Inner Myth - MacIver & Campbell

We each have an inner myth guiding our lives.  That
myth guides us without us knowing it.  It grows out of
all the things we've learned, the things we've failed at,
out of our insecurities, out of the triumphs we
experienced.  It is also affected by the spiritual current
that underlies our lives - the mythical journey that is seeking
to manifest in our outer life if we'll only pay attention to it.
It is the seed that is wanting to grow into a tree, the call 
waiting to be answered, but risky.  That path is risky.

What is the inner myth guiding your life, unknown to you?
What mysterious figure, what spirit entity of wisdom and
kindness might you invite to accompany you, guide you,
on your journey?

Rod MacIver
Heron Dance

~

Joseph Campbell says myth opens the heart and the imagination
to the wonders of the universe and the mystery of existence.
He says myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the
human life.  He says that myths can teach us how to live a 
human lifetime, not grounded in ancient religions, that support
our personal quests for wisdom and happiness.

From the 4 Ways that Myth Can Change Your Life,
According to Joseph Campbell.

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Mysterious Man with the flat hat
and long robe in the curtain... :)

~

What stories do we tell ourselves,
and what beliefs do we live by
that may be outdated now?

 

A Symbolic Universe - Ernst Cassirer

...man lives in a symbolic universe.  Language, myth, art,
and religion are parts of this universe.  They are the varied
threads which weave the symbolic net, the tangled web of
human experience.  All human progress in thought and
experience refines and strengthens this net.  Physical reality
seems to recede in proportion as man's symbolic activity
advances.

He has so enveloped himself in linguistic forms, in artistic images,
in mythical symbols or religious rites that he cannot see
or know anything except by the interposition of this
artificial medium.  His situation is the same in the
theoretical as in the practical sphere.  Even here man does
not live in a world of hard facts, or according to his immediate
needs and desires. He lives, rather, in the midst of imaginary
emotions, in hopes and fears, in illusions and disillusions, in
his fantasies and dreams.  'What disturbs and alarms man,'
said Epictetus, 'are not the things, but his opinions and fantasies
about the things.'

Ernst Cassirer

German Philosopher

From - An Essay on Man:
An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture

via - The Beauty We Love

~

Fun-Qi Art - 2009

Craypas oils
done with fingers

Perspective - Carse, Lin Chi, Kastrup & Bailey

How we perceive things, and therefore what we call
'real,' or 'true,' or 'right,' has to do with our perspective
from where we sit in the overall continuum.

The tendency is to absolutize one's own perspective,
to make everything relative to that, when in fact our
perspective is what is relative...

David Carse
Advaita
Perfect Brilliant Stillness

~

If you want to perceive and understand objectively, just don't
allow yourself to be confused by people.  Detach from whatever
you find inside or outside yourself - detach from religion, tradition,
and society, and only then will you attain liberation. When you're
not entangled in things, you pass through freely...

Lin Chi
Buddhist

~

All explanations are myths whose truth-value we assign
subjectively.  They are true only insofar as we say that they are
true.  They are stories we conjure up and tell ourselves in order
to make sense of the disconnected, context-free phantasmagoria of
present perception.  It makes no sense to proclaim any explanation
for the present to be objectively true...

Bernardo Kastrup
Philosopher
More Than Allegory

~

Stories about existence can't be fact.
What is your actual experience?
What has life been presenting all along?
Don't deny your day-to-day experience.

We are the dance of the universe.
All the story lines are a legitimate
expression of Existence...

The Formless is form...

Darryl Bailey

unaffiliated

~

Photo - shadow of the spindles in the back of a chair
on a wall...

Losing the Maps - Mark Nepo & Kastrup

Just when we're softened by the years,.
when we have enough experience to see
for ourselves, our maps are torn from us.
This can be frightening, but there's divine
timing in the dissolution of a stubborn mind,
the way an inlet waits on the last rock to crumble
so it can find its destiny to the sea.  Losing the
way set out by others is necessary so we can discover
for ourselves what it means to be alive.  Now we can
burn the clothes others have laid out for us, [other's
maps of reality, other's agendas], not in anger, but
to light our way.  Now we can let the soul spill its
honey on the unleavened life we've been carrying.
Now we can rise.

Mark Nepo

Poem from: Inside the Miracle

[brackets mine]

~

All explanations are myths whose truth-value we
assign subjectively.  They are true only in so far
as we say they are true.  They are stories we
conjure up and tell ourselves in order to make sense
of the disconnected, context-free phantasmagoria of
present perception.  It makes no sense to proclaim
any explanation for the present to be objectively true...

Bernard Kastrup
More Than Allegory
via - Markings