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Kathleen A. Brehony, Awakening at Midlife (Riverhead Books: New York)

James Hollis, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life (Gothem Books)

__________. The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning (Inner City Books)

__________, Swamplands of the Soul: New Life in Dismal Places (Inner City Books)

__________, Mythologems (Inner City Books)

__________, Tracking the Gods: The Place of Myth in Modern Life (Inner City Books: New York)

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One of my favorite Jungian authors, Hollis has many other books he's written on the transformation at mid-life. He's a great, readable author and I love everything he's written. Here is a link to his page on Amazon:

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http://www.amazon.com/James-Hollis/e/B000AP7GGQ/ref=ntt_aut_sim_1_1

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Robert A. Johnson, The Fisher King and the Handless Maiden (Harper SanFrancisco)

_______________, He (Harper SanFrancisco)

_______________, She (Harper SanFrancisco)

_______________, We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love (Harper SanFrancisco)

_______________, Balancing Heaven and Earth (Harper SanFrancisco)

_______________, Living Your Unlived Life ( Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin)

_______________, Ecstasy (Harper SanFrancisco)

Robert A. Johnson and Jerry Ruhl Contentment ((Harper SanFrancisco)

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Robert A. Johnson has written many other short books on the inner journey.They are all great. Rather than list them all here, I'll just give you a link to his page on Amazon.com:

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http://www.amazon.com/Robert-A.-Johnson/e/B000APIDYA/ref=sr_tc_tag_2

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*Charles Ponce, Working the Soul (North Atlantic Books)

Robert Graves, The Greek Myths: The Complete Edition

Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Robert Avens, Imagination is Reality

C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Charles Ponce, The Archetype of the Unconscious and the Transfiguration of Therapy

C.G. Jung, Answer to Job

Frank Pittman, M.D., Man Enough

Bud Harris, Sacred Selfishness

Michael Washburn, Embodied Spirituality in a Sacred World

Richard Lind, The Seeking Self

Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Power

Thich Nhat Hanh, Nothing to Do, Nowhere to Go

Hugh Prather, The Little Book of Letting Go

Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance

Patricia Reis, Daughters of Saturn

Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning

Viktor E. Frankl , Mans' Search for Meaning

Pema Chodron, Start Where You Are

___________, TheWisdom of No Escape and Path of Loving Kindness

___________, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

___________, The Places That Scare You

___________, Comfortable with Uncertainty

___________, Perfect Just as You Are (audiobook)

Karyl McBride, Ph.D., Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers

Peg Streep, Mean Mothers: Overcoming the Legacy of Hurt

Susan Forward, Ph.D., Toxic Parents: Overcoming their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life

Linda Schierse Leonard, Meeting the Madwoman: Empowering the Feminine Spirit & Breaking through Fear and Destructive Patterns to a Balanced and Creative Life (Bantam Books)

Sakyong Mipham, Ruling Your World (Morgan Road Books: New York)

Christina Baldwin, Life's Companion: Journal Writing as a Spiritual Quest (Bantom Books: New Yorki)

 Ken McLeod, Wake Up to Your Life (Harper SanFrancisco)

Liz Greene and Juliet Sharman, The Mythic Journey: The Meaning of Myth as a Guide for Life (Simon & Schuster Publishers)

Can you explain the process of recapitulation?

Recapitulation

Recapitulation is a simple breathing technique that allows you to release the past on an energy level. Every piece of information in your mind has an emotional component and an action component. Almost every memory you have has some kind of an emotional charge attached to it. If you were severely bitten by a dog as a child chances are you are afraid of dogs. A dog that might terrify you seems quite lovable to others because of your past.

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Your filter system is a series of stored memories that your mind relies upon whenever it makes a decision about anything. The stronger the emotional component the more rigid your thinking is around a particular issue. When I suggest that our greatest strength lies in being totally vulnerable people generally disagree with me. They argue that it’s unsafe to be vulnerable only everyone because as children most of us learned that vulnerability allowed us to be hurt emotionally. I believed this for years but eventually I realized an open heart allowed me to feel love all the time, protecting myself by not being vulnerable required me to close my heart and cut myself off from love.

