CreativeMythologyCreating Personal Mythology

I’ve been procrastinating again. Well I imagined I was until I had a rather significant discussion while out to dinner the other night. We were talking about personality and I mentioned that my conversational skills had been described at times as being like squeezing blood out of a stone. Yes I do tend to hold myself back. And I brought up my blog. This is how I am putting myself out into the world, how my stone is beginning to ooze blood. The talk turned to excavation and then to archaeology.

“Emotional Archaeology” was bandied about as we talked about where the blog is going. I wasn’t sure if that captured the tone correctly. Was it deep enough? The word “psychotropic” came to mind. On reacquainting myself with the word I discovered it meant “acting on the mind” usually referring to drugs. My thought around psychotropic was in the  deeper sense of “psyche” meaning soul, and “–tropic” meaning turned toward, or having an affinity with. So the blog in a poetic sense felt like it had a “Psychotropic Archaeology” an excavation of my deeper self to develop this sense of a Creative Mythology

A few days prior to this enlightening discussion the thought had come to mind that at its conception a blog is a blank slate yet to be written and each post the same. I choose a subject and the words that will populate the screen and speak to the readers.

A new born is a blank slate when they enter the world. Initially what is written in their psyche is chosen by the environment they inhabit. They take their original cues from their mothers, then fathers, siblings if they have them, and so on until a day comes when they have to select or reject the cues they’ve picked up during their formative years. Their experiences may dictate to them that this or that cue is not working in a certain situation leaving them to wonder if this is really how life is meant to be for them.

And so collectively with Humanity. In its primitive state what might have been the cues taken that evolved into the wars of today? War seems a huge manifestation of an inhumanity wrought in the tribal communities of prehistory. My ponderings coincided with a visit to Wellington to see my children. And the following image struck me as I walked along the waterfront….

What is it that anchors our inhumanity in our collective consciousness?? Can we blame the media for placing images in front us ad nauseam or is there something deeper going on? An opportunity for individual or collective compassion and action perhaps? An opportunity for us to wake up to a collective and personal need to change.  First our inner selves and then the outer manifestation of this inhumanity which seems embedded in our very nature.

As always I rely on my day to day experiences to fuel the blogging fire. What can I excavate from the previous weeks events to furnish the room of understanding. And the inspiration (or is it desperation) to complete this post keeps coming. Only yesterday I received this in my inbox….

I see desperation in the images accompanying the script. And sorrow that the way the world works leads to this.

I have also been trawling through the M*A*S*H series on DVD. Hardly an episode goes by without a tear being shed. There is no dearth of material for an examination of Sacred Sorrow. A couple of episodes stand out…

Dear Sigmund: Sidney Freedman their on-call psychiatrist is spending time at the Unit during which he is composing a letter to Sigmund Freud. The plotline that touched on this inhumanity theme involved a pilot shot down over Korea. His war has consisted of flying missions from Japan dropping his deadly payload and then returning to Japan to spend his off-duty hours with his wife. During his stay at the 4077 he comes face to face with the horror he has wrought in the form of a injured child whose village has been bombed from the Air. A defining moment for him. In a parallel plotline there is a prankster at work in the camp offering some lighter moments. While funny there is something faintly dark about using someone to be the butt of another’s pranks.

Preventative Medicine: A sobering episode where Hawkeye contrives an affliction for a Colonel who has an overwhelming casualty rate, whose achievements as a commander are more important to him than the welfare of his men. Hawkeye has him come down with symptoms akin to an infected appendix which he then removes. The resulting recuperation time means the colonel will be taken off line duty indefinitely.

With his penchant for bringing the ironic to life I often find the voice of Hawkeye in my head….

While we’re on the DVD trail I picked up The Cove a couple of weeks ago not knowing that it would have relevance to the post. The blurb mentioning elite team, covert mission had piqued my interest a while back and it seemed the time to hire it. As the story unfolded the issue of dolphin exploitation and secret slaughter was in the foreground.

