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5 Trippy Implications About Time

Jeremy MacDonald
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5 Trippy Implications About Time

Time is simultaneously one of the most illusive and familiar concepts out there. Familiar because we experience time in every instance of our waking life, illusive because it precludes every notion of common sense that we have ever had.

Time ticks at the same rate no matter where you are. Time can only move in the forward direction. Time moves at the same speed for you when you are moving, as it does for people who are stationary. These are all common beliefs about time in which science, specifically Einstein’s theory of relativity, have proven to be untrue.

Einstein started to think of time in terms of its roots of existence, as opposed to being a human made mechanism which ticks away from a clock.  His discoveries explained to us that time is much more than our common experience tells us.

1) The Concept of “NOW” is Simply a Holographic Illusion.

One of Einstein’s key insights is that we experience time relative to light. When we look up at the sun, we are not technically seeing the sun as it is “now”. We are seeing light that was emitted from the sun over 8 minutes ago.

We perceive things as happening “now” only at the moment in which light has reflected off a certain object and reached our eyes. But there is no universal “state of now”.  It all depends on where you are experiencing an event from.

sun from earthWhen we observe the stars, we are seeing light from some stars which do not exist anymore. We are observing light which has been traveling for millions of years, but since the light is arriving at our eyes at this instance, we perceive the star as existing in the now. It is possible that if you could instantaneously see the origin of the light, that there would be nothing there.

Imagine if we were in a different location, one which is another 100 light years away from Earth and the given star. We would not experience that star as existing until another 100 years have passed and the light has finally reached us. This implies that our universe acts like a giant hologram, and that is why Einstein and other physicists believe that the concepts of past, present and future are illusory.

2) The Faster you Travel, the Slower that Time Passes.

This is not to say that the faster you are travelling, the slower that you perceive time passing. This means that time itself actually passes slower, including the physical seconds that tick on a clock.

This is a cesium atomic clock located in Boulder, CO.
This is a cesium atomic clock located in Boulder, CO.

How do we know this happens? In 1971, an atomic clock was flown on a jet and compared to a similar clock which stayed on the ground. An atomic clock is the most accurate clock invented by humans to date. This clock operates on the natural frequency of a cesium atom, an atom which oscillates, or “ticks” at over 9 billion cycles per second. This allows us to measure and compare extremely small intervals of time.

The results of this experiment were exactly what Einstein’s theory had predicted. The clock on the jet and the clock on the ground no longer displayed the same time after the flight. The difference was small as it was only measurable in nanoseconds. The effect was measured in every trial of the experiment. Einstein’s theory stood up to the test.

3) As Time and Space Warps, so Does Our Perception of Physical Objects.

The faster an object is traveling, the smaller it appears to a body which is at rest, or traveling slower.

This diagram helps to visualize such an effect in action. V stands for velocity, or speed. and C stands for the speed of light. The speed of light is measured at 186,000 miles per second (mps). The diagram states V = 0.3C, which means that the blue sphere is traveling at 30 percent of the speed of light (55,800 mps).

Lorentz length contraction

Notice how there is a minor difference in contraction between 0 and 0.3C, while there is a huge difference between 0.6C and 0.9C. The speed of the ball has increased by the same amount, but the length of the ball has contracted significantly more from 0.6C to 0.9C. That is because the closer an object accelerates towards the speed of light, the more the size of the object will contract for each mile per hour gained.

Most of us have not traveled faster than a Boeing 747 jet, which reaches speeds of around 567 mph (0.1575 mps). The speed of light travels over 1,180,952 times faster than this. Because we travel so slow, we cannot notice this effect. But it does happen, and it is more proof that the way our universe works is not what our common perception tells us.

4) Time Travel is not Impossible, and we Have All Done it to Some Degree.

There are many people in the scientific world who regard time travel as “unscientific” or “impossible”, and it is neither. We travel in time everyday. Maybe not to other dimensions or other timelines, but Einstein’s theory lets us understand that the rate in which time passes changes with respect to our speed.

So whenever we displace ourselves, we slow the amount of time which passes in our frame of reference, as compared to our surroundings. This effect actually moves us into the future, as the video below will explain.