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Recapitulation allows you to release the emotional component so you can ‘see’ an issue more clearly and make different choices in your life. Once the emotional charge is removed we ‘see’ so many other choices. We are free to choose based on what we want to create rather than on what we believe about the past. Until we release the emotional charge or the energy behind our decisions change is very difficult.

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Recapitulation – The Process

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The actual process consists of two types of breaths: the inhalation and the exhalation. They are two entirely different types of breaths that are practiced separately. These breaths are designed to remove any emotional charge or energy you have attached to old, stored memories. Once you remove the emotional energy from the memories they become emotional neutral and it is much easier for you to make different choices in the future.

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When a doctor hits you knee with that little hammer your leg automatically swings. When you hit one of your emotionally charged memories you automatically take the same actions. Once you recapitulate a memory or series of memories you can chose what action you want to attach to events in your life.

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By recapitulating my life I literally created a different childhood. When I was young I felt constantly judged by my mother, I felt unloved, alone, and abused. I spent years doing inner child work and trying to heal my abusive childhood. Then I recapitulated my past. Once I did that I could see very clearly that my mother was saying I love you and I was hearing there is something wrong with you because of my filters. I could see how even as a child I was creating my experience of reality with my filter system. Inside each child’s body is a spirit that already has beliefs and filters.

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Now as I look back on my childhood I can see my mother’s perplexed face. I remember her saying I am just trying to help you. She was saying I love you the only way she knew how and I couldn’t hear it when she said it that way. I imagine she couldn’t hear I love you the way I said it either. We came together to learn how to say I love you and we missed the mark. Recapitulation can set you free from your filters or at least allow you to see them more clearly. I hated giving up my mother as my escape goat but I eventually had to if I wanted to be happy and free.

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The inhalation breath focuses on taking back any energy you have given to a person or event. In order for us to be upset by someone or something we have to give it permission to upset us. In a sense we have to give away a piece of ourselves. With the inhalation breath we take back that piece of ourselves we left behind.

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The exhalation breath gives back the energy we received during the exchange. If someone was yelling at us we give back their anger, shame, or judgment. They gave us a piece of themselves so we give it back to them. The Hawaiians believe we leave behind little energy filaments wherever we go. We leave behind a part of our energy unless we chose to take it back. The ancient Hawaiians would periodically cut the filaments so they could regain their mana or spirit.

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When I view life from an energy level it looks like a vast spider web of luminous filaments. Our emotions attach us to everything and every one. Those attachments drain our energy and strip of us of our freedom of choice. Recapitulation will break those attachments.

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It is important to keep the energy aspect of the two breaths separate. When you are removing energy from the event don’t give it back with the same breath. When you sit down to recapitulate I suggest you practice doing it for at least fifteen minutes at a time.

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Depending upon the issue, you either start with exhalation breaths or inhalation. If you are very upset with the person I suggest starting with exhalation breaths. It doesn’t really matter which type of breath you do first you just do it until you feel like you don’t have anything to give or take back anymore. Then you do the other breath until you feel done with that one.

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If an issue is particularly emotionally charged it may take several sessions to clear it. I know I am done with an event or series of events when I have what I call a moment of clarity. I see what my filters are and how they created the events clearly and with no judgment what so ever. Then I know I am done. It takes as long as it takes to really release an issue so allow yourself to repeat the process as often as you need.

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Recapitulation can take on many forms. You can practice it daily so you can release all the stored energy from the past, you can work on specific issues, or with practice you can do it in the moment when you are feeling yourself hooking emotionally.

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If you want to recapitulate your entire life you need to make a series of lists. Often our mind feels so overwhelmed at the prospect of making these list we never get started on the process. If you start the lists and add to them as people and places come up you’ll be surprised at how fast they get done. You need to make five lists. You need to make a list of all the places you have ever lived, of all the people you have ever known, of all the jobs you’ve had, all of your pets, and all of your sex partners.

