If you decide to live life on your own terms then be prepared to deal with the consequences. Not every way is a way that will bring fulfillment. Not every way is a way that is full of heart. Not every way is a way that offers the best opportunities. Not every way takes into consideration the greater good. However you decide to live your life this time around will also determine how you live your life the next time around. Spend some time in deep contemplation. Ask yourself some hard questions and decide what is right for you to do now and what your next step should be. To walk a path with heart, or not?
In containment of self find the peace you seek. Relax your body and mind and be fully present with what is. Acknowledge the truth of where you are right now and with a measure of grace accept your faults and frailties as well as your strengths. Accept what truly is. From this place of truth know that you are essentially good, that you have your best interests at heart, and that you are fully capable of changing yourself into a more stable and balanced being. Breathe this certainty into the container of your body and tell yourself that you can do it. Life is always right there ready to take you by the hand and show you a new path. If you want change it’s up to you to take the first step. Life is waiting. Are you ready?
The great mythological Eye in the Sky… – Photo by Chuck Ketchel
Home from the office, I sink into a chair on the deck. I’m drained, fatigued. My energy continues to plummet. I end up frozen, immobile. My depleted energy directs me to the sounds and smells of nature. I crave the open sky. The thought of entering the inside cooled space of sealed containment is unbearable. Sleep must happen out-of-doors, under the stars.
The sky darkens. The constellations brightly impress themselves upon my eyes. I drift into sleep. I am awoken with these words: “The origin of all myth lies before you.” And before me, at the moment of awakening, lies only sky.
My relationship with life and experiences such as this-with nature, with the heavens, and with the mysteries-is the basis of my personal myth. This is something I share with all who have ever lived in this world. All the shared encounters with the mysteries, with the awe of life, are accrued and recorded in the myths we inherit and contribute to. How foolish it would be to not partake of the nectar of such accumulated knowledge and wisdom encased in the great myths that have been handed down to us.
Myths are our natural history, recordings of the ancient psyche that resides within us all. Myths are the language of the soul that, in a myriad of forms, speaks to us in dream and projection. Cracking the code of the myth, collective and personal, means discovering the greatest guidebook for life. However, the journey is always, first and foremost, in direct experience, in the here and now. Study the artifacts of the ancient myths to discover the mysteries of life, but directly live now, this day, this night.
Sadly, I see nothing in the structures we build and value to encapsulate and make sense of our lives. Modern humans are too busy, too distracted, too consumed, too pre-occupied. In truth, with a little knowledge of the ancient myths, we need only a direct encounter with the Big Dipper, nothing more, to send us into the direct experience of discovering our own myth and the experience of being fully alive now. It’s that simple.
Every day we are beckoned to wake up, to open our eyes to the stars, to discover where we are in our own myth—to engage life fully in the tragedy and comedy of it all—to live the magical, the mystical, the awesome; to break the spell of the fixation of the assemblage point that Jan referenced in her recent blog. Beyond that fixation lies access to the greater mysteries, to the hidden truths of our journeys through infinity, to why we find ourselves where we are at the present moment. The rigid fixation of the assemblage point is life lived at the level of the mundane, screened from the broader journey we’ve all taken—and are taking right now—without our even realizing.
The Bite of the Ostrich…another myth, referenced in Jan’s book, The Edge of the Abyss. – Photo by Jan Ketchel
In her blog, Jan writes of a dream she had when she was a young woman. In the dream, she buries her dead child en route across the American frontier, traveling by covered wagon, a recent Swedish immigrant. The dream foreshadows her return to Sweden in this life to ultimately rediscover an ancient strength that would allow her to lift the veils that hid a brutal life, already lived in this lifetime yet completely unknown. This is living the greater myth. This is cracking the code of the personal myth, daring to take the journey into the awesomeness of the personal myth, connecting lives lived with the here and now, but also bridging with life to come.
We are all living lives of greater myth, myths that are constantly seeking our attention, desiring to be lived and united with us, reconnected in a wholeness that transcends just this life and connects us with life in infinity. This is the journey that each and every one of us is on, charged with discovering our personal myth through direct experience with life, with nature, with the heavens, and with the mysteries. This is the meaning of the guidance I received. We all have access to it in our everyday lives, in the world we live in and the world we dream in.
As you dare yourself to wake up and live your own myth, I humbly pass on the guidance presented to me by the stars: “The origin of all myth lies before you!”