Also, Einstein’s and other physicist’s equations which comprise the Theory of Relativity work just as well moving forward in time as they do moving backward in time. These facts certainly lay a theoretical basis for making time travel research a worthwhile scientific endeavor.

In this video, Stephen Hawking explains how time travel into the future is possible, simply by traveling close to the speed of light.

5) Einstein’s Scientific Discoveries take us Closer to Ancient Wisdom.

It is common to see a dichotomous division between science and ancient philosophy, but Einstein’s theory actually helps to unite our understanding of time with some sacred principles of Buddhism.

Einstein was the first modern scientist to think of space and time as being intrinsically connected. He renamed the plane in which we exist as “4-dimensional space-time”.  However, this is not a new idea.

An ancient concept of Buddhist philosophy is that of “being-time” (u-ji). “Being” represents our existence in the three spatial dimensions, while time represents the fourth dimension.

There was also a recognition of the illusory nature of time. The Buddhist concept of “zero time” explores how there is no distinction between past, present, and future. According to this philosophy, everything that we experience is just a series of present moments, meaning that one time exists within all times. This is very comparable to Einstein’s ideas that time is just an illusion, and that what is happening “now” is relative to where you experience an event from.

This leads us to more philosophical questions about our existence.

Since time was understood so deeply by Buddhist philosophy, what other forms of ancient wisdom can help us extend our understanding of the nature of reality?

With such a major discovery proving that our personal experience of time tells us nothing about its true nature, how else does our reality and our perception of common sense deceive us?

Learn more about time and how we perceive it by watching the documentary, “The Illusion of Time”, by Brian Greene and PBS Nova.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK-YlXghvqA

Sources:
Buddhist and Zen philosophy
Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and Relativity
Cover Image
Atomic Clock
Lorentz Contraction

Animal Spirit Guide: The Sacredness of Cats and Dogs

Lauren
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0
Animal Spirit Guide: The Sacredness of Cats and Dogs

“All things share the same breath – the beast, the tree, the man… the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports.” ~ Chief Seattle

Using animal spirit guides or animal medicine as a basis for our connection with the divine is a tradition as ancient as the first civilizations that settled on this earth.

With its roots in Native American culture, European Paganism, Chinese medicine, Aboriginal mysticism and African folklore you probably wouldn’t find a land on this planet that didn’t acknowledge the power of animals and the importance of our harmony with these fellow creatures.

soul-work-with-animal-spirit-guidesThe mark of kindness and human virtue throughout religious texts often draws parallels to how one treats animals and reflects on the degree of our inner barbarity. Even in heavily meat-eating cultures like the nomadic Thule people the Inuit’s have descended from, or Islamic culture that annually celebrates Kurban Bayram, (the sacrifice of an animal to divide between extended family and the poor), believe in upholding the highest respect for the animal kingdom, for they are as equal expressions of the universe as we.

In the Native American totem, there consists of nine spirit guides that will stay with a tribe or individual throughout their earthly life, usually with one main guardian spirit. In the diverse multitudes of pagan practices throughout the west, spiritual beings and shamans often conversed with an animal familiar.

The fear associated with witchcraft and the past lives we may have lived in a different form breeds a certain kind of ignorance and is generally connected to those who vibrate at a lower level or consciousness. In fact, this is one main way to advance our consciousness; in showing an animal kindness or by acknowledging and working with the animal spirit within.

Two animals that are commonly found by human’s side (or vice versa, whatever way you want to look at it) are the cat and the dog.

The Cat

Sekhmet-by-Leon-Dubois-1823 ‘In ancient times, cats”, as author Terry Pratchett points out, “were worshiped as Gods; they have not forgotten this.”

The cat or lioness was worshiped as Bastet and Sekhmet in ancient Egypt, Goddess of Love, Joy and protection, and has always been honored as reflecting the independent and protective aspects of ourselves.

In Slavonic mythology there was Ovinnik; a great black cat that watched over farmer’s herds and livestock but was known to cause mischief if you upset him.