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I found that if I started with the places I lived I could fill in the other lists much more easily. If you can’t remember a person’s name just write the store clerk or the **** who cut me off or Joe’s friend. As long as you know who you’re referring to that’s all that matters.

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Then design a system for yourself. I find it easier to start with a house and bring in the events and people I remember from that time period. Some people chose to start with themes like relationships or a feeling like being betrayed. Whatever works for you is what works for you.

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Set aside a time once a day or once a week to recapitulate. I start out by saying a short prayer and then breathe for fifteen minutes. I say a prayer of thanks and give myself a few minutes to write or think about what just came up. Strong emotions at times are normal, at other times I’ve felt numb. There is no right or wrong way of doing this as long as you do it.

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Another way to use recapitulation is do events as they come up. Say you had a fight with a coworker. You sit down and start breathing. If you really allow yourself to complete the process you will not only feel better but you will see your filter system as the cause and be able to change it. Once you become really proficient with the recapitulation you can do it in the moment. While you are talking to someone you can breathe the situation in and out so you don’t have to react. If a person is yelling at you rather than take on their anger you can breathe it out. If you find yourself emotionally hooked you can take back that part of yourself by breathing in. It just takes practice and a bit of discipline and dedication to remain emotional neutral, which can be hard because we love to be right.

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Inhalation breath

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Obviously with each breath you inhale and exhale but with this breath you focus your attention on the inhalation. As you inhale you imagine yourself pulling energy in like you are sucking on a straw. Inhale through your mouth. It helps if you simultaneously sweep your head. Start by looking over your left shoulder and slowly inhale as you move your head to the right. Finish inhaling as you reach your right shoulder. Then exhale as you mover your head back toward your left shoulder putting no emphasis on your exhale. You are merely releasing the air in your lungs. Inhale through your mouth and exhale through your nose.

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Exhalation breath

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The exhalation breath focuses on releasing any energy you have attached to a memory. As you exhale imagine yourself blowing out energy like you would a candle. Start by looking over your right shoulder exhale pushing out the energy as you slowly mover your head toward your left shoulder. Finish exhaling when you reach your left shoulder and inhale as you move your head toward the right. When you inhale only fill your lungs with air. Exhale through your mouth and inhale through your nose.

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http://susangregg.com/q-a

Dr. Susan Gregg

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Ancient Power, Strength and Royalty,
Strength of the Feminine: The Child, the Woman,
and the Wise Woman (Matriarchal Head of Family).
The Importance of Family, Fertility, Sexual Power,
Discrimination, Clouds and Illusion,
Out of Control Masculine Rage

The symbolism of Elephant is ancient. In India, Elephant was the mount of Kings. Elephant was a devastating weapon of war and would throw the enemies of the Kings of India into confusion whenever the giant animals would rush into their ranks. In the West during the Roman Empire, the general Hannibul was made famous for attempting to bring the Carthaginian war elephants over the Alps to attack Rome from the city’s exposed flanks. He failed, of course. But in India and even in the West, Elephant came to symbolize the God of Warriors. Elephant is the totem of the greatest of warriors, denoting royalty, inner strength and nobility.

The myths involving Elephant have profoundly influenced humanity through history. Dreams filled with Elephant carry messages of transformation and spiritual power. Elephant in one’s dreams can signify the emergence of one’s Highest True Self. The Self, deep within the Collective Unconscious, only emerges when one has done one’s shadow work and integrated the contents of the Unconscious with Conscious Mind. This cannot be done by oneself, but is a sign of the Grace of the Divine and gift of Love of the As Above.

Like most mythic symbols, Elephant carries both positive and negative symbolic content.

Elephants live in separate social groups of females and male. Members of the female herds care and protect their young, act together for mutual protection from predators, and maintain loving relationships across the generations. The older, experienced females act as the Grandmothers of the Herd, using their experience and wisdom to assist the mothers and calves with the problems of life. Unlike much of human society, elephant herds demonstrate how close supportive relationships can be maintain between the generations by the feminine members of family.

