The Distance Between Spiritual Experience and Interpretation

Don't forget your own myth of existential atheism that allows you to interpret the myths of others, and thereby reduce them to ideas within your own mind.

The point being, you can pick apart and interpret what everyone else is experiencing, but it is only a thought-structure within your own mind. This is the big problem with “theories of everything” and the mind-set that wants to encapsulate everything within one's own domain.
(This is also why, I might add in the non-PC fashion you like to advocate, I think you tend to be dismissive of those views that don't support or agree with your own).

Now I'm not saying we shouldn't build TOEs and/or look at these issues with discrimination. But that we should be careful about reducing the perspectives of others to lesser fragments within our own psyches, as a kind of psycho-spiritual colonialism that is, quite frankly, endemic to Teal thinking. To some degree this is inevitable in the realm of debate and discussion. You have your view, I have mine–and obviously we both think they are “superior” in that we both want to hold the most inclusive, truthful perspective we can muster. That is crucial to what could be called the path of embodied jnana yoga. But at some point, and I would say that this is the difference between Teal and Turquoise in Wilberspeak, the colonialism ebbs and one's perspective opens up, it becomes more transparent and flexible, as one becomes less and less identified with it (and mental structures in general). There can be a certain “crisis of faith” because one begins to question previous hierarchies and interpretations, one begins to question one's own sacred cows.

There is a certain natural oscillation between a more relativistic/open and more hierarchic/discriminative mind-set. If we adhere to Spiral Dynamics this would equate with “cool” (purple, blue, green, turquoise) vs. “hot” (beige, red, orange, yellow) vmemes. If we don't subscribe to this linear approach, then the oscillation arises naturally and in different contexts and times of life. But of course what often happens is that we get rigidified in one extreme or another, such as that of extreme relativism or extreme hierarchicism. When we are so vociferously against one extreme, it usually means that we are embodying the other.

Julian

This is great stuff. Really appreciated the “real-life” human examples & scenarios - puts flesh on the theoretical bones.

Thanks, James

Hi Julian. Fine essay and I appreciate that you keep a focus on these issues that are important to integral and transpersonal theory.

For future reference, in case you are not already familiar with it, you might famliarize yourself with William James's “will to believe.” Whether one is sympathetic with James's ideas on the will to believe or not, I think it's an idea that any well-formed intergral and transpersonal theory needs to take into account. One place to start is with the Wikipedia entry (Will to believe doctrine, which includes a link to James's “The Will to Believe” lecture), and there is also an overview in outline form (by a philosopher) here.

I think that James Hillman (the post-Jungian) and Huston Smith would take issue with your emphasis on distinguishing between “literal” and metaphorical truth. In a book titled Jesus at 2000 that contains entries by a number of authors including Smith, Smith goes ballistic on a woman who wrote him a letter saying that while she values her Christian church and community, she cannot take stories about the virgin birth, etc., literally. Smith calls her a “fact fundamentalist.” In Revisioning Psychology, Hillman writes:

To the mythic perspective the world appears personified, implying a passionate enagement with it. We do not ask: “Are the Gods alive or dead?” or “Are the Gods real or are they symbolic projections?'” Questions of this sort “may be thought illegitimate,” says the most psychological of all classicists, E. R. Dodds, “so long as myth-making is a living mode of thought to confront it with this sort of brutal 'either-or' is to force upon it a choice which destroys its being.” Mythic consciousness answers with Cassirer: “There is nowhere an 'it' as a dead object, a mere thing.” Subject and object, man and Gods, I and Thous, are not apart and isolated each with a different sort of being, one living or real, the other dead or imaginary. The world of the Gods are dead or alive according to the condition of our souls. A world view that perceives a dead world or perceives the Gods to be symbolic projections derives from a perceiving subject who no longer experiences in a personified way, who has lost his immagine del cuor.

It seems to me that Ken Wilber has had an ambivalent relationship to what he calls “the mythic,” and it is my impression that recently he has been moving toward an understanding of it that parallels the approach that Jung and Jungians and post-Jungians have long had. (I think Wilber is dead wrong when he makes the blanket accusation that Jung was guilty of the elevationist version of the pre-trans fallacy, but I'm not going to address that here and now.)