In Norse mythology, two grey cats – given as a gift to her by the sky God Thor – pulled Freyja’s chariot, encouraging farmers to leave gifts of mice and rats for the neighboring cats to ensure a plentiful harvest.

The cat has commonly been known as a familiar for witches; with their orb-like eyes that look like scrying bowls and sagacious natures they are known to stalk between two worlds and be sensitive to things we may not.

Amazonian tribes affiliate with the much feared and admired Jaguar, believing him to be the God of darkness and his spots a canvas of stars; a cat capable of causing the sound of thunder with its roar and eclipses by swallowing the sun.

The prophet Mohammed is said to have loved cats and blessed them with the gift to land on their feet and had a high regard for them for burying their feces and keeping themselves clean. He is also said to have cut off the sleeve from the garment he was wearing when the call to prayer sounded to avoid waking the sleeping cat who sat on it.

The ‘Kasha’, or burning wheel in Japanese folklore is often said to have taken cat form and would steal or even eat corpses from their coffins on the transition from their place of death to their final resting place.
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It was seen to be a journey fraught with danger, especially if they had had questionable dealings with evil deeds during their lifetime, which enticed this demon-like being from its nest to come and seek out to devour their souls. “When a cat leaps over a coffin, the corpse inside the coffin will wake up”.

According to Steven D Farmer, author of Animal Spirit Guides, the cat is your power animal when you are introspective and favour your own advice over others, are independent and most of your creative work is completed at night, and can often seem self-absorbed and oblivious to those around you.

Whatever the attributes of any individual cat, they are known to not give a damn about what others think of them but are incredibly graceful, alert and wise, and above all; spiritual.

The Dog

Dog medicine however, is quite the opposite. Predominantly about loyalty, they can be likened to the tarot card of The Fool; trusting eternally no matter how much cruelty you show them. Any aggression comes from a deep inner imbalance when the evils of human nature have pushed them to the edge. Ordinarily they really are man’s best friend and will stop at nothing to please their ‘masters’.

In Chinese mythology, one account of how the Chinese Zodiac came to be in that order originates from a tale where all the animals competed in a race to swim across a river. The dog, despite being an accomplished swimmer, chose to play about; splashing and chasing his tail in the warm waters.

The dog is most certainly not competitive, unlike the cat who will often commit sly acts of manipulation to get what they want and are leaders and individuals who seek to stand out from the rest.
wolf
The dog, being part of a pack from birth is more family orientated and will often step aside to let others shine. However, it’s in Chinese mythology that we find parallels between the two animals, as the Tiangou, or heavenly dog who takes the shape of a meteor swallows the sun or moon during an eclipse much like the South American jaguar.

Although unlike the feline Kasha who is to be feared by the newly dead, paper dogs are an integral part of rituals in Northern China designed to protect corpses from harm.

The kind but lowly station of the dog extends to Jesus’ parables such as that of Lazarus whose wounds were licked clean by street dogs. The dogs and the beggar Lazarus illustrate the value of humility and the heavenly riches of appreciating true wealth in comparison to the material wealth of earthly riches that get us nowhere and invite greed and cruelty to others into our lives.

The dog is often the one who transports us to the afterlife or guards the doors to heaven and hell. One Egyptian Jackal God, Wepwawet, or ‘Opener of the Ways’ performed life resuscitating ceremonies for many a Pharaoh in order to give to him the power of speech well into the afterlife and beyond. In the Mesoamerican region dogs were buried alongside the dead as they were believed to carry spirits over to the underworld.

But not all dog depictions and myths are positive. In some Aztecs beliefs there existed a God named Xolotl who was essentially a monster hunted during the creation of the fifth sun by none other than Death. Death followed him as he transformed into various beings – including a salamander in a pool of water – until he was able to trap and eventually kill it.

And as depicted in the mythology of the Popul Vuh of the K’iche’ Maya of highland Guatemala, dogs and other such supposedly ‘stupid’ animals got their revenge on those who had beaten them by hunting down and killing them. If you were lucky enough to escape this fate then you transformed into a monkey and reverted back to your previous incarnation to learn the lesson of being a human from square one.