Elephants depend heavily on their well-developed sense of smell to stay informed on their environments. The sense of smell symbolizes the ability to ‘discriminate’ between positive and negative environments. Elephant can bring the gift of discrimination, so that if you are contemplating some important decision, you will notice if “something does not smell right” about your options, and you will take more time to find more positive solutions.

Male elephants wander with other males during much of each year, seeking food. But during breeding season, they become aggressive and go individually in search of the female herds. Once the breeding seasons are ended, they leave the females and return to their bachelor herds. In rut, the males are dangerous and so the term “rogue elephant” has become part of even the Western vocabulary. In the dark, Elephant symbolizes the abusive, enraged, out of control male.

Linked with the planet Neptune, Elephant can also symbolize illusion or fantasy. In Greek mythology, the god Neptune was the god of the oceans. The Ocean, in dreams, symbolizes the Unconscious. But then imagination is a gift of the Unconscious as well, so Neptune/Elephant can bring gifts of creativity. However, the danger of the Unconscious is the possibility of becoming lost in illusion or fantasy. The dreamer can become lost in illusion in life or escape reality into fantasy, turning ones back on the challenges and learning opportunities in everyday life in exchange for the lure of imagination and fantasy. The dreamer therefore must learn to live in the Present, using his creativity to build dreams here, instead of wandering only in the realms of the fantastic within his mind. Fantasy can also bring riches of creativity. Children often fantasize about life as a way of experimenting with solutions to problems. Adults need imagination to find solutions to life’s challenges, but too much fantasizing can lead one to withdraw from life into isolation, leading to depression and loss of healthy relationships if not attended to. If we lose the ability to play and instead start to take life too seriously however, Elephant can teach the adult how to play with others again and thereby restore lightness and laughter to his life.
 

Thanks to Ted Andrews’ book Animal Speak for symbolic analysis. Also, Mary Ellen Guiley’s book The Encyclopedia of Dreams for information on Jungian dream symbols.

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Guardian of Ancient Languages and Alphabets,
Polarity and Balance, Creativity,
Death and Rebirth,
Magic of Writing,
Gentleness with Strength.
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Spider has long had symbolic meanings in many cultures through history. To Native Americans, spider's archetypal form was Spider Woman, a trickster immortal who might help the seeker or devour her. Often, the seeker must pass a test or answer a riddle before Spider Woman decides whether the seeker is to be helped in her quest or eaten for lunch.
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In India, Spider symbolized the Laws of Cause and Effect. Her webs held humans fast in their illusions (Maya) until their learned that their own actions had caused their painful life experiences. Once learned, Seekers found her need was kindness, and they discovered their Dharma.
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Her eight legs speak of the Mayan Twenty Count, where Eight is the number of the Laws of Cycles and the Book of Life. When we have lessons written in our Books of Life, they are karmic requirements. So when Spider lays down the Law, we must listen and do as she tells us. The Seasons of our Lives have their time. We must accept the natural cycles of birth, existence and death.
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Spider teaches us that everything we do has consequences which may carry well beyond this life. Do No Harm is Her Lesson.
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Spider wove the web of the Universe. When morning first came to the Universe, the dew drops glistened on her web in the dawning sky, and the First People named the points of light in the skies “Stars.” She was called First Creator for many Aeons.
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Spider symbolizes three magics: The magic and energy of Creation, the magic of writing, and the Magic of the Spiral or Labyrinth.
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Spider is the Guardian of ancient languages and alphabets. In old myths, letters were created from the patterns and angles in spider webs. Spider gives the gift of writing which can catch others in their webs of thought and emotion.
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Possibly because the female of the species sometimes eats the male after mating, Spider has been associated in some myths with Death and Rebirth. She is also associated with the Moon.
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In her dark aspect, Spider is associated with murder and horror. Out of mankind’s primal past, an image has also come which causes both men and women to recoil in terror at the touch or close proximity of Spider. Spider reminds us how we too once were prey of animals which ate us.
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If spider has come into your life, you should ask yourself: are you caught in a web of karmic issues? Do you keep holding onto the things in life you shouldn’t? Are you in pain because you can’t let go of losing and winning? Do you need to spin a new web of dreams and life directions? Do you blame others for your not getting your needs met? If so, call on Spider to aid you. To find Her, you will need to go down into dark places within yourself to find your own answers to your frustrated needs. Spider often also brings the gift of writing; do you need to write?