In his early book No  Boundary, Wilber defined myth as follows:

In our culture…if we say something is a 'myth' we mean that it is a falsehood, a primitive fantasy, or wishful thinking. That usage of the word myth is fine, but it is obviously not the way we are using it here. Rather, to live life mythologically is to grasp the transcendent, to see it alive in oneself, in one's life, in one's work, friends, and environment. … Mythology begins to transcend boundaries - boundaries of space and time and opposites in general - and for that reason alone, mythological awareness is one step closer to the real world of suchness.

This is a positive understanding of the role that myth can play in our lives, and this passage is from a section of No Boundary where Wilber discusses Jungian psychology.

But over time Wilber began to use the terms “myth” and “mythic” in a pejorative sense, e.g., as in One Taste, published about two decades after No Boundary. In One Taste he writes:

A myth is a story that, for the most part, is always taken to be literally and concretely true by its believers… Unless noted otherwise, when I refer to myth, I mean concrete-literal myths, which are generally prerational.

(Based on what Smith writes in Jesus at 2000, I think he would characterize the above passage from Wilber as an example of “fact fundamentalism.”)

(I'm just cutting and pasting stuff from my voluminous notes here, in hopes that some of this may be of interest to some readers, and that some, including you, may find some of this useful.)

My own view is that on the one hand we do want to honor the kind of mythic view that Wilber talks about in No Boundary, and on the other hand we need to acknowledge that some of our beliefs have concrete consequences. It's of little concrete consequence if the woman in your last example believes that her deceased son was “literally” communicating with her husband, but what if her son was in a persistent vegetative state for over a decade and her husband wanted their son to be removed from life support and she did not? Someone who has sustained massive damage to their neocortical structures either continues to exist as a person with the capacity for memory, cognition, perception, thinking, volition, and so on, or they do not. Sentiment may prove dominant over reason in such cases, and I think we do well to accept that sentiment in human beings is important. But what if the situation were such that keeping the son on life support would put his parents into abject poverty, and that the mother was willing to go that route because she is convinced that persons with the capacity for memory, thinking, cognition, and volition, etc., can exist without neocortical brain structures? My only point is that this is an example of a situation where a belief has concrete consequences, meaning consequences beyond how it makes the believer feel.

But how beliefs are related to overall mental well-being is also important. I think we can look at this from a first-, second-, and third-person approach.

Consider test subjects who are psychologically evaluated (second-person) before being given a powerful entheogen. After their “trip” is over, they report on their experiences and whatever insights or realizations they may have had as a result (first-person). The test subjects brains are examined with sophisticated brain imaging equipment before and after their entheogen experiences, to see what areas are “lit up” (third-person), and this is correlated as much as possible with the results of the (second-person) psychological testing.

I can easily imagine someone being relatively depressed prior to their entheogen experience, and being much less depressed if not downright joyful afterwards, whose first-person report includes beliefs that some of us might be skeptical about.

To use a simplistic and somewhat silly example, let's say that someone has the experience of shapeshifting into a crow, and reports that he is convinced that he literally turned into a crow and that if the testers had cameras rollling when he underwent this experience, they could see for themselves that he literally turned into a crow. Let's say that unbeknownst to the test subject, the testers did have cameras rolling, and all they showed was the test subject rolling around on the floor with his eyes closed, while in his mind or “interior” he was having the experience of flying over the city as a crow.

And let's say that the subject was shown the footage and immediately he moved from joy toward depression, and areas of his brain that had been lit up after his trip dimmed. I would say that in such a case it might have been better to not undermine his belief, ridiculous (IMO) as it is. There's an ethical question here.

My familiarity with what is called “Positive Psychology” is slight, but I've read that “studies have shown” that optimists enjoy better mental well-being than pessimists, but that there are some pessimists who have mental well-being as that of many optimists. In either case, the optimist or pessimist is choosing to think in a certain way, e.g., that the glass is half full or half empty, that the economy will improve or that it will get much worse, that a major terrorist attack is on it's way and that we will soon all be reduced to living as people live in the movie Road Warrior, or that life and civilization is going to keep getting better and better and no major catastrophic or apocalypic events are likely.

I think I'm rambling (I notice that people often say that when posting here!), so I think I'll quit while I'm ahead, or behind as the case may be! I'm too tired to edit what I just wrote, so I will just hope (optimistically) that it makes some sense and is somewhat relevant to your fine blog post above, Julian. :-)

Hi Julian. Regarding James's “will to believe,” I think familiarity with it is important for anyone who is into integral and transpersonal psychology simply because a lot of transpersonalists and religious and spiritually oriented people accept it and some use it as an argument against skepticism.