Other forms of dog medicine include the wolf; a great teacher and common totem animal in Native American culture. Again the wolf signifies family leadership and a strong sense of intuition; howling at the moon to gain insight into complex or shadowy matters, and keeping ones strength through all degrees of adversity.

Steven D. Farmer describes ‘dog’ people as having strong faith, working well in teams and motivating people towards the greater good. With a strong sense of community, dog spirit guides also offer stamina when one feels like giving up and reveal to us the more childlike facets of our nature; that which hasn’t been sullied by the ‘real world’ and the harsh realities of human nature.

Whichever animal you feel allied with; each individual medicine can teach us more about ourselves and those around us. About our deepest motivations and the spiritual path we were destined to tread.

Image Source

Sekhmet
Spirit animal
Wolf

Reverse Dominance: The Secret to a Healthy Tribe

Gary Z McGee
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Reverse Dominance: The Secret to a Healthy Tribe

 “Every human culture, to remain healthy, sustainable, and vibrant, requires a constant renewal of ceremonies, crafts, cultural practices, and the arts. Each society must generate new knowledge, skills, self-understanding, and modes of self-transcendence. To evolve, a human community must have available a diverse set of authentic and viable social forms that enables it to respond to shifting times, long-term weather patterns, food sources, spiritual needs, cultural longings, and relations with other human groups.” ~ Bill Plotkin

Egalitarianism is a type of social system that has worked for human beings for millions of years, and it has a very adaptive effect in human evolution. Anthropologist Christopher Boehm has proposed a social theory that hunter-gatherers maintained equality through a leveling mechanism he calls Reverse Dominance: a social system of checks and balances that maintains egalitarian ethos while preventing a dominance hierarchy from forming.

In his 1999 book, Hierarchy in the Forest, Boehm offers compelling evidence for his reverse dominance theory. In this article we will analyze this social theory and see how we might be able to use it to improve things within our own social environments.

Reverse dominance hierarchies are broken down into four different leveling mechanisms: public opinion, ridicule, disobedience, and ostracism. These mechanisms work because human beings are social creatures and hugely influenced by peer pressure and social acceptance.

Let’s break them down and see how we might be able to take the good and leave the bad while applying them to a more modern methodology.

Public Opinion

“He who asks a question is a fool for a minute. He who does not remains a fool forever.” ~ Buddha

34478_600This is where the tribe gets together and delivers its checks & balances upon tribal leadership. In some cases chiefs are actually controlled by the public opinion of the tribe.

Usually there is an elder council that comes together to give its opinion, but sometimes the entire tribe is involved. This keeps power from corrupting and definitely prevents absolute power from ever getting the chance to become absolute.

If we blowup the concept of “tribe” and look at it on the scale of a country, groups like Congress and the House of Representatives could be the elder council, but the problem with the large scale dynamic is that it doesn’t seem to work as well, because even the “council” becomes stagnant and power gets entrenched.

Security in power leads to tyranny by nature. One way it could work perhaps, is through a true democratic model based on sortition (rather than election) that maintains the egalitarian ethos. Or to have moral individuals who expiate their power (Capital Munificence), and that’s where ridicule comes into play.

Ridicule

“The first task is to win something; the second, to banish the feeling that has been won; otherwise it is a burden.” ~ A.C. Grayling

ridiculeThis is probably the most important egalitarian leveling mechanism of all, playing upon the guilt and shame regulators inherent within the human condition. Stephanie Segal, had this to say about a !Kung method of ridicule known as “insulting the meet: “In a strange ritual known as insulting the meat, when a man hunts and kills an animal, especially a large one, he is expected to act extremely modest and to minimize the importance of his contribution to the tribe.

In addition, the other tribe members insult his kill by proclaiming how small and worthless it is.” Everyone knows it’s a great kill, but everybody jokes and jeers about it to maintain a sense of humility. This applies to any great achievements.

The goal here is to prevent anybody from becoming too arrogant. It promotes an egalitarian ethos because it prevents anybody from becoming to self-important or taking themselves too seriously or getting to the point where they think they deserve more because of their greatness.

