CreativeMythologyCreating Personal Mythology

What do we need to look at within ourselves when we consider these modern plagues? We saw the Egyptian plagues had a probable natural cause while these modern plagues are largely self created.

Consumerism/Debt, Deforestation, Addiction, Poverty, Celebrity, Climate Change, Female Infanticide, Politics, Suicide, Terrorism/War.

All this has been created by our thoughts of who we are at this point in time. Again I was finding it difficult to begin this post I had some ideas but when I put myself in front of it nothing happened.

I begin a new job tomorrow. Leaving my current abode and moving to another area about an hours drive away. Living on site taking up the position of Catering Manager for the YMCA Camp at Wainui Park.

I went for a bike ride through my favourite spots,  a sort of a good-bye. I’m sure I’ll be back but it won’t be the same.

Its autumn here in the Southern Hemisphere.

South Hagley Park

Leaves are fading, falling, carpeting the earth. Along with acorns they crunch under the tyres as I take the path through the park.

Seems as though we are in autumn (fall) universally. Harvesting those things we’ve created through our thoughts. The good and the bad. Thoughts about who we are individually and globally.

Is there a coldness entering our universal consciousness? A time of what worked during the summer of our age beginning to become frozen. Do we need collectively to embrace a wintertime? To consciously allow a winter bleakness to enter our psyche that we can better appreciate the springtime that’ll follow. To huddle together, deriving common warmth. Burning away the deadfall, those branches of thought that no long serve our global community, that have outlived their necessity to the tree of humanity.

What will follow this conscious embrace of winter, this burning away metaphysically the deadfall of “civilization”, the “civilization” through which have emerged these modern plagues. The ideas and and thoughts that serve our concept of a common humanity will be the first shoots pushing through the thawing earth as winter turns to spring.

And yet throughout a winter there is still greenness to behold, still flowers to spark our imaginations for the unfolding beauty.

Are there areas of your life that seem to falling away, parts of your psyche going cold to ideas you have about yourself. Can you see the seasons at work within yourself?

Blessings

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I had completed my blog for the day. It’s been taking two or three hours to get my blog to a point where it is in a shape for posting. So the day is almost half gone by the time I get the post up and then move into the rest of the day.

Parts of the day, small parts are spent going round and round in my head – What’s happening here? Why am I not getting any offers of work? When am I going to get some money going into my account? When am I going to get a ring from the credit card people, the telecom people, the bank? I was honest with the companies I had outstanding debt with. I see what is most important in life. Shelter and food. Those are the two things that are in focus when my financial wellbeing wasn’t so well. Paying the rent. Putting food on the table. There has even been a week when paying the rent went out the window.

The whole experience I’d describe as a madness. Why have I allowed this to happen? What is it that I am seeing within myself as I make this passage? I had a similar experience over the Xmas period 2007-2008 but I had some holiday pay to carry me through. There was uncertainty then, though nothing compared to this time. I consciously stopped that facility through my pay earlier in the year. What was I doing – saying to the universe show me the worst?

If  I’m appearing mad to myself how are others experiencing me? Do they think I’m mad? I’ve noticed a sort of coolness in some. And I wonder about that. Others are supportive, being with me through the process.

It has been interesting watching what has been going on inside of me as I notice the way my son has been tackling the same no work space. I notice my frustration as I sense he’s not giving all he has to the process and I wonder how much of that is me not giving my all to my life. How much of this madness has to do with my not being all I am meant to be? How much of this madness has to do with fear? Of not being or doing enough with my life.

Enough about those areas. There were good things going on as well. I visited my friend whose house I helped paint. We’ve been working on a business proposal for a while now that has had its share of challenges. We were finalising a flyer. We had talked about paying for distribution but as we considered it further we thought we deliver them ourselves. Will keep our costs down. So all good to go with that.

From there I went to a planning and assessment seminar at Work and Income. I’d collected some of the bits and pieces they wanted me to bring but had neglected a few things so I wasn’t overly confident that there was going to be any change to the situation there. As I was going in I was receiving texts from the temping agency I’d signed up with saying they had work for me. It was all happening. It kind of felt surreal here I was signing up for unemployment and receiving calls about jobs at the same time. The madness of it all.

And other things began opening up also. Just bumping into people I hadn’t seen for weeks. I’m not sure whether this process has changed me or that something else on a more global perspective changed. I am moving again at least financially. And I’m committed to sharing myself through my blog.

Life is too precious. I thought about not connecting when I saw people on the street that I knew. I considered just biking on to my appointment. Life is much more satisfying when I stopped to smell the flowers along the way. In  a metaphorical sense people are flowers – they bloom when treated to some positive attention – a smile, a hug, recognition. When the sun of a smile, of recognition, of a hug shine on me I can’t help but return the compliment.

Life is good.

Blessings to you.

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Depleted Azeri Oilfield

One of the ways a Creative Mythologer works is by acknowledging and working with what is in the foreground of his life at any moment. What am I attracted to? What is calling to me? I’d been looking at lending the OilCrash Movie “A Crude Awakening” for a few weeks. The video store had it on a shelf of staff picks so I imagined it would be interesting.

In the movie I was struck by the images of oilfields and the ugliness that goes along with them. There is a busyness and excitement when they’re productive and when the resource runs out there is an emptiness, a wasteland. How can we devastate what is beautiful and then leave it ugly without repairing what we’ve done?

The narrator called our attachment to the possibilities of petroleum an addiction. Alcoholism on wheels. Its not only ourselves we are damaging with this addiction. We are affecting our landscapes. Climate change is another affect. One of the people interviewed in the movie referred to oil as a magnet for war. The movie is a sobering reminder. A reminder that any addiction sucks away our spirit.

I look at the ways I’m addicted. I look at my uses of power and control. Physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. I see the slavery to substance, to feeling, to mood, the habit of thought, the habit of devotion. I see them and understand them because I have experienced them first hand. And when a narrator in a movie refers to our oil usage as an addiction also, I wonder how much am I addicted to the lifestyle I am living at the moment.

I notice when I am without work I begin to have withdrawal symptoms even though I’ve told myself that it’s a lifestyle choice. Fear comes up and I lose a sense of being supported, until I finally get some news that there is work, or that I have a client. I have debts to service and these can also create a sense of being enslaved. That somehow this addiction to certain standard of lifestyle wrought a financial commitment that I don’t have the freedom to walk away from. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing as I need to see even debt in a different light.

The images of the wasteland have me looking again at the Grail Mythology. In the search for the Holy Grail the knights needed to quest with pure heart in order to heal the king and find the Grail. The Grail symbolizes the principle of wholeness and is the source of everything we ask for. What am I not Being in order to feel Whole. If I don’t ask the question “to whom does the grail serve” I remain in the wasteland. If in my life I’m not lead by a pure heart I continue struggling in the wasteland.

It seems that the questions I pose to life itself create the results that materialize for me. If I don’t feel whole I need to understand and clarify my questioning process. Are the questions I’m asking coming from my unconscious habitual ways of thinking or are they lucid questions emanating from an awakened consciousness. As my life changes I need to perhaps change the questions I’m posing.

Resources:
Grail Myths: http://www.uiweb.uidaho.edu/student_orgs/arthurian_legend/grail/fisher/

http://www.oilcrashmovie.com/

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