My personal impression of James is that he was overly credulous. I get this impression especially from the scholarly book Ghost Hunters, which is an account of investigations of “psychical” phenomena by James and others.

I think as you suggest that the will to believe can have situational utility. But overall my take on it is similar to that of philosopher Simon Blackburn, who discusses it in his book Truth: A Guide. Blackburn argues that “we simply cannot, self-consciously, bring our passions and desires into the matter [of determining what is propositionally true] as James suggests…”

In the same context, Blackburn writes that James can be accused of ”privatizing belief.”

And it is this privatization of belief that leads to relativism: my belief ceases to exist in a public space, up for acceptance or rejection by all who pay attention. It starts to be a matter of 'my truth' or 'your truth', like my ornaments or your ornaments, which serve fine if they are to my taste or yours, and about which we can be indifferent to the tastes of others.

This is not how we need to think about beliefs. In philosphers' jargon, a belief is a state with a 'content'. We believe propositions, and when an issue arises, it is some proposition and its truth and falsity upon which our attention turns.

I do think that there are specific situations and cases where the will to believe can be more important that true beliefs. I recently purchased a book titled The Rosary which is of course about the Catholic rosary, and I am going to give it as a gift to an eldery woman who is part of my extended family who recently lost her sister. It's not even a tiny bit relevant to me if her beliefs are justifiable true beliefs, for in her case what is clearly important is the overall state of her soul (in the non-supernatural sense of the term). I am 100% willing to support her on that level. (If for some reason she happened to take a philosophy class and I was in the same class, then I wouldn't hesitate to challenge her beliefs, just as I wouldn't hesitate to punch a man who got into a boxing ring with me in order to box.  I'm not into boxiing and when I was punched in the head by a boy I boxed with when I was little, I decided then and there that getting punched in the head, even with a soft glove, was not my cup of tea!)

julian—

i love the piece above, and haven't read all the comments, though i've often thought about this scenario similarly—transcendent and expansive experiences happening to different people and colored, of course, by the context and with the images ingrained in the psyche. so of course i take it back to the nervous system and our physiology, and the powerful things which happen in the body which would be, stripped to their core, non-verbal  responses of the body-mind (sorry if all this sounds redundant, i guess i'm kind of processing it as i write.) we have something relevant in somatic experiencing called “sibam.” halah may have told you about it. it's an acronym for “sensation, image, breath, affect and meaning.” it's about the images associated with nervous-system trauma release, and how the psyche calls upon images to accompany scenarios in which the nervous system is expanding or contracting. we are reminded, though, that how underneath, the nervous system itself is impartial, and simply aiming for balance…..but it also relates to ecstatic experiences, i think, and our own subjective psychic galleries…..

thanks for articulating with examples…..:)

A myth can also function as kind of a how-to for life, something your functions touched on, Julian, but perhaps it could be elaborated on a little. For example, with the traditional, Amber myth, one will find happiness in heaven if one is good in life according to the Bible. So one lives one's life according to those rules in the hope of happiness after life–if God is pleased with my actions, I will go to heaven. So the myth helps determine what things to do, what things not to do.

With the Orange, American-dream-type myth, we find happiness by accruing all the material possessions, including the right sexual partner (a holdover from an earlier myth, perhaps). If we don't accrue these things, we are not happy, and either blame ourselves or the system or someone else. But the myth that material things will bring us happiness helps us know (in that worldview) what things to do and what things to avoid. Quite different from the Amber myth, which in some cases will lead a person towards selfless service in order to please God.

I'm not sure, but the Green and Teal myths just seem to be subtle variations on the Orange myth. With higher ethics perhaps. With Teal, in addition to the material possessions, there are the self-actualization dreams–if I give my gifts to the world I will be happy. Maybe I conflate it with the Orange myth just because the Orange myth is still so much in the cultural COG that everyone or nearly everyone, even those with a COG higher than the culture, will be affected by it.

At any rate, with a kosmocentric myth, which is based on empirical evidence by the way, we have new ideas of what to avoid and what to do–whether they will help us evolve or not, whether they will serve ours and others' evolutionary unfolding.