This is one of the cornerstones of a Sacred Clown’s contribution to the “tribe.” Sacred Clowns are preeminent mockers and actually make a playful art out of scorn. If we blowup this concept to make our country the tribe, we can probably see how this might work.

When say a football player scores a winning touchdown and the rest of the team might jokingly jeer at him and poke fun at him. Or maybe when an actor receives an academy award, maybe the crowd could make fun of him/her and take them down a notch.

The same thing could apply across the board, from small social acts like good grades in school to big ones like receiving a Nobel Prize. This makes humility a part of the foundation of a society and can even prevent people from hoarding or taking more than they need.

Best of all, it creates a particularly powerful characteristic that Ernest Becker calls Cosmic Heroism and what I elaborate on with the idea of hero-expiation & capital munificence.

il fullxfull 372829195 ikfpDisobedience

“I was not designed to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.” ~ Thoreau

This is probably the second most important leveling mechanism. Disobedience is a direct way of keeping power checked and balanced. It keeps authority on its toes and prevents power from becoming entrenched. Disobeying an order from an authority creates a ripple-effect within the social dynamic that cannot be ignored.

The authority is forced to check itself and improve upon the given order or demand. Sometimes even morally sound orders are purposefully ignored or mocked simply because the authority giving them is high on power and must be taken down a notch. Similar to public opinion, disobedience prevents power from getting to the point where it can become corrupt.

In our modern day culture we have civil disobedience, but it is still a very rare occurrence. It was made popular by Thoreau and MLK Jr., but most people just use them as talking points and there is no real direct disobedience. Most people are afraid of being disobedient because of the ominous shadow of the state and its threats of violence and imprisonment.

But this is all the more reason to be disobedient. The state is exactly the type of corrupt power that healthy egalitarian cultures use leveling mechanisms to prevent.

As it stands, the state, the very system itself, needs to be deemed unhealthy by public opinion, ridiculed to no end, its authority disobeyed, and its entire nature ostracized. Otherwise a sense of fairness, equality, and morality will continue to elude it.

Like MLK Jr. said, “The hope of a secure livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists, who are dedicated to justice, peace, and brotherhood. The trailblazers in human, academic, scientific, and spiritual freedom have always been nonconformists. In any cause that concerns the progress of mankind, put your faith in the nonconformist.”

Extreme Sanctions (Ostracism)

“Love is the whole thing. We are only pieces.” ~ Rumi

ubuntu-tribeIt’s extremely rare that human beings can live alone for long. We are social creatures. We need each other in order to maintain our health (physical, mental, and spiritual). So ostracism is usually a last resort as far as leveling mechanisms go.

Threats of ostracism are usually enough to get people within the tribe to “come around” and cooperate as a healthy member of the tribe. Rarely is ostracism necessary, but sometimes it is.

In which case the ostracized person better get used to being alone or move to another tribe, where he’d better shape up or the same thing will happen again. At any rate, cooperation rather than competition with the tribe is the emphasis, assuming that the tribe is healthy.

When the tribe is not healthy, as with our current system of human governance, then an ostracism of the entire system is in order. As it stands, we live in a system that is built upon competition and that suppresses cooperation.

Such a system is not socially sustainable, and therefore must be ostracized by its members. To quote Perry Buffington, PhD, “If in fact competition brings out the “beast” in us, then research demonstrates that cooperation surely brings out the “best” in us.

This finding has been held in virtually every occupation, skill, or behavior tested. For instance, scientists who consider themselves cooperative tend to have more published articles than their competitive colleagues.

Cooperative businesspeople have higher salaries. From elementary grades to college, cooperative students have higher grade point averages. Personnel directors who work together have fewer job vacancies to fill. And, not surprisingly, cooperation increases creativity.”

Summary

“The wise know to say little, o much, and face the world with cheerful countenance. The question the wise ask is, ‘How long will you delay to be wise?’” – A.C. Grayling

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In order to become a healthy society again, or even a healthy species, we need to adopt an ethos of proactive egalitarianism that uses the leveling mechanisms of reverse dominance. It doesn’t have to be serious; it just has to be sincere. And there is no reason why it cannot be playful. Indeed, the drive to play requires suppression of the drive to dominate.