Then I received an email showing photos taken in the Faroe Islands where the slaughter of the calderon dolphin was openly acknowledged and was described elsewhere as a rite of passage for young adults males. The images are sickening. Another sorrow of our inhumanity.

And last but definitely not least is a sense that what we create in our lives is related to our predominant thoughts and feelings. Focusing on this theme brought that home for me. The ease of which all this arrived at the threshold of my awareness and then battered down the door seeking sanctuary. So when I turn inwardly and consider further – what are the ways I am wreaking inhumanity on myself and why…..

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Blessings to all who created this opportunity for people to gather and be at peace with themselves and the world. Take a look!!

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A new wind has blown through my reading habits. Prior to finding Ellen Burstyn’s “Lessons in Becoming Myself” . I had been trawling through myriad self help books gaining some insights here and there but without finding much that touched my soul. I seem to find the books that connect me to something deeper on the bargain tables in book stores and it happened again. There was something in me that just had to read this.

As in “UP” here was a shining example of what I like to think of as Creative Mythology. On the first page there was a reference to Mnemosyne, the Greek Goddess of Memory, mother of the 9 Muses fathered by Zeus. Somehow fitting as each of them seemed to touch her life in some way. Music, dancing, history, love, comedy, tragedy, epic and lyric poetry, and astronomy were all under the governance of the Muses.

The book worked on different levels. Ellen appears to follow a couple of perspectives, that of her spiritual journey and also her journey as an actress. Both combine to evoke a profound life. Simply read as autobiography it gave wonderful insight into Ellen Burstyn and if I’d been unaware of who she is I might have thought I was reading a novel.

Ellen models beautifully the way to craft a life, showing the way to follow a dream, of letting go of the riverbank and moving into the flow. Sure, along the river there are rapids where the ride holds peril and Ellen’s story is not short of those. There are stretches where the river slows and the flow is gentle, allowing her be more conscious of how life is unfolding and she recounts these with keen attention.

I was moved by her struggles with addictions and relationships and how they mirror my own. She spoke of them with detachment observing them from the writers perspective seeing how she was touched by them at that time but now no longer. I’d like to say that for the me that’s still working with them.

I was enchanted by her life. So much so that I had to read it a second time. I noted passages and pages that spoke to me. The one that is sitting with me now is one I didn’t note. She talks about working with and being mentored by Lee Strasberg of the Actor’s Studio. The feeling I got from the passage was that what is happening in the moment whether part of the performance or not, is perfect not only for the performance but also perhaps for the actor’s life outside of her art. And so it is for all of us being able to perceive the perfection in the present moment. That was brought home for me as I watched the trees from the kitchen window seeing them in the early morning light noticing a nuance I hadn’t seen before and reflecting on Ellen’s perceptiveness as she notices the nuances of characters as her roles evolved.

In another profound passage she tells of being drawn into learning through doing crossword puzzles and as she discovered new words she was initiated into study. I can imagine there was a sort of a family tree evolving as she was led from a reference in one book to seek out another. Looking always for what might be the ultimate truth, that truth that will allow us to live fully in the present. And being aware, as Sartre said, of a “God-shaped hole in my heart.” Wow.

Ellen confronts her fears and has epiphanies on her journey. She meets some of the 20^th century’s more famous people outside of the acting fraternity and is touched by these encounters.

Her strong connection with Sufism as a spiritual path because it honours the wisdom of all religious traditions again mirrors my own experience.

Ellen never shys away from seeking help in understanding herself when confronted by an aspect of her psyche with which she was uncomfortable and thence taking another step to becoming fully alive, fully present.

The photos from her personal collection show Ellen’s evolving radiant beauty while her roles show the diversity of characters she played.

The latter stages of her path were spent without companionship. It was a beautiful ending to find her under the auspices of the god Eros.

Blessings

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I am quite fond of the word constellate. It aptly describes the way ideas form as I consider a new post. The inspiration for this came from seeing “UP ” from Pixar. A brilliant example of Creative Mythology.

Three generations of our family have seen it and thought it was magic. The animated format sat well with my nephews. And both my sister and mother were touched by it.