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Carl Jung was a colleague of Sigmund Freud and member of the cluster of Austrian psychotherapists who gathered around Freud in his earlier years of work. After a period of loyal collaboration with Freud, Jung moved away from Freud’s emphasis upon ego and the sexual fixations of the infant to develop a view of individual growth which differed from Freud’s in significant ways.

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Jung was interested in the constant appearance of spiritual images and symbols in human dreams and felt that these demonstrated the importance of spiritual issues in human growth and development, especially during the second half of a man’s life. He noted that, from culture to culture, dreams were strangely paralleled by myths, folk and fairy tales in the appearance of similar symbols and stories. It became apparent to him that something was connecting people of all cultures and historical periods, and that something was ’speaking’ to Man through dreams and myths. To explain these observations, Jung hypothesized the concept of the collective unconscious.

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The collective unconscious is that portion of the psyche which links everyone together psychically and is normally outside of the normal awareness of individuals. Because of his own personal experience with the unconscious, Jung believed that through the collective unconscious, any person can access knowledge beyond his or her own personal experience. In a sense, the concept of the Collective Unconscious portrays the species of Man as a single organism, bound together at a level of collective consciousness that is ordinarily ’invisible’ to the individual, but which opens in sleep and during waking hours in ’daydreaming.’ At these times, images and symbols can come through to individual awareness informing the individual of imbalances between needs at the unconscious level and needs recognized in conscious awareness.

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Jung thought that mankind is essentially guided through life by guidance from the collective unconscious by instinctive, patterning energies called "archetypes." In ancient history, the stories of the archetypes took the form of the Greek myths and the Indian pantheon of gods and goddesses and the stories of their adventures. In these myths, the great stories of human life were told--of heroism and tragedy, love and hate, and life and death. These myths appeared again in the lives of individual men and women, as we live our own lives, as the archetypes "live us." We, in effect, are the ways in which these energies come into manifestation and live; only we do not realize that the patterns that guide our instinctive reactions, needs, and behaviors are collective and species-wide--not individual--in their character. They encompass not only biological needs, but mental, emotional, spiritual and sexual needs as well. Moreover, these encounters with the collective unconscious carry a "numinous" quality to them that personifies the mystery of life and possesses the character of guidance from divine sources.

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Man’s conscious awareness takes in only a minute fraction of the causative factors in his existence, according to Jung, and the central organizing principle in every man’s life is the central, organizing, collective archetype called "the Self," which seems to be deep within the collective unconscious. Self, to Jung as to many Eastern philosophies and religions, was the Divine organizing energy creating the Universe. Jung felt that Mankind’s religious experiences are, in effect, encounters with the collective unconscious.

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One of Jung’s greatest contributions and observations was the realization that there is a natural psychic process guiding each person’s life towards maturity and growth. He saw this central driving force as often largely unconscious and impersonal; it takes us on our ride through life whether we want to or not, moving us along towards maturity and realization of our divine essence. Jung called this process ’individuation.’ The essence of individuation, the natural process of growth towards maturity during the human life cycle, is the emergence of the Self within the human personality. This emergence brings not only maturity, but the ability to relax into who one truly is, to turn one’s back on the values and expectations of society and follow one’s inner values in life.

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The Self was, he maintained, manifested through many of the great avatars through history, such as Jesus Christ, Krishna, Ramakrishna, Rumi, Mohammed, Siddhartha Gautama and the great mystic saints of Christian history. Individuation, Jung believed, leads, ultimately, to self-realization.

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Jung realized however that only a tiny fraction of Mankind ever reaches self-realization because individuals become stuck in their maturation by rigid belief systems, closed symbols, unrealistic personal rules or laws, the self-rejecting effects of society’s values, and neurotic and psychotic blocks of all kinds. In other words, conforming with society demands and its values holds us in childhood, in suffering, and in unconsciousness.