Sincere play should always trump serious work. It will require a mature playfulness, and may even require more of us adopting the Sacred Clown archetype in order to level things out, but there’s no reason to think it is not possible. It must be possible; otherwise we may not survive for much longer as a species on this planet.

Also, children growing up in a social environment that practices proactive egalitarianism, and who are themselves trusted and treated well from the beginning, are more likely to grow up trusting others and treating them well and will feel little or no need to dominate others in order to get their needs met.

This is very important, because if our kids can adopt a culture of proactive egalitarianism, instead of domineering one-upmanship, even just a little bit, then there is hope for the future.

Like Robert Kennedy said, “Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, they send forth a tiny ripple of hope. These ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

Let’s be the person that acts to improve the lot of others so that our children may become tiny ripples of hope.

Image source:

Male-female yin yang
Bush cartoon
Obama Joker
Thoreau disobey
Ubuntu
Greek proverb

Self-inflicted Mythology: The Power of Creating Our Own Myths

Gary Z McGee
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2
Self-inflicted Mythology: The Power of Creating Our Own Myths

“The old gods are dead or dying and people everywhere are searching, asking: What is the new mythology to be, the mythology of this unified earth as of one harmonious being?” ~ Joseph Campbell

All of life is a meditation, whether we are aware of it or not. Put even more succinctly, life is a meditative mythology. We are, each of us, walking, talking myth-machines going through the motions of our mythological projections. In any given culture, we are the hardware, and mythology is the software.

We are naturally creatures of myth. It’s a human need to be told stories, and to tell them. Joseph Campbell described mythology as having four basic functions: the Mystical Function: experiencing the awe of the universe; the Cosmological Function: explaining the shape and image of the universe; the Sociological Function: supporting and validating a certain social order; and the Psychological (pedagogical) Function: how to live a human lifetime under any circumstances.

As it stands, our current mythology is somewhat progressive in the cosmological function but seriously lacking in the  mystical, sociological, and psychological functions. We, as individual mythmakers, have the power to change this, to create new, healthier stories that work in all four categories. And we must if our species has any chance of surviving on this planet in a healthy way.

When our mythology is one of dominance, control and comfortable inertia, we become stagnant, hard and closed off to the underlying essence. When our mythology is one of passivity, chaos, and orgiastic passion, we become too vulnerable and soft, fragmented and unable to contain the underlying essence.

But when our mythology is one of healthy moderation and balance between these polarities, the underlying essence can be tapped, and the overarching theme becomes a sort of existential solace, or connection to the heart of creation; what Nietzsche called the “Primordial Unity”, which revives the balance between our Dionysian and Apollonian nature.
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The more of us creating new, personalized myths, instead of relying upon old stagnant myths, the more likely we are to achieve a higher and healthier state of evolution. In a balanced culture, bad myths will get weeded out and good myths will progress. In an unbalanced culture, even good myths can stagnate and become bad myths that no longer apply.

Like James Russell Lowell said, “Time makes ancient good uncouth.”

One very powerful way of bringing forth this balance is through the art of self-inflicted mythology: the personal creation of living myths. Self-inflicted mythology (the cornerstone of self-inflicted philosophy) bridges the gap between science and spirituality by showing a child-like trust and hope for the human condition, in itself, which leaves open the realm of personalized mystery and enchantment.

It is a way of dreaming away from the world (current myth), in order to discover other-worldly knowledge (new myth) that can then be used in the real world upon our “return.” It’s a Promethean act of courage in the face of the current myth. Its structure is based upon metaphor, simile, and analogy, which keeps our third-eye sharp enough to intuit “otherworldly” mechanisms for perceiving reality, but it also has a direct effect on reality itself.

One must tend to the soul with art, poetry, and myth, with failure and loss, with ambiguity and complexity; rather than soulless, machine-like, diagnosis and treatment. Otherwise the world that’s created becomes unhealthy and unsustainable. It becomes a world where products are primary and people are secondary.