The first half of the story tells of two childhood friends, Carl and Ellie growing up, getting married, coping with the discovery she can’t bear children, allowing their life to unfold without manifesting their dream, the wife then contracts an illness and dies. This connects me to my own mortality and my own seemingly frustrated aspirations. The second half follows the husband drawn into an adventure with a young boy who needs to assist an elderly person in some way to enable him to become a fully badged “ Senior Wilderness Explorer”.

This second act of the story triggered my imagination seeing it as symbolic of a journey to be become fully conscious. While the opening seemed to form the background for the rest of the story as I considered it more deeply I found it held as much symbolism as the second. There was much to stir both thoughts and emotions.

Thomas Moore describes children in Soul Life his audio retreat as being “raw carriers of soul”. This attribute was borne out by the curiosity of the two children in “UP” and their first meeting in the derelict house. With further thought I see them as the male and female elements of the psyche and the house as being the soul before one begins to sense a connection to the divine. An attitude of curiosity is essential as we walk upon the earth even though it may lead to injury as happened to Carl as he listened to Ellie daring him to be adventurous in this rickety old house. Carl winds up in hospital.

They are both excited by an explorer, Charles Muntz who is introduced early in the movie having found the bones of a previously undiscovered bird and he then goes off to “Paradise Valley” to search further for a living specimen telling everyone he won’t return until he has one. Consequently he disappears. Carl and Ellie wish to search for this childhood hero, find “Paradise Valley” and the bird. Ellie begins a scrapbook for this adventure.

They get married and buy the derelict house and begin to do it up. A jar with the words “Paradise Valley” on it sits on the mantle piece and they put all their spare cash in it for the trip. Life intervenes and the money they’re putting aside gets used for other things.

Doing up the house could be seen as working on our relationship with the sacred and the marriage as the union of the divine male and female.

Ellie becomes depressed when she finds out she’s infertile. I sensed the tragedy and sadness. And yet in these times of consumerism and materialism perhaps it points towards the rejection of our inner children. The playfulness and wonderment seem to get lost in the striving for the next best thing.

Life carries on then Ellie gets sick and the doctors are unable to do anything for her. Perhaps we’ve also lost connection to the feminine energies in our strivings. Carl sadly lays Ellie to rest and seems lost without her, taking on the aura of a grumpy old man. Until one day there’s a knock on the door…..

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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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“A thought arrived in my consciousness yesterday and started building a home “. With those words I began the post Haunted by the Future. It feels like I’m beginning to move some furniture in.

The trip to Auckland and the meeting with the sculpted Moses returns me to his story and the plagues that were experienced in Egypt at that time.

There were 10 plagues according to the Old Testament. The first was the Nile turning to blood followed by frogs, gnats, flies, livestock disease, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, and the death of first born children.

Plagues of Egypt in Wikipedia gives a possible scenario on how these plagues may have occured naturally. It makes for interesting reading.

It got me considering how history might look back at the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Are there experiences that might be thought of as plague-like by future historians? Will a certain mythology arise from this seemingly transitional time we are going through?

What are our modern plagues? After I had Googled modern plague I found I needed to first define plague. What was at the top of the list had to do with biological disease. Another definition is… any widespread affliction, calamity, or evil, esp. one regarded as a direct punishment by God: a plague of war and desolation.

What came to mind for me personally were the following:

Consumerism/Debt, Deforestation, Addiction, Poverty, Celebrity, Climate Change, Female Infanticide – for each of these I’ve supplied links in the resources below.

