by which the world understands itself.
If we are to evolve, our myths must evolve.
Self-aware myth-making is not an activity that was confined to the ancient Greeks. Hollywood and its global counterparts now represent the most active myth-making enterprise in human history. More important, however, is the solitary and collective interior myth-making we all engage in moment-by-moment. It is this story-making activity that delivers us to our highest functioning as human beings. It is within this story-creation activity each of us contain, arrange, and re-arrange the fundamental relationships to life we are constantly choosing.
The daily journey of life is the journey of the Storywarrior. WATCH VIDEO: http://http//storywarrior.consultech.net/public/video/categorized.aspx?t1=1&t2=2&t3=35
While myth-making and rehearsal has many forms (story, symbol, art, music, song, dance, ritual, rite, poetry, etc.), language and its myriad of poetic containers serves a foundational role and is the focus of this section.
The Legacy and Future of the Supporting Myth
We live in the Time Between the Myths.
The “Old Myth,” in all its global forms has delivered our species and our journey of depth through the eons to this hour. The New Myth, as a shared global story, has not arrived. We live in the “time between.”
We at the Storywarrior Institute affectionately refer to all manifestations of the “old myth” as the “Supporting Myth.” The Supporting Myth is simply the entirety of the body of depth-seeking material that has delivered humanity solitarily and collectively to this present moment. The Supporting Myth represents the collective journeys of the depth-seeking traditions of the East, West, North, and South. We all are dependent upon this special mythic literature, practices, and ritualistic expression for our deepest self-understanding about the meaning and purpose of existence. It is this vehicle that has deposited us on the shore of the present moment. Yet, the Supporting Myth is not a vehicle capable of delivering our united, 21st Century, quantum scientific, digitally-connected, environmentally-integrated, single-planet into the future. In this “time between” the task is now one of exploring and sharing a “Relevant Contemporary Mythos.” In our communication with our own interior depth and with one another we must learn a language we can grasp within a contemporary context. The “code words” and “special language” of a past age once united users of such poetry because participants all understood the existential life content to which these mythic symbols pointed. These same words and poetry, especially when interpreted literally, morally, sentimentally, or in a fundamentalist context now are experienced as divisive and adversarial. The unifying depth context or common experiential content is no longer shared. A new story or mythos is now required for a single people that inhabit a common planet.
It is not time to abandon the Supporting Myth which has successfully delivered us to this time and place. Rather, it is time for those who have a need and desire to deeply engage our depth history to visit the Supporting Myth in its appropriate contemporary home: The Library. The Supporting Myth is the Library of Human Consciousness. Yet, none of us live in The Library; we live in our lives. From time to time we visit The Library to engage our memory from the past and to do the research life always requires.
Joseph Campbell points out that one of the four fundamental functions of myth is to connect us to the Ultimate Mystery of existence. A myth remains viable when it is accomplishing this function and becomes irrelevant when it can no longer do so.
Mythic Language is the special poetry human beings have always used to talk about That-Which-Cannot-Be-Talked About. “Mythic Language” can be distinguished from the “everyday language” we use to talk about the latest sale at the mall, the weather, rising taxes, and what happened today at the office or in the classroom.
Metaphorical language has always been used and always will be used to speak of the unspeakable qualities of the inner life. But metaphorical language is a human creation that is invented, changes, and dies like every other human creation.
—Gene Marshall
Mythic words are special because they point to the Contentless! Mythic words are vehicles that point beyond themselves to something unfathomable…something awesome….something very non-human…something non-material and without content. It is the connection with this Contentless Reality that is transformative in human experience. These special words assist the user to re-establish and rehearse his or her connection to the Great Contentless One. Yet, we human beings routinely fill our mythic language with content so that we can “understand” That-Which-Cannot-Be-Understood. As we add content to the Contentless, meaning and personal connection with the transformative encounter is lost. We human beings cyclically ruin the poetic containers that previously connected us with our essence. In this inevitable process words that were once boundless containers of Mystery become “humanized” and full of content that everyone “understands.”
The problem with so many great Supporting Myth words like “prayer,” “sacred,” “meditation,” “God,” “Brahma,” “Christ,” “Buddha-nature,” “divine,” “worship,” “soul,” “spirit,” “spiritual,” “holy,” and countless other words as well as all of the words located in the Supporting Myth Translation Guide of this website, is that when they first came into being they had power and interior potency because they pointed beyond themselves to Infinite Invisible Mystery. Yet, over time, all of these great mystery words have been humanized and, for the most part, are now full of content; everybody knows exactly what the word is pointing to because it only points to itself – an entity now filled with content. Because everyone, through popular use, believes they understand what the word means, it means nothing; it becomes intellectualized, sentimentalized, moralized, and abstracted into impotence.
