SPIRES: A Journal of Mythopoetic Inquiry
These dreams came between 1995 and 1998, a time of change, awakening, and development for me. I was re-entering the workforce after graduate school. I was meditating more and recording dreams and sharing them in my groups. I was overcoming shyness in my “middle age”.
And so this is one of the curious ways in which the religious impulse follows us into the secular world: In front of the computer screen most of us are brought to our knees...
I would like each of you to take a moment to think of some way in which your own life has been empowered, blessed, transformed, gifted by the mythology of the constellations: the images of the sun, the moon, the planets moving in their spheres-the very idea that we are part of a celestial dance that progresses in this serene, dignified fashion eon after eon with great predictability-every planet moving through its great elliptical phases. All of these energies impacting our little planet and we, as little, human receptors of these vast energies. And just ask yourself, how have I benefited? What are some of the gifts of these mythologies: the planets, the cosmos, the cosmic dance, the harmony of the spheres?
In going through years of dream journals to select connective dreams, I made a discovery - Unconscious of a dream long past, I did an art piece of a spinning rose out of fabric with collages on a lazy susan, no less. It had a meaning and purpose, which spoke to me at that time. The spinning rose image, I now see, came unconsciously from that older dream.
Before we get up on our high horses, it is a good idea to recognize efforts to demonize Muslims as another opportunity for spotting "the shadow" of our own, all too recent, excesses of puritan zeal and religious violence.
If we are to thrive throughout the monumental cultural and environmental transition in which our planet is currently engaged, humanity must become aware of — and act out of — the deeper dimensions of interconnectedness that fuels and drives our greatest potentials; our inherent spiritual nature. Creative people in the arts and sciences can activate this in our species en masse. The creative community possesses the power not simply to render an image of a “positive” future, but to serve as the actual architects of our future civilization.
The Joseph Campbell Foundation proclaimed its mission boldly at its inception back in 1990 with the intriguing phrase: “a not-for-profit organization seeking to formulate a mythopoetic response to contemporary literalism and cultural retrenchment.” This deliciously difficult phrase holds what is, in many ways, the clue to what Campbell’s work is all about.
Romantic projections are born in childhood. The poet was correct in saying "the child is father of the man." Our childhood drama sets the stage for the dramas that will be enacted by our future self. The scripts we create and the characters we conjure up later in life are all in service to the psychological puzzles left over from childhood. As soon as one puzzle is solved another steps in to take its place. Puzzles inherited from mother or father or grandparents will come seeking the resolution on the later stages of our life.
The phrase “follow your bliss” has become so well-known in America that you may think it comes from some ancient source of world wisdom, handed down from time immemorial. You would be only half wrong. The catchphrase was actually introduced to Americans a little over 25 years ago by the great mythologist, Joseph Campbell, who used it in an interview with Bill Moyers in 1987 in the now-famous PBS series The Power of Myth.
In 1972, when I was in my late teens, I recorded a dream in my journal which has remained vivid in my mind all these years. It is one of a dozen dreams which I believe are foundational to my sense of self and undoubtedly reveal - in symbolic form - everything I need to know about my life purpose and inclinations. Upon turning 60 this year I vowed to start honoring these, and the rest of my dreams, by giving them new life in animation, paintings, interpretations, retellings and the like.
A parable found in a number of traditions is given a visual treatment in this videoscribe.
150 years ago or so we witnessed a rush to profit, the likes of which have not recurred until this decade. Then it was a rush to mine the caves and rivers of the west for gold. Now it is the rush to mine the rivers of federal student loan money that continue to gush forth, inviting prospectors to set up camp in the same hasty, slipshod fashion that characterized the miserable habitations of the California 49ers.
The peace of great prairies be for you.
Listen among windplayers in cornfields,
The wind learning over its oldest music...
(from Harvest Poems - Carl Sandburg)
The Peace of Great Cities – A Response to Sandburg
Isn't it curious that there is one relationship – that with our family of origin – which it's considered a failure if we do not eventually move out and leave them. While another relationship - marriage - is considered a failure if we do move out and leave them.