The other plagues that came to mind were:

• Politics: I haven’t included a link here as politics is such a complex subject suffice it to say that it comes from the Greek word “polis” meaning state or city. “Politikos” concerns anything regarding the state or city affairs. These days we can include any forms of governance within corporate, religious, and academic institutions as having a political base. My personal slant is that I see those in power as being at times held to ransom by people with money. I see an us and them mentality that concerns itself with ideologies the average guy probably has no concept of. International politics seems to be a game of oneupmanship oblivious the needs of the common people and the Earth on which we live. And I’m also sure there are many politicians who have a good heart as well.
• Suicide: This is very close to my heart at present. One of my cousins has recently lost a son to suicide. I’m not sure whether I’d describe it as an epidemic, though that is the way a friend saw it. It is certainly a tragedy that Adam found it necessary to take away the most precious gift he had, his life. I heard it described as a “coward’s way out” and I’m not sure I believe that either. When I try to imagine what it might be like to reach that point I get the feeling that it is the most courageous act left to the person who feels they need to take that final step. I’m sure they are fully conscious that this is the only way. And finally -
• War/Terrorism.

I imagine that the law of attraction is bringing this to us all for a reason. I’m reminded of the book Zero Limits , a collaboration between Dr. Joe Vitale and his Hawaiian mentor Dr Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len. In it Dr Hew Len asks that we consider that it we need to be responsible not only for what physically manifests that we in our lives but anything that enters our consciousness, anything that we become mindful of. Dr Len is the man who cured a ward of the criminally insane without seeing them in a therapeutic setting. By working on himself as he read through their records the environment around him began to change. He used a “mantra” as he encountered the space within triggered by what he was reading. The mantra – “I’m sorry… Please forgive me… Thank you… I love you”. He took responsibility for what was arriving in his consciousness and offered the “mantra” or prayer to the Divine. He acknowledged that to the Divine all was perfect and was taking responsibility for imperfectness of our human experience.

The way I understand it is to see that there is a perceived imperfection in the human condition and by becoming conscious of the places our imperfection manifests we are able to improve on them. We are only able to change that which we become conscious of.

I’m not surprised by synchronicities that occur as I continue to make posts on this blog. Only today I received an email from a friend that she’d forwarded on. An answer to the questions posed by these Modern Plagues?  A Call to Conscious Evolution . If what you read resonates there is a link at the bottom of the page where you can pledge your support.

And another synchronicity finding this quote at the beginning of the Zeitgeist: Addendum Movie…

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society”

J. Krishnamurti

Blessings

Resources:

• Debt (89 min video),
• Deforestation ,
• Addiction ,
• Poverty ,
• Celebrity ,
• Climate Change ,
• Consumerism ,
• Female Infanticide .

Lest we forget beauty…..

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I sometimes feel the need to make a grand statement about who I am. And this post was going to be one of them. I imagined writing about the Collective Consciousness, Unconsciousness and Conscious Evolution. These are abstract concepts and it is really in the details of our lives that we may find the precious gems of grandness.

Yesterday I was struggling with what to write here. It has been a fortnight since I last posted and life has been extremely busy. I’ve been working long hours preparing for functions both at AMI Stadium and at the Christchurch Convention Centre.

Last week we had the Ellerslie Flower Show here and the work was intense. I don’t think there was a day I did less than 12 hours. The most I did was 16. And others worked longer than me.

The event was held in Hagley Park luckily not too far from the Convention Centre where the food was being prepared and then transported. There was an army of workers providing food from upmarket restaurant and cafe fare, to pizza stands, stands offering steaks, pies, fries, coffee, sandwiches, muffins, scones. Most of the time it felt like a battle to keep the food flowing from the Convention Centre kitchens to the Flower Show.

Over the first couple of days the queues were huge. It started on Wednesday the 11th and went through ’til Sunday 15th. By the weekend things seemed to have got a little less busy or was it that we had adjusted to what had been chaos the first couple of days? By working through the chaos had order begun to make itself present? There were aspects though that could have been more efficient through better organization.  Attention to communication around the different areas could have averted overruns in production. This was already being discussed for the next one by management.

Associated with overruns especially around food is waste and the disposal of. In such a tense and busy atmosphere conscious disposal of waste is the last thing on everyone’s mind and mostly whatever has been finished with is thrown in the nearest bin. There are recycling programs and receptacles but this becomes secondary to getting the food to the customer.

The aspect of waste created by the event was most haunting for me. It is something that needs to be more embedded in consciousness. Systems need to be put in place so it is both user and environmentally friendly.