In the current age when someone says “Let us pray” everyone present knows exactly what is going to happen. Thus do these commonly used Supporting Mythic words fill our depth-seeking gatherings and tradition-bound ritualistic acts, yet, no encounter with the Unknown and the Unknowable happens; no lives are changed or slightly disturbed, much less transformed. Content reigns and Mystery and transformation are nowhere to be found.
What once served to deliver human beings into the awesome, terrifying, and ecstatic presence of the Contentless One, these same words now have been totally inverted and actually serve to assist the user in evading, escaping and otherwise avoiding a direct and potentially unsettling personal encounter with the Awesome Contentless Reality at the center of life.
The Scientific Context of Mythic Language
In this discussion of language it is necessary to engage the scientific and cosmological source of the Supporting Myth language that continues to pepper our attempts to communicate about depth.
For many thousands of years our ancestors sat under the night sky and beheld the spectacle above them. Our ancestors, like us, used their rational skills of observation to the best of their capacity to do so. As they gazed at the night sky the situation was obvious. Above them were holes in the next level and light was leaking through. It was clear that we indeed lived in a two-story cosmos. It is important to understand that this was not some profession of a belief system, this was the obvious “science” of the day; this was the “cosmology,” the “world view” that defined rational understanding. There was “this world” and there was “that world.” Certainly there was a connection between the two but the power was obviously “up there” and “out there” and “somewhere else.” These two levels were clearly “separated.”
The mythic language of the Supporting Myth all was created within this two-story scientific world view or in more elaborate cosmologies within a “three-story context. Thus it is that when 9 year old children today use Supporting Myth language to talk about matters of depth, the only language of depth available to them, they must suspend their understanding of the digital, quantum worldview of their present-tense, computer and electronic device driven lives and interiorly revert to a scientific perspective that is at least 4000 years old. [VIDEO]
In 1543 when Copernicus published Revolutions of the Celestial Orbs the end of the 2-Story Cosmos was effectively announced. However, for the following 100 years his books were burned by the institutional defender of the dominant depth-seeking Western tradition. For the last 600 years our species has continued to struggle to move beyond the science of the two-story universe in our mythic language. This struggle continues today.
Moving Beyond Translators
As we seek depth in the current age, we have become dependent upon “translators.” A translator is simply a person or teacher or depth-seeking leader who presents themselves as having a direct grasp of the ancient text or code words and then proceeds to help those of us who are not so informed to “translate” how this or that special word actually relates to our real lives. The Supporting Myth requires that we have a mediator or a translator to establish the connection between our real, everyday life experience and the containers of meaning we seek. Revolutions in human history and self-understanding occur whenever the great secret and enduring truth breaks through that we each have the possibility of a direct, personal, present-tense, existential, and experiential relationship to Ultimate Reality without the need for a translator or mediator.
When personal myth-making and relationship-choosing is empowered the foundations of life are shaken and authentic living of life emerges. We live in such a moment.
A Relevant Contemporary Mythos and the language it uses do not require translation. If a “special word” or “codeword” requires translation this is a strong clue it may be Supporting Myth language.
A Contemporary Mythic Language
Many of us have had the experience of being in a country where we did not speak the language and were dependent upon a translator. In such situations we can easily feel alienated, isolated, out-of-touch, stupid, and lost. The same experience occurs when we seek a life-of-depth in a world where we do not have a language-of-depth.
When one is learning a new language, in the beginning it is always a little sluggish while one learns to translate in one’s head from the native tongue to the new language before speaking. This process is cumbersome and slow and, as they say, “there is always something lost in translation.” Yet, over time, as the new language takes root and words begin to associate directly with objects and experiences without the need of translation, one becomes fluent in the new tongue. One becomes fluent as the new language actually becomes biological; grounded in the cells and sinews and tissues of the brain and nervous system and tongue and muscle memory. No translation is needed.