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Neurotic behavior is caused by the presence of unfulfilled needs, or wishes, which have been repressed. Individual’s repress needs because they become convinced that the fulfillment of those wishes is impossible, and the pain experienced from not being able to fulfill those needs causes individuals to ’forget’ the need, e.g. to drive it out of consciousness and into the subconscious. This process begins at a very young age, driven by the unresponsiveness of parents to the demands of their children for need satisfaction. Freud and Jung called these repressed feelings ’complexes.’ ’

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Jung taught that treatment of these neuroses involved going back to the sources of the problems and bringing into the patient’s consciousness the precipitating causes. Two methods dominated in his therapy. First, dream interpretation was probably the most important method for uncovering the frustrated wishes/needs being expressed at the Unconscious level of a patient’s psyche. And second, active imagination, guided by word association tests, provided the second Jungian method of preference for doing this. Dreams, whether sleeping or waking, come to the dreamer in symbolic form and have to be interpreted in terms of their symbolic content. Dream interpretation is therefore a skill that has to be learned.

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As the content of the unconscious becomes understood, the patient discovers that the repressed frustrated need is a natural and human need that has been denied, and that the initial cause of the failure of need satisfaction when he was a child was not his fault. He must then take responsibility to change his attitudes and behavior to begin getting that need met.

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This realization helps the patient to recognize that the experience of traumatic need frustration is a part of the human experience and that parents and other significant others also suffer beliefs, attitudes and behaviors that unintentionally damage their own sense of self. The patient can then forgive himself for being less than perfect, and forgive parents and other influencing mentors for making human mistakes with them. This process of working with one’s neurotic complexes to free the trapped energy in them is called "Owning Your Shadow."

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The first half of life, Jung hypothesized, is a time of exploration and exertion of our intent to explore and gain experience. As one approaches the mid-point of one’s life however, people encounter ’mid-life crises’ that cause them to reassess the directions of their lives. In fact, such crises are common, and are recognized as being the time when the repressed memories and beliefs pushed long ago into the personal unconscious gain the power to push back into consciousness so that they can be resolved.

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In this time of crisis, many people realize, if they did achieve their life goals, that their achievements have lost the meaning originally attached to them. And if their life goals were not achieved, individuals feel they must search out a new way of living to end the endless struggle for goals which life is denying them.

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Also at this time, the individual is becoming increasingly aware of his or her mortality, and the significance of approaching death begins to make every remaining moment of life assume new importance. Many ask at this time in their lives: "Who am I? What do I want at this point of my life? Where am I going? What is it that makes Life worth living? What is the source of real happiness? What is the best way to live the remaining years of my life so that I realize my true potential and become who I was born to be?

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This time, then, is the opportunity for the individual to begin what is known in ancient mythology as The Great Work; the work of going back and retracing one’s life, of owning one’s own shadow, of cooperatively working with the forces of the Collective Unconscious to allow the Self to emerge within the personality. This is the Quest for the True Self.

Possibly the first modern scientist to realize that myth affected people on a personal level was Carl Jung. Following his studies in psychology, he went to work in a clinic treating psychotics who were predominantly schizophrenics. As he worked with these people, he began to notice that they related not to the outside world but to a world within themselves in which mythic themes repeated. His patients were caught in a view of reality which reflects ancient themes of behavior reminiscent of Greek and other culture’s mythic themes. It was apparent that these mythic themes were rising from the Unconscious realms of the minds of his patients and ‘possessing their thoughts and emotions.’ As a result, Jung began to study mythology so he might begin to recognize the stories his patients felt themselves to be living.

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The Purposes of Myth

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His experiences soon lead Jung into a shamanic experience of “falling into the Unconscious” where he himself experienced what it felt like to be possessed by a myth. Shamanic traditions have spoken about what it felt like to experience this moment of crisis: it has been called “the Knock of the Spirit” in some traditions. Modern psychology would refer to it as an emotional or mental breakdown as the conscious mind loses control and something beyond one’s consciousness catches hold of you and begins to guide your actions.