I am reading an interesting book at present called Who Owns The Future? by an ex-pat Kiwi who in one of the chapters uses the analogy of a caterpillar gorging itself on food before it enters the chrysalis state on its way to becoming a butterfly and likens it to the state we find the world into today – perhaps unconsciously gorging ourselves before entering the pupa stage of a new state of being. Working a large event such as the flower show certainly brings a consciousness to that idea though on a smaller scale.

Light & Shadow

And how does the picture to the right figure in all of this? I took the picture on the left only yesterday. The one on the right was taken on Feb 6 for my post Waitangi Day . In it I refer to what I witnessed in the sculpture (image on left) then as a shyness.  And as I look at it now I see an element of fear, of trepidation. Interesting that I experience two different feelings about the same object on different days. I imagine that is engendered by the hauntedness that I’m supposing for this post and the fear that often goes along with the concept of haunted. Am I looking at the future with trepidation?

Anyway to the light and shadow of the event. What people attending see is the light. The creations, the exhibits, stall holders, food outlets, etc. These are where their eyes are drawn and yet behind the scenes, in the shadow, other elements or persons are working to bring the event, the stall, the exhibit, food outlet into their immediate consciousness. And in some cases deeper in the shadow there are others providing service to those servicing the event.

Not only that there is also the work done after the gates shut and then open the following day. The tidying of the site, removal of rubbish, replenishment of stock. All create a pleasant atmosphere for the event to unfold.

Also in the shadow lie the unfortunate happenings – dehydration, cuts, burns, exhaustion – problems the public doesn’t get to see. One of the interesting stories I heard following the event was of one chef who had been rearranging her kitchen and putting items in her oven in her sleep during the proceedings. We laugh it off as an extraordinary circumstance. Had it gone on any longer though I’m guessing it could have turned into a mild form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Exhaustion of workers was apparent and it was interesting to note the effects of it. For some their coping mechanism was anger and others became funny, laughing sometimes uncontrollably at the smallest of things. Its great when two of the funny get together, not so good when a funny person and an angry person are in the same space especially for the angry one. It brings to mind the amusing drunk and the violent drunk and how what may be going on in their psyche comes to the surface when the liquor takes hold. I’ll side with the funny people as I get that way myself though I do hold concern for what maybe hiding within the person who gets angry or violent when their defences drop away.

With the onset of exhaustion a person can also become more open if they connect consciously with that space. That funny or comic self, angry or violent self are coping mechanisms and yet as I experienced through VisionQuest exhaustion can be a portal to the whisperings of your heart.

Blessings

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Joseph Campbell suggests four functions of Mythology. The first he says is to “reconcile consciousness to the preconditions of its own existence”. This means a merging of our day to day consciousness with what he refers to as the mysterium tremendum. In cultivating a sense of awe and fascination around our perception of life and fully participating in whatever way we are called we find a mythic sensitivity to life itself.

The second function is interpretive. In this the myth is “presenting a consistent image of the order of the cosmos” . Cosmos means ‘a place of adornment’. On a personal level how do we see our own cosmos? Are there things we know about ourselves we can rely on come what may? If you’re not sure you have a cosmos how would you imagine it to be? What are the ways in which you adorn your world, create a beautiful space?

The third is to “validate and support a specific moral order, that order of the society out of which the mythology arose”. The question I ask myself here is how do I create a moral framework for my own life? What is it about my life that has created my sense of ethics.

The fourth function is to “carry the individual through various stages and crises of life – to help people grasp the unfolding of life with integrity, meaning that individuals will experience significant events in accord with first themselves, second with their culture, third with the universe, and lastly with that mysterium tremendum beyond themselves and all things. What is arising within when you read this? What have you experienced within your life that has given you the tools to deal with the crises that unfold. If all is perfect at all times then we can look for clarification of what is happening now in what has already come to pass. We may be called to honour something that was important in our past that has slipped into the background – something that engendered a sense of awe and fascination at the time.

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