But given that every truth is relative, we can call every truth a “myth.” In fact, perhaps myth is really a better word for it than “truth.” What people call reality is generally their highest stage adaptation. Brian Swimme gives us what is basically the highest myth that I know if. He doesn't get into anything too esoteric concerning the evolutionary impulse–Eros, psychic being, authentic self, etc.–but he gives us the basic kosmocentric myth, which is quite different from what the four horseman are giving us.

By the way, if you ever wanted to know what would happen if Rupert Sheldrake met Richard Dawkins, you can click here.

David

Hi Julian.

Sounds like a word game. Everything is not a myth. I am using the word in a very specific way to talk about a very specific activity of the human psyche that is definable and widely studied as an aspect of culture, religion and psychology. Calling existential atheism a myth is like calling the assertion that viruses cause the flu  just an alternative form of superstition from a curse from the witchdoctor caused the flu. it's an oxymoron, rather like “rational fundamentalism” and I dont think it makes any sense or brings us any closer to accurate understanding of the subject at hand.

What I hear you saying is that existential atheism and virus theory are truths, whereas myths are metaphors and thus “useful falsehoods.” This is where I equate your perspective with classic Enlightenment rationalism: there is a distinct before and after, a line between falsehood and truth, witchdoctors and medical scientists (and, perhaps, those that agree with you and those that don't! ;)

Yet how do you decide who is a true doctor and who is a witch-doctor? If it works, isn't there some truth to it? This is the problem with atheistic rationalism: it sees anything that is not rational as either false or metaphorical, rather than a different type of cognition.

My point was that your perspective is itself a kind of “Myth”–and I am using the word in a different sense (which I will capitalize from now on to distinguish it). And yes, I would say that viral theory is limited, contextual, not a “discovered fact” but a partial understanding to something that has deeper layers. Viral theory is how the scientific-materialistic worldview perceives X; it has great utility and truth to it, but it is not the “final answer”.

All hermeneutic activity happens within a context, but the ability to step back and percieve contexts needn't be an endless regression in which nothing ultimately can be said.

I agree, but where are we “stepping back” to? We are still within the contexts; we cannot speak but from a context. Thus we must, if we are to be as truthful as possible, recognize the context from which we speak, the Myth we are enacting.

This sounds like another word game. Just because one can never be context-free does not mean one can never become fairly clear about relative degrees of truth and accuracy or that one should not attempt to apply the tools of one's developing ability to transcend the misperceptions while including what is still meaningful and true from the previous stages of development.

I agree with you. But what you are doing in the above paragraph is, in essence, turning what I am saying into a declaration of relativism (something I've seen you do quite often with different folks…that is an observation, not a diagnosis!).

I am dismissive of views that do not pass my own standards of accuracy, truthfulness and usefulness, as are we all. this is not about superiority its about a passion for understanding an area that is simultaneously so powerful, healing and meaningful and also frought with delusion, superstition and dehumanizing delusions that lead to religious violence and other irrational and ironic choices.

Right. But, to be frank, what makes you so sure of yourself? You are essentially saying that you are dismissive of everything that you don't disagree with–or understand! But your assumption seems to be (always?) that what you disagree with is never a matter of not understanding.  You can call this a personal diagnosis, but I see it more as a cognitive limitation on your part.

Again, refer to my comment above: I disagree with the general approach of splitting reality into superstitious falsehood vs. rational truth, where the only value to the non-rational is as a metaphor for the cold, hard facts of life.

I am not too interested in getting into a pissing contest over who is 'teal” and who is “turquoise”…

Good, neither am I. I was using Wilberspeak to illuminate a distinction in consciousness, not to compare dick size ;-)

…but suffice it to say that i think it is one of the central misunderstandings of recent integral theory in its popular community to think that “turquoise” is this wonderful utopian  state of consciousness (attainable just by reading about it) in which magic and myth are somehow revamped in inclusive new relativist clothing and the rational distinctions are somehow subverted by the transrational. i have written at length about this elsewhere, and dont have the energy to get into it with you.

Again, you are turning “the opposition” into relativism, as if anything or anyone that offers a different perspective than yours on these subjects is automatically a relativist. This is eerily reminiscent of Wilber's more vociferous “Mean Green Meme alert!” days.