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In old videos of tribal ceremonies, this experience has been documented again and again. Ritual calls forth these same energies. Religious experience calls for these same energies. The individual is caught up in a powerful experience in which he or she is moved by power. On the positive side, these experiences gave each individual a sense of the Presence of the Divine—of being a part of something guided by the Divine. These experiences integrated each individual into the myths of his tribe, culture and world. They created a sense of meaning and purpose to the life of each individual. They justified their needs as being a part of something beyond themselves and in fact divine in need. They made “all right” life’s painful experiences, suffering and finally even one’s death as religious, ‘right’, in alignment with the Laws of Creation.

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The experience of being caught up in a myth is an extremely powerful experience. It is the primary source of religious experience. In fact, Jung referred to these experience as ‘numinous,’ and having experienced them, Jung knew what he was talking about. Once experienced, an individual is ‘hooked,’ for nothing read in a book or heard in a sermon can compare with the feeling of contact with these mythic energies.

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Living in a Mythic Universe

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Before the coming of the Renaissance, people lived by worldviews that were widespread. These were widespread belief systems, usually founded in religious theologies. Thus, myth became associated with religious needs and told the stories of the relationships between mankind and his gods. The combined worldviews of so many humans in the world created in the collective memory images and story lines which continued to affect people long after the original belief systems had subsided. Today, schizophrenics and other psychotically ill individuals continue to react to ancient Greek mythic themes arising in their minds, influencing their worldview and their behaviors.

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The Loss of Myth in Everyday Life

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As a result of the loss of belief in the old religions and the new ‘theology’ of reason and science, the mythic themes of the old religions have lost a lot of coherency. The myths and stories which once swayed large numbers of individuals have been forgotten as modern religions and academic institutions have dropped these stories of life and the grand themes of mankind’s relationships with his ‘gods.’ The stories, however, remain in the energies of Mankind’s Collective Unconscious. They still come to us in dreams and, occasionally, by the Knock of the Spirit.

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Today, man largely pushes those themes away as he rushes to secure a life for himself based upon secular views of the Universe. He no longer sees the Earth as a Living Presence. He no longer views the gods as being in his life and as accessible. He no longer admits his needs for them. The arising of monotheism has eliminated the gods of nature and spirits of plants, brooks, springs, and forests from his theology. Man no longer feels the presence of the Divine as he walks through forest paths or departs on travels in ships on the ocean. Instead, he perceives inanimate, impersonal, even unloving things everywhere around him. The animals are no longer his brothers and sisters. The plants no longer demonstrate the innocence and goodness of divinity. Man has become a user of all other life, without respecting it, without honoring it.

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Modern man has paid a high price for his worldviews. To feel secure, he kills everything which he feels threatened by. He pollutes his world and his own body without thought because he cares more for his own ‘standard of living’ than for the life all around him. He has no respect for life at all, other than his own. He has closed himself off from the Divinity of the Earth. And yet all the Earth is within himself. Although he does not realize it, he is the Earth, and all that he does to the Earth and its other worlds, he does to himself.

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Psychological Consequences

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Psychologically, man hides from the darkness within his own mind. Instead of being guided by mythic themes, man has lost himself in issues of right versus wrong or good versus evil. He represses thoughts his religions tell him are ‘wrong’, yet his dreams are filled with his own fear and violence against life and himself, and so he forgets his dreams, takes drugs to dull himself, and refuses to think about the way he poisons Earth’s life forms and his own body. He avoids the unpleasant, the insecure, the painful, seeking “rightness”, happiness, security. And when the individual fails to achieve these ideals, he feels that the world has turned against him or that he isn’t good enough to achieve what everyone else is clearly enjoying.