Like Daniel Quinn wrote, “We have an organizational system that works wonderfully well for products. But we don’t have a system that works wonderfully well for people.”

atlas___figure_from_greek_mythology_by_violetcrosshatch-d5t2bb7The myths we harbor can work for or against us. Our current myth is a violent, exploitative, dog-eat-dog system. Our duty, if we have the courage, is to update this outdated, unsustainable myth into a healthy, sustainable myth that meets violence with laughter, exploitation with expiation, and the dog-eat-dog system with a human-support system.

“My work is really about changing the old stories — the defining narratives and myths of our civilization, and therefore the institutions and systems that are built on those myths,” says Charles Eisenstein. “They don’t resonate much anymore. We need new stories that will change the world.”

Our tool for changing the world is our own personalized myth. Our vehicle is our meditation.

Our goal is, as Thomas Berry said, “to move the human community from its destructive presence on the planet to a benign or mutually enhancing presence on the planet.”

For those in whom a mythology is healthy, there is an experience of tonality with the human condition, of equilibrium with the cosmos, and an overall sense of symmetry and meaningfulness. For those, however, in whom a mythology is unhealthy, there is an experience of atonality with the human condition, of dissociation with the universe, and an overall sense of asymmetry and meaninglessness. It’s our duty as mythmakers to create responsible mythologies that are healthy contributions to reality.

But first we need to take a step back and think like an outsider. We need to let go of the outdated myths and unhealthy stories that are inadvertently destroying our world. We need to release the old myth in order to embrace our newly created myths. Think past it, around it, inside and out of it. Let it be what it is, and then let your imagination run rampant all over it.

Take the framework of your yester-life and break it, reshape it, widen it, rebuild it out of rubber-bands if need be. The point is to prevent the frame from ever becoming a locked safe. And if it already has, it isn’t too late. You know the combination. And if you’veternelle-trinite-eve-spatiale-543poe somehow forgotten it, then shatter the lock.

You’re the only one who can.

Like Leonardo da Vinci said, “It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”

Please don’t let humanity become a soul-less destructive mechanism that suppresses love, creativity and imagination. Don’t turn your life into a commodity. Instead, allow your life to become an adventure. Be mythological.

Creative myths are wonderfully cathartic because they cast on the primordial screen of our imaginations archetypal echoes and immense personifications of our hopes and capacities. Mythology bridges the gap between science and spirituality through a kind of mythological methodology: a subjective method of scientific inquiry using archetypal psychology as a vehicle toward discovery.

Mythology is the world on an elephant on a tortoise; science is explaining the infinite fabric of reality beneath the tortoise. Both are needed for the creative scientific-mythological victory over human limitation. We must create our own forms of faith, our own gods, and our own myths.

This will be an arduously Nietzschean task, but a most important one. Human beings make progress not by becoming more rigorous but by becoming more imaginative. Like Joseph Campbell said, “It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestations.”

But societal change is never a black and white issue of total abstinence of outdated traditions to be replaced by the renovated new. History always has, and always will, proceed dialectically. Societal change will be a mixing of the old myth (x) with the new myth (y) to create the hybrid myth (xy), or “new” middle-gray mythology.

Like Mark Twain said, “History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.” Let’s just make an attempt at taking the good aspects of mythology forward and leave the bad aspects behind.
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At the end of the day, creating our own myths is a way of putting our own fingerprint on the history of human evolution. It’s a way of taking old and current myths into consideration, learning from them, and then shedding them like an old skin, so that we can discover something new.

Like Francesca Lia Block said, “Choose to believe in your own myth, your own glamour, your own spell.”

At any rate, it will give people something to do, to help fit them into their own destiny, to help prevent their wandering aimlessly about in an empty, desolate existence. It’s a way of bringing meaning to the meaninglessness in our own unique way, and then sharing it with others.

Like Carl Jung said, “Dream the myth forward.”

Forget genes and memes, take the mytheme and astonish the world.