So it is with the journey to embrace a Relevant Contemporary Mythos. At first this practice is awkward and, in frustration and clumsiness, we may wish to retreat to the comfort of the Supporting Myth even with its liabilities of non-transferability. The old code words are tempting as we seek to communicate with our own depth or that of our neighbor. Yet, over time and with practice, a Contemporary Mythos literally can take root and deliver us to a fluency in life that is both sustainable and transferable.
It is this journey the Supporting Myth Translation Guide seeks to nurture.
The Wikipedia of Depth Language
What is needed is……an altogether new language.
—Walter Nigg
When the depth metaphors of one age relinquish their prominence to make room for new contemporary poetry a 3-step process inevitably occurs. The first step is “de-mythologizing.” De-mythologizing is the process by which a former supporting myth becomes understood or clarified through scholarly assessment so that at some future point the life meaning of the inquiry can be “re-mythologized” or re-stated in a new contemporary poetry or jargon. Between the scholarly inquiry and poetic restatement there is an in-between step; this is the clinical step. In this “clinical” in-between step, the understanding gained from the scholarly inquiry into the previous mythic poetry is now stated in boring, everyday, clear, and mutually understood, universal, contemporary language. The objective of this in-between stage is one of clarity.
It is perhaps a paradox that in matters of depth, one of the most important elements of progress in an interior journey of Mystery, is clarity. This special clarity is not necessarily an intellectual understanding so much as it is an existential or experiential resonance. Nonetheless, if this clarity is valid, its truth is verified as it is shared and recognized by others. Thus is the importance of clear, clinical, language as we approach the inner life and attempt to communicate with one another. The process of “poeticizing” Truth, or the third step, cannot take place until clinical clarity is strongly established in the second phase. The boring but clear clinical language of the second phase must occur before the more eloquent and romantic poetry of phase three can emerge. It is this second phase that calls for our attention in the current era and provides a primary mission for the work of the Interior Mythos Journeys curriculum.
There are no experts in the evolution of a contemporary mythic language.
Contemporary language of depth is emerging all around us and from surprising sources including athletics, Hollywood, science, medicine, astrophysics, quantum mechanics, economics, and the cutting edge of almost every field of human endeavor. The ability to speak in depth about the absolute mystery of human existence is being empowered from all these arenas as we open ourselves to embrace the new linguistic containers being delivered.
Join us at the Storywarrior Institute in building a Supporting Myth Translation Guide that both preserves the mystery-laden message of the mythic language of the past and creates a context for depth exchange in the contemporary world. Begin the practice today of speaking to yourself and others in clear contemporary language of depth. When the appropriate words are not clear, check in with the Translation Guide or join the Forum and raise the question with others engaged in this quest.
The paradox of moving beyond the need for “translators” is that, to some extent, we must all become translators!
Therefore, as you engage the work of unlocking the message of the Supporting Myth or seeking language to communicate in a contemporary context, feel free to offer contributions to the Translation Guide of this website. Recommendations for consideration by the advisory panel can be submitted to info@storywarrior.net.
The task we are being called to engage is not new; it must be repeated in every age. Yet, this hour is ours. Please join us.
Meister Eckhart is said to have prayed “God to rid [him] of God” – to free him from the images that he saw as ultimately pointing away from the Mystery rather than leading to it; and that he saw as distracting, misleading, blinding him to the essence of the Holy, rather than giving him sight. Most of us, I suspect, would prefer to be less radical than Eckhart. Language, after all, is the primary way by which we communicate and relate. —Barbara Fiand
Palmer, Parker J., Let Your Life Speak, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., San Francisco, 2000, p 96.
Interior Mythos Journeys, “Nurturing the Infinite Addiction,” Bloomington, IN, May, 2009, Message III, Module 18.
Campbell, Joseph, Moyers, Bill. The Power of Myth. New York, NY: Broadway Books/Random House, 1988. p 22
Campbell, Joseph, Moyers, Bill. The Power of Myth. New York, NY: Broadway Books/Random House, 1988: p 32.
Marshall, Gene W., No Masters Anymore, Realistic Living Journal No. 52, November, 2009, Realistic Living Press, Bonham, TX: p 6.
Interior Mythos Journeys, “Nurturing the Infinite Addiction,” Bloomington, IN, June, 2009, Message V, Module 25.
Nigg, Walter, Warriors of God. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959. p 12
Bultmann, Rudolf, Jesus Christ and Mythology, New York, NY, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958: p 18.
Fiand, Barbara, Awe-Filled Wonder, New York, NY, Paulist Press, 2008: p 52.