I am not interested in revamping magical and mythic consciousness–in the sense that you are using the terms, and what Wilber refers to as the Red and Amber latitudes. However, I do think that you are subsuming a lot into this magic-mythic rubric, that you are effectively reducing much that is authentically transpersonal (and trans-rational) by filtering everything through your rational requirements. Again, the rational mind cannot truly cognize that which is trans-rational. It can only interpret (and reduce) it into its own language.

i hear some kind of personal diagnosis here that i am not asking for - but thanks anyway!

Julian, you throw castigations all over the place–your blog is a constant crusade against the Evils of the New Age, for Buddha's sake! And, as I said above, you effectively accuse any who disagree with you as non-rational, New Age, relativist, etc, yet you call me out for giving you a “personal diagnosis.” I see this as a double standard.

in the above piece i have actually included a great deal of open-ness and recognition of the relative forms that spiritual experiences take, at the same time i have wanted to point out that it is reasonable to assume that not all of these relative metaphysical interpretations can simultaneously be true in any kind of objective way.

What do you mean by “objective”? But I agree with this point in the sense that not all channelers can be “right” because they share contradictory cosmologies.

This statement need not be interpreted as “closed” unless you mean closed to the literalist magic and mythic interpretations. however, having transcended literal magic and mythic interpretations (and their undercover new age variations that postulate all sorts of parallel universes, interdimensional beings, the possibility that the empirically verifiable world as we know it may be completely subverted one day etc..) one actually in my view becomes more “open” to more accurate and truthful interpretations and a more naked contact with the mystery at the heart of this subject.

What I see you being closed to is any form of spirituality that isn't aligned with yours, that doesn't meet your (very narrow, imo) standards of authenticity and truth. You write the New Age off wholesale without seemingly realizing that it includes a vast plethora of perspectives and approaches (and that some would consider you New Age, my friend!).

Don't get me wrong, I agree with much of your critique of the New Age if we are talking about the popularized, cliche New Age ideology–I do live in Boulder, after all! I get tired of many of the same things you do: the beliefs that are clothed as spiritual truths, the absolutizing of channelled information, the unassailable assumptions and pet beliefs that cannot be questioned, and of course the naive belief that we all have the power to manifest whatever we want, and the rather heartless implications of this viewpoint (e.g. I manifested my cancer through negativity).  And certainly a lot of folks subscribe to these views, but the thing is that the New Age is a big mess of ideas and people, a veritable grab-bag. My view is that there is some truth to most of it (even astrology! What's your sign, anyways?).

So what I see you doing is the classic second aspect of the pre/trans fallacy: you reduce everything non-rational to the pre-rational, and/or interpret (and reduce) it to the rational, personalizing that which is impersonal, literally “beyond” the individual.

I do appreciate your perspective as exemplary of what could be described as soulful existentialism. But it doesn't go beyond that, imo. It personalizes and psychologizes the transpersonal, reducing Spirit to Soul so that we are left with, once again, a dualistic universe: metaphor and fact, mind and matter.

To put it another way, what I am saying is that what you are calling “metaphors” are not just that. The realm of the psyche is not simply a metaphorical reflection of physical reality (as you seem to have it), but a living, breathing domain with….well, I'll leave it at that.

p.s. Even Jung believed–towards the end of his life–that the archetypes were actual autonomous beings (autonomous of the human psyche and control, that is). He thought that his own inner guide, Philemon, was not self-created, but “other.”

What are the conflicting meanings in the way I have used the word myth?

Using myth instead of truth doesn't necessarily equal relativism–we can have a hierarchy of myths. We can have the Amber God myth, for example, the materialist, consciousness-is-a-product-of-biology myth–there is a little truth in each of these but not enough to call either worldview “the truth.”

What I feel is really necessary is to bring the myth of our times up to date–the Amber myth doesn't work anymore, the Orange. materialistic myth obviously led to as many disasters as the Amber myth, something the four horseman have missed by a mile (world wars, global warming, unequal distribution of wealth, unfair trade practices, pollution of all kind, etc.). It hasn't brought anyone happiness and must be overcome perhaps even to save humanity, or so it appears. Recognizing that we are a part of this kosmic process, which has resulted in this patterened rather than chaotic or random evolution, will be helpful in remedying some of these issues. It will give people the proper direction in life, or the best we we can come up with now. I have loved your recent blogs and agreed with 90% of it, but I have been missing the kosmocentric perspective. It is quite liberating.