Image source:

Two heads of mythos
Lightning hitting sign
Modern Atlas
Female Atlas
New-gods

Giving Advice and Being the Light for Others

Nikki Sapp
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Giving Advice and Being the Light for Others

“I find the best way to love someone is not to change them but instead, help them reveal the greatest version of themselves” ~ Dr. Steve Maraboli

At a certain point in our spiritual journey we begin to unlock our own inner truth. We no longer are looking to outside sources such as religions, gurus, self-help books, etc. to tell us what to do and how to be, but instead we begin to realize that the answers were inside of us all along.

Not to say that we still don’t read books or open ourselves up to learning from others, but rather we have a more clear connection with our own intuition, which allows us to FEEL the “truth” rather than intellectualize it only.

When we were at the point that we needed outside sources to show us the way, they were coincidentally brought into our lives, either in the forms of other people, reading material, or any modality of spirituality that best fit our own personal needs.

Once, we have graduated from needing the constant affirmation and validation from these outside entities, we most likely will find that we have become the “teacher” that has manifested in someone else’s life in the form of a way-shower.

Then it becomes our turn to be the light on someone else’s path. If you have found yourself in this position, consider your responsibility very carefully. Life is a constant journey of learning and growing, and just like there will be countless teachers on our path of growth, we will also find ourselves in situations that we must be the teacher.

So what is the most effective way of being the light and giving someone advice? How do we go about showing someone the way to their own inner truth while still allowing them to learn their own lessons without our interference?

“A teacher is never a giver of truth; he is a guide, a pointer to the truth that each student must find for himself.” ~ Bruce Lee

The only person we will have the power to change is ourselves. No matter how much we want the best for someone, want them to be happy, want them to realize their inner light, or want them to be their best self, we cannot force them to do any of these things.

And just like we had to walk our own journey, complete with struggle, adversity, heartache, sadness, anger, etc.. we must realize that all these things are a part of the human experience, so they too will most likely have to go through all of them.

When we give advice to others we must always realize we are only speaking from our own inner truth, the truth as we know it given the situations and circumstances that we’ve experienced.

However, their life is not ours. Their truth will never be exactly the same as our truth because their mind is not our mind and their life has not been exactly as ours has. What we can do however is be in our own awareness and light so strongly that we become an inspiration for them to find their own awareness and light.

If a person comes to us for advice and questions we can’t come up with a million “You need to…” or “You should do this…”, directives, but instead, only point them in the direction of their own inner light and unconditional love. The only advice there ever is to really give is to accept the “what is” and love yourself anyway.

ramdass-quoteAll arrows should point back to unconditional love of the self… no matter if the person is sad, depressed, frustrated, insecure, it doesn’t matter. As long as they have identified the feeling, felt it without resisting it, accepted themselves for having it and loved it, there can be nothing else to do. Without attaching ourselves to the outcome of whether they follow our advice or not, we actually free ourselves and them.

We don’t fear for them, because we trust that their journey is bringing them to the right people and situations that are perfect for them. And they don’t abandon their own inner self by blindly attaching to whatever we are saying as their ultimate truth, which may not always be what’s best for them.

However, if we find that we have been put in another person’s life to help them, guide them or show them something, we must trust that the Universe is speaking through us in the best and most effective way possible. Without doubting ourselves, we find that our inner light shines automatically and manifests in the best way possible for all parties involved, as long as we trust that it always will.

“As we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence actually liberates others.” ~ Marianne Williamson

We will sometimes be students and we will sometimes be teachers in life. Since we cannot ever know everything about everything, we will find that this role reversal happens over and over throughout our lives.

The most amazing thing about all of this is that as soon as we think we are giving someone else advice and showing them the way, as most teachers know, we realize that we were also giving ourselves the same advice.

Sometimes the Universe brings another person to us in the form of a student, but in actuality in our helping of them, we are actually helping ourselves with the same issue. By being in the form of another person, we were able to look at the situation in a different way, from a 3rd party perspective, that we weren’t able to do when dealing with ourselves and our own life.

As always, we must be the change we wish to see in the world. In doing this, we find that we always attract the right people into our lives, either to teach us something about ourselves or to be the teacher for them.

But if we really pay attention and become super aware of how things happen in this ironic Universe, we realize…. it is always both.

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