On Myth

[LenKop]

From Individual and Mass Events, ch 3

'Facts are a very handy but weak brew of reality. They immediately consign certain kinds of experiences as real and others as not. The psyche, however, will not be so limited. It exists in a medium of reality, a realm of being in which all possibilities exist. It creates myths the way the ocean creates spray. Myths are originally psychic fabrications of such power and strength that whole civilizations can rise from their source. They involve symbols and know emotional validities that are then connected to the physical world, so that that world is never the same again.

They cast their light over historical events because they are responsible for those events. They mix and merge the inner, unseen but felt, eternal psychic experience of man with the temporal events of his physical days, and form a combination that structures thoughts and beliefs from civilization to civilization. In Framework 2, the interior power of nature is ever-changing. The dreams, hopes, aspirations and fears of man interact in a constant motion that then forms the events of your world. The interaction includes not only man, of course, but the emotional reality of all earthly consciousnesses as well, from a microbe to a scholar, from a frog to a star. You interpret the phenomena of your world according to the mythic characteristics that you have accepted. You organise physical reality, then, through ideas. You use only those perceptions that serve to give those ideas validity. The physical body itself is quite capable of putting the world together in different fashions than the one that is familiar to you.'

Love it.

Len

[Sena]

Myths are originally psychic fabrications of such power and strength that whole civilizations can rise from their source..... They cast their light over historical events because they are responsible for those events.

Lenkop, thanks for this.
An example of a myth: The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Meaning of that myth: Every human being continues to live after "death".
Reference:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/989672.Myth_and_Ritual_In_Christianity

[LenKop]

Thanks Sena.

That's one meaning. I think there are many.

In fact ( ) the entire drama surrounding the Christ story is so full of interweaving patterns encountered by people every day that it's easy to forget the lessons that we can learn from them.

Friendship and betrayal, forgiveness and trust, bravery and fear, faith and denial...the list goes. We encounter this stuff daily yet many times think of it as inconsequential in ways, often not stopping to look at a particular situation from a deeper point of view but rather focusing more on some grand after life venture that is awaiting us. With our automated thinking patterns these small, day to day moments are not seen as important, ironically, though, it's the smallest things that often give us the most joy or create the biggest frustrations.

I once cracked a joke to a Catholic friend relating eating the body of Christ with cannibalism....it didn't go down too well (pun intended  )...and the powerful symbolism of that particular sacrament is not lost on me, but i think humour might be one of the things that Christian churches have lost, even when Christ is quoted as saying something about the kingdom of heaven belonging to children (who love to laugh and joke about the most inappropriate things).