Jonny says:

Even Jung believed–towards the end of his life–that the archetypes were actual autonomous beings (autonomous of the human psyche and control, that is). He thought that his own inner guide, Philemon, was not self-created, but “other.”

Jung believed that archetypes arose from within the psyche, specifically from that part of the psyche that he initially referred to as the uberpersonliche or transpersonal unconscious and which he later called the collective unconscious. To Jung, the transpersonal unconscious is part of the psyche. It is not independent or autonomous of it. He believed that archetypes behaved autonomously of the conscious will and ego and attempts by the ego to be in control. Jung used the word “autonomous” to mean “independent of the conscious will.” Maybe this is what you mean, but the way you word it, it sounds to me as if you could be suggesting that Jung believed that archetypes would continue to exist even if all human life were wiped out. If he believed that toward the end of his life, I'd like to see a reference.

Hi David. You say:

Recognizing that we are a part of this kosmic process, which has resulted in this patterened rather than chaotic or random evolution, will be helpful in remedying some of these issues.

I want to comment for sake of clarification. People often say or imply that people who accept contemporary versions of Darwinian evolution believe in “random evolution.” This is misleading. To say that someone believes in random evolution seems to imply that they believe that all the complexity we see around and within us just fell together randomly.

The only part of biological evolution that is random is variation. DNA can change by mutation defined as any variation in DNA that is not a result of the mixing of male and female DNA. Mutation can result from chemicals in the environment, ultraviolet rays, viruses, and so on. DNA also changes as a result of the mixing of male and female DNA, and so this is another source of variation. Each time a male and female reproduce, a unique individual results. Since neither mutation nor the combining of male and female DNA (called recombination) can see into the future and make plans, these processes are considered random. That's the only part of biological evolution that is random.

Natural selection is not random. Selection “evaluates” the fitness of each individual. That process is not random, and that process, over long periods of time, results in increasing complexity.

I'm not trying to make a big deal over the fact that you referred to “random evolution.” I wanted to comment on it because so many people seem to think that one must either believe in “random evolution” or in some process that cannot possibly be accounted for by naturalistic science. One may believe in forces, entities, and events that do not fit into a naturalistic picture, and that's fine, but it's unfair to naturalists to suggest that they believe in “random evolution.”

Thanks, Jim. I appreciate that. It seems that there is considerable variation among naturalists, however, and some believe very little in any kind of telos, which is what I was referring to. I do appreciate that information, though. Have you seen this article?

It seems that with “selection” those naturalists have a bit of telos, but what I think they miss is some inherent evolutionary intelligence even in the ultraviolet rays, viruses, and so on. Those holons that “select” evolved from the simplest organisms, which must also have been engaged in “selection.” That selection would be preserved in more complex holons at all levels.

Do you see what I mean? It doesn't make sense to say any of it is completely random considering the fact that these holons evolved from the ground up, “selecting” all the way. So even in the evolution of a star there is some kind of “selection.” But I don't see that the idea of selection really explains creative emergence.

The way they explained the neo darwinist position in the page I linked is that random mutation is responsible for novelty:

  “What accounts for biodiversity and novelty, they argue, are random mutations in genetic material, which give the organism an evolutionary advantage and which are then passed on to the next generation.”
 


I'm not sure, Jim, but you may have been explaining a different position, such as what they call The Directionalists.

Julian

Just wanted to highlight a BIG  question that stood out for me in your discussions with Jim:

should we value feeling good over engaging depth?

In the context of the question my answer is no, partly because if depth has not been engaged then it's unlikely that the”feelgood” will be sustainable anyway, as you pointed out re. Jim's crow scenario.

Great discussion going on here.

i find this thread fascinating and very much something that occupies my consciousness. Please allow me to throw up (not literally!) a rather lengthy post here. I'm cutting and pasting in from a grant application i did last year and also from recent graduate school application essays. Some of this material was included in my “statement of purpose” as explanation for why I write…..

“I meditate to sit in the shell of my old self.”

                                                -Allen Ginsberg

I was still dreaming her tattoo: the window on the torso where the birds flew

voyage proof the two worlds are one. Heart: where the inside land became land again.

