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Michelle talks about the mythic dimension of our lives and how our myths are changing.
What is unique about your work?
I’m contributing to the development of a mythic consciousness, an awareness of the larger dimension of our personal and collective lives. Joseph Campbell spoke eloquently on the subject 25 years ago, but it’s taking a long time for his ideas to take root in the hearts and minds of busy people who have gone from working from nine to five, to 24/7.
The central question he asked is the question of every myth-teller: “From whence do you come, and whither do you go?” We’re all on a journey. What’s yours? What are you seeking? What do you wish to leave behind for future generations? There’s no philosophy, religious dogma, or political ideology that can answer those questions. The answers lie within.
Many people in the western world feel they have no spiritual tradition to help them access their inner knowing. But a wide river of wisdom runs through the world’s myths and fairy tales. Our ancestral dreams hold the universal pattern of the human journey and they can help us to understand our own myths.
What is a myth?
It’s the story we tell ourselves about who we are and why we are here. We acquire our foundational myths very early on in life. So, for example, in my Catholic upbringing, I learned that God created man in the Garden of Eden, and then Eve tempted Adam with the apple and messed everything up. The story formed my thoughts about the relationship between human beings and God, and it influenced my sense of self as a young girl. The myth told me that we were all sinners, but that girls were particularly unworthy. That feeling of unworthiness might have afflicted me all my life had I never challenged the story that began it.
A myth is a story with the power of maya (the Indian term for “illusion”). It can disguise the truth or it can reveal it. When we start examining the myths we have acquired, we can determine if they express or limit our self-realization.
During these times of radical change, it’s more important than ever to know the myths we live by. The first thing you want to do when you’ve been thrown off course is to reorient yourself. Find out where you are so you can figure out how to get from here to there, and what you need to change in order to move in that direction.
What would you say is our current ruling myth? What is the story that rules our collective lives?
Each person would answer that differently. But I would say that it’s a myth we have borrowed from science. When Darwin published The Origin of the Species back in 1859, he dropped a bombshell. God was replaced by a mechanism of nature that did not reward virtue, goodness or loyalty, but simply the strongest and the fittest.
Darwin didn’t want a biological law to be translated to social and spiritual life, but it happened anyway. His theory was perfectly suited to become the ethic of the industrial world. We grew up learning that if you want to get ahead, you’ve got to become what others want you to be. You’ve got to find your niche in the harsh, competitive environment of the market economy. In human society it’s not nature but the market that’s doing the selecting. I believe that myth has kept us agents of external authority. Your own vision is not important, what’s important is whether or not you will fit in. As Erich Fromm put it, we’re being ruled by “anonymous authorities,” censors in our head that tell us what will and will not be appropriate, what we should and should not do. We’ve been taught not to listen to our hearts. If you’re trying to fit into the machine of the industrial world, your own vision is going to be seen as an object of disruption, the wrench in the works. I see it as a myth that is built on the older myth of the Garden of Eden. It’s saying the same thing. If you don’t obey and follow the commands of an external authority, you’re going to get run out of the Garden.
Who can forget poor old Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s play, Death of a Salesman? When he was fired, Willy felt that he had been thrown out like a piece of fruit. The myth he lived by had landed him on the street with no more self esteem than trash. His myth had betrayed him. Instead of making him into somebody going somewhere, it robbed him of all his dignity and took him nowhere.
It’s important to choose our own myths, to ask ourselves the question: What is the story I’m telling myself about who I am? As we face radical changes in our work and our world, the old narratives are coming under pressure. If they don’t serve to help us to realize ourselves and our possibilities, then it may be time to let them go.
What happens when we change our narrative?
I’ve had the privilege of witnessing that. When people shift in the way they see themselves, all sorts of growth starts to happen. At the root of the shift is a transfer of authority from outside to inside, from believing in external codes of conduct, to believing in their own goodness and possibilities.
They start to move into the adventure of their lives like the hero in a folktale. He doesn’t set off to win the game and fill his pockets with as much gold as he can. His motivation comes from a place of love. He dares to follow a dream. People laugh at his idealism and naivety, they call him a simpleton. But he goes forward anyway. On the road, he is met by different creatures, some of whom need help—and he responds to the needs of others while continuing to follow his dream. He continually makes choices based on the intention to offer something of himself to others. In so doing, he enters a co-creative relationship with the cosmos.
My own mythic explorations have given me a picture of humanity that is quite different from one I started out with. I don’t see human beings as sinners or mechanisms governed by the arbitrary laws of nature. I see the human soul as extraordinarily brave. It takes great love and courage to enter mortal life, to feel pain and grief, to love and then lose what we treasure most of all. Human beings meet the mystery of the cosmos at its very shore. We have the tremendous opportunity to relate to other beings, to rouse and inspire the world around us. We are creators within creation who have the opportunity to take the raw materials of life and spin them into gold. Who can know how rare that opportunity is?
When I am in the presence of one who is ill, stigmatized, bewildered, or overcome by losses that can’t be fixed or even compensated—I am aware that I am in the presence of a truly noble soul. Her story has something deep within it—a pearl of great price—not just for herself, but for the whole world. It’s vital that she see herself through to the other side, because those who suffer and thrive are the real stars. They’re the ones who will shine in the dark night and guide others who take the same way.
Basically my objective is to get people engaged in their own stories. To turn their attention from outside to inside authorities. I don’t have the answers to their questions, but they do. I’m absolutely fascinated by what people find for themselves. I marvel at the subjects they choose to explore, the questions they ask, the myths to which they’re drawn, the elements of nature that speak to them.
I’ve observed enough people taking hold of their creative paths to see that when they embrace their calling, good things happen. They have ordeals, sure, but trials come one way or another. What’s exciting is that the outside world responds to the changes people make inside. Jung called it synchronicity. It prompts one to think: Hey, maybe Providence is real. Maybe the universe actually does support me becoming the person I really am, rather than the person others tell me I should be.
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