I married a mythologist
Bobbi is a mythologist. She has a PhD in “Mythological Studies, with a Concentration in Depth Psychology.” If you don’t believe it, I’ll send you a photo.
I traveled with her on the road to her PhD and learned to respect mythology. I’ve used what I’ve learned.
Active Imagination
In Active Imagination (the original AI), you imagine a conversation with someone who you imagine might be able to help you solve a problem.
Most of my active imaginings have been with the Buddha.
I wrote a book about our conversations. It’s called “I met the Buddha on the road” (Google Doc.) I’m going to publish it once I finish with SRMW1.
I also wrote about this dope roshi who got me to enlightenment in a hot New York minute.2
But here’s a new use of Active Imagination: I’m going to have a conversation with Bobbi after I finish writing this and posting it.
That’s plenty of incentive to get it done!
Personal Myth
Dan McAdams wrote “Personal Myth, Stories We Live By.”
Here’s the idea:
There are facts of our lives. And then there are the stories we tell about the facts. Someone with a hard life can tell a story of victimization and injustice. Another person—with the exact facts of experience—can tell a story of endurance, survival, and even heroism.
We can construct one myth or many. And in mythology, changing the facts to fit the story is permissible—even encouraged.
Myths live for thousands of years because they contain metaphoric and useful truths. They may not contain literal truths; they may even contain literal falsehoods. But no matter, they are preserved because of what is true and useful.
Indeed, some myths are truer than the facts that they represent.
That’s mythology for you.
Everyone’s life becomes a set of myths. Some are myths we tell about ourselves. Some are myths that others tell about us. This blog is full of myth and every one of them is true.
MEA and myth
When I joined my compadres at the Modern Elder Academy Workshop, “Discovering the Hero’s Journey in Midlife” I discovered my personal myth—hiding in plain sight—and I’m living it out.
It’s a grand story, full of mythical (and true) adventures, challenges faced, some overcome, some not.
I’m actively rewriting my personal myth as I tell it to myself and others.
The main story arc starts with a nice Jewish boy who had a personal relationship with God. He abandoned that God and that relationship. Eventually, he found his way back—to a different aspect of God, not the one he had first encountered.
Like my forebear Jacob (Isreal), I wrestle with God—and other ideas. Something that I call God (or insists on being called God) comes to me, often unbidden. I call it “The God I Don’t Believe In” to make clear that it’s probably not the one you that you believe in.
But I’ve struggled.
Should I write this?
Am I being egotistical?
Blasphemous?
What will people think?
Will I go to Hell3?
I’ve declared an end to that series of wrestling matches.
God—whatever She is—wins. And so do I.
I don’t know what “it” is, so I can’t “tell it like it is.” I can only tell it as it comes to me. And that will be enough.
It might seem irreverent for me to refer to God as “She” and having God say “f**k4” and spout some of the outrageous shit that She sometimes spouts.
But it is deeply reverent.
To me, God is Love, Truth, Knowledge, Wisdom, Grace. And these are all things that I love.
The God I Don’t Believe in isn’t a judging old man who afflicts his children and consigns them to eternity in Hell—for making mistakes.
For me, the idea of God is the idea of “the best possible being.”
If God exists, God is better anyone. Certainly, better than me.
If God exists, God has to have more wisdom, more forgiveness, more compassion and love and a better sense of humor than me. I mean seriously, God invented sex. That’s some wild comedy there.
I would never eternally torment my children for making mistakes—or even being defiant, which is just another kind of mistake.
I would teach them. As The God I Don’t Believe in has taught me.
So whatever God is, She, or He, or They, isn’t the best possible being beyond giving a shit about pronouns?
That’s my myth, and I’m sticking to it.
And now (or shortly), it’s time for that conversation with Bobbi.
And thanks, Grok, for FINALLY generating the image I wanted for the post instead of going into the nanny-zone and telling me that it wasn’t polite.
Been there. Done that. Hell is something I created and I’ve left behind.
This not the word you think it is.
The best possible thing!