Myths for our time

 There was a post on another section that basically asked why so many people were depressed these days. This was my answer:-

Many thoughtful people recognise that Western society no longer has a viable, functioning myth which would give a sense of place and ultimate meaning (and maybe not just western society) The breakdown of a central myth (that Christianity once provided) is like the shattering of a vessel containing a precious essence. Meaning is lost.

The secular conception of the human appears unable to genuinely offer a viable option or alternative, saturated as it is by positivism, materialism, reductionism, and atheism.

Well, "thoughtful" or not, Carl Jung would certainly have agreed, having said himself:-

"....those who think they can live without myth, or outside it, are an exception. They are like one uprooted, having no true link either with the past, or with the ancestral life which continues within them, or yet with contemporary human society.”

I sought to relate all this to my own living without beliefs and have come to see that a myth is not a belief as such. I have tried to make sense of my own "myth".

It is that Reality-as-is expresses the immanence of the liberative potential, or buddha nature, in the heart of our earth, as well as in the inner, psychological ground of being, always ready to spring forth and benefit beings when called. The Reality I live in represents the fertility of the earth itself and the wondrous, healing, natural power of creation, or the phenomenal world.

This comes in part from the study and reading of Dōgen, the 13th century Japanese zen master, who himself had a strong lifetime's allegiance to the Lotus Sutra, and thus an approach to awakening as a function of the nature of reality, intimately connected with the dynamic support of the earth, space itself, and a multidimensional view of the movements of time.

As is now being recognised more and more in the West, Zen Buddhism developed and cannot be fully understood outside of a worldview that sees reality itself as a vital, ephemeral agent of awareness and healing, and also the liberative qualities of spatiality and temporality.

As I see it, much of this can relate to, and correspond with, Christian Universalism, the hope that eventually all things and every human being will be redeemed and gathered together in Christ. Nothing and no one is left out. Those who see this as a soft option should try to see the world around them like this, and thus the demands made upon them - it is always easier to judge than to think, to condemn rather than seek to redeem.

But this is obviously associated, in Christianity, with a future, even a future world. Myself, I am more into an eschatology of the present moment, this itself within (as mentioned above) "a multidimensional view of the movements of time."

I find it more and more life giving to live within this "myth". To see every human being not as "other" but as already potentially "one" with me. To see nothing as totally alien, but as having the potential to fulfil, to redeem. I'm really seeking to give voice to that which has already taken shape in my own way of no-calculation.

Whatever, Thomas Merton saw all this when he spoke of "true communion".....

..... the deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. it is beyond words, and it is beyond speech, and it is beyond concept. Not that we discover a new unity. We discover an older unity. My dear brothers and sisters, we are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.

Well, that is my myth. It is not there to "believe" in, but to live within. It gives support to me, even as I live upon the firm ground of emptiness......

Just to add, I'm reading bits and pieces about Jung at the moment. The last thing I need is another set of jargon words like "anima" and suchlike, nevertheless the thrust and significance of his thought and life is relevant in this entire context.

Jung distinguished between the "spirit of this time" (this age) and the "spirit of the depths". For Jung our own “spirit of this time” represents the scientific-materialistic worldview, while the “spirit of the depths,” which has been from time immemorial and "for all the futures possesses a greater power than the spirit of this time, which changes with the generations.”

One of Jung's paintings

Jung:-

The spirit of this time would like to hear of use and value. I also thought this way, and my humanity still thinks this way. But that other spirit forces me nevertheless to speak, beyond justification, use, and meaning.

The New Testament (Romans) says:- "Be not conformed to this world" which in this respect is good advice, at least as I see it. That is, not to simply accept the suppositions of our own times, often simply presumed and "worn" by ourselves as some sort of given, unquestioned.

As far as the "spirit of the depths", as I see it, such is not some unchanging formula that can be put into words and learnt by rote, but itself is something that is truly alive and even itself changes with the times. It is ever new.