                                                                                   -me, 2001 (poem excerpt)

Personal myth is creatable

Personal myth is breakable

                        -me, 2005

I am drawn to mythologies and to indigenous ways of perceiving the aliveness in everything, but also to the stark silence of Zen Buddhism, which drops an anchor into the ocean beyond all stories. As humans, we navigate between language and silence, between personal/collective mythologies and an awareness larger than those stories’ limits. The desire to build and the desire to shed are paradoxical sisters in this dual process: both self-creation and self-dissolution happen in the negotiation between our voices and the vastness that surrounds them. Somewhere in between is the body/mind relationship I became familiar with inmy study of healing arts: subtle integration through movement or touch can release a “truer language,” a kind of guidance of the spirit. All three of these ways of listening have been of deep value to me as a writer and as a human, and I continue to call on each in my work.
     The act of writing down a piece of the conversation I’m privy to between mythology and awareness is an act of commitment to self-understanding, responsibility, listening, and integration. I also can see in it the primal need to document, like modern-day cave-painting: as I once wrote, “desirous of hieroglyphics and written record of you”.

…Born to a mythology, literature, and women’s studies professor, and a modern-day forager, gatherer, and naturetracker, my genetic archetype insists I work as a reporter from the fringe, tracking lines of myths on the edges of the crumbling American dream. Writing grows here, from a need to rebalance cultural loss and rootlessness with the presence and guidance of the wild self. Searching always for truer languages, I have longed for, sought, and found opportunities to take the masks off myself, society, and subculture. Yet I have seen the cracks in tellings of my own creation; felt pain and awkwardness that life doesn’t fit into neatly-finished boxes. My characters and I search for integrity, wholeness, self-love, story.

*****OK, so those are my fine-tuned thoughts on this. I am interested in the fact that there seems to be some kind of either/or-type debate going on here: is mythological consciousness irrational/an invalid/earlier-stage type of spiritual expression, or can it be included in the mix?

hi julian, yes, i get a better perspective on where you are coming from; having read through the thread sometimes it's hard to recall what you actually said vs. what others say you said!

i'd like to open up & explore via one part of what you said:
for those of us lucky enough to have developed adequate rational consciousness we can divine the essence of the myth, its symbolic meaning, its language of the inner life or soul without making the mistake that we see down the ages and still today

i'm saying, i still get lost inside the process of discernment. and can anyone really say for certain that they don't?
am i sure i even want to know how to totally separate the essence of the myth from the surrounding wildness? the seed from the peel? i certainly am not mistaking myth for religious fundamentalism. however, do we each have a personal choice as to where the level of separation lies? i.e. you might peel all the white off the sections of your orange; i might leave more on. is not either way just a story? a myth as to how to proceed?

i do see building up any myth as untenable: what happens when your own spiritual identity of any nature is shattered by an event that particular mythology cannot hold?

i'm not criticizing you (nor anyone's) process here. rather i am perhaps recognizing & exploring my own desire to allow myself, in a mythological, fairy-tale sense, to get lost. A fellow Buddhist practictioner once said to me, “It's like you fall into a hole in the sidewalk on purpose just so you can pull yourself out”. Perhaps that's my personal brand of spiritual narcissism, the attraction to that repetitive cycle (both the falling & the pulling out). Yet i'm not so sure anymore that there's a linearity to it all (my spritual “progress”), even if i wanted there to be. I've found the last 15 years of my life an oscillation between being swept up in a technicolor ocean of story & then the interspersed periods of deconstruction…..and maybe i like it that way. is it my choice? or am i delusional? is it “wrong” to enjoy the sublime fear, dread, & subsequent string-tracking out of a mythological consciousness? i do have the skillset to do otherwise in terms of awareness practice. Yet I have to admit I am not fully able to commit to either end of this spectrum. i'm scared when anything becomes dogma, either a storied dogma or one about how to release story.

I don't mean to go on and on about me; what I'd like to ask is if anyone can open this up more & dialogue on it in a way that's even less “either/or” bewteen story & practice. if anyone has words on how to more find a balance.

as for my poem, i will try to get technological & figure out how to post it on my own blog, & then link to here.


-r

Ahh, the typical Julian-style dismissal. I'm not surprised. It is too bad that you write off everything I wrote so easily. It seems you are less interested in challenging dialogue than you claim. Tiresome, agreed. We are simply too far apart on too many things to really dialogue in a creative manner.