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He has no sense of myth which would reassure him of his own relative unimportance in the scheme of things and that misfortune can come into anyone’s life. He has discarded the understanding that life is a mystery, and bought into the idea that the only thing that is keeping him from being a success at anything is a good plan and some clever thinking. So modern man has no humility. He has no myth that centers him within his culture, shows him who he is, reassures him that life has meaning, legitimizes his natural needs, shows him what right and wrong is in his culture, guides boys into manhood or women into womanhood, or gives meaning to his death. Instead, in modern cultures, the ego—or conscious subjective mind—is left on its own to grapple with these needs. The individual is thus easily overwhelmed by modern life. Without the guidance provided by myth and the contact with the Divine provided by myth, the individual is adrift in chaos, holding on while he tries to understand why he is always living for tomorrow and never present in his life, why he feels so alone in society and so without support from his God and others, why in spite sometimes of material success, he feels so desperate and unhappy.

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The Modern Personal Myth

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Jung and later, Joseph Campbell, resolved these issues for themselves by asking themselves, ‘what myth am I living?’ And they delved into mythologies until they found the one myth that steered their lives. They found that, in the midst of the most powerful and meaningful portions of their lives, they were unconsciously living ancient mythic themes. Subsequently, they described in their writings how it felt to be guided by their personal myth. First, being in the grip of a myth begins with the experience of awe. Campbell, in his book Pathways to Bliss, describes this experience:

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Now, it’s not always easy or possible to know by what it is that you are seized. You find yourself doing silly things, and you have been seized but you don’t know what the dynamics are. You have been struck by that awakening of awe, of fascination, of the experience of mystery—the awareness of your bliss. With that, you have the awakening of your mind in its own service. The brain can enable you to found a business in order to maintain your family and get you prestige in the community; given the right mind, it can do these things very well. But the brain can also impel you to give all that up because you become fascinated with some kind of mystery.

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Survival, security, personal relationships, prestige, self-development, Campbell wrote, are exactly the kinds of values that a mythically inspired person doesn’t live for. “Mythology begins where madness starts. A person who is truly gripped by a calling, by a dedication, by a belief, by a zeal, will sacrifice his security, will sacrifice even his life, will sacrifice personal relationships, will sacrifice prestige, and will think nothing of personal development; he will give himself entirely to his myth,” Campbell told us.

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The ordinary needs of a man or woman in the grip of his/her myth no longer hold him. He is in the grip of a mystery that consumes him, leads him to fulfill the role destiny has brought upon him.

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The beginning of a mythic world is a seizure—something that pulls you out of yourself, beyond yourself, beyond all rational patterns. It is out of such seizures that civilizations are built. All you have to do is look at their monuments, and you’ll see that these are the nuttiest things that mankind every thought of. Look at the pyramids. Just try to interpret them in terms of rational means and aims or economic necessities; think of what it meant in a society with the technology of Egypt—which is to say practically nothing—to build a thing that massive. The cathedrals, the great temples of the world, or the work of any artists who has given his life to producing these things—all of these come from mythic seizure, not from Maslow’s values. That awakening of awe, that awakening of zeal, is the beginning, and curiously enough, that’s what pulls people together.

What has happened to modern Western man is that he has lost his myths. Now it is terror that drives us together rather than inspiration. It is fear that controls us rather than Divine guidance which steadies us. And so we in the West are divided, while among those who attack us, there is mythic unity.

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In the Absence of Myth, Life becomes Existential

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That is what has happened in the United States today. Suspicious, paranoid, consumed by our worldview that all conflicts are win-loss in character, we project our shadows out upon terrorist killers. We withdraw inward defensively and become aggressive invaders of countries we perceive as an “axis of evil.” Those terrorists, of course, are living their myths, and in their zeal and passion for their causes, they cheerfully give away their lives for their causes to give us pain. In martyrdom and death, they find meaning because there is nothing else they can do to escape their despair over their lives.

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As individuals, Americans can do little about this. We are caught up in a conflict between cultures which are mythically inspired and our own which has no unifying mythology. Fundamental Christianity is attempting to impose a unifying mythology on our country based upon its interpretation of our 2,000 year-old Bible, but diversity in culture and religion is increasing in the United States—not diminishing. There is no one myth guiding mainstream America any longer. There are many myths and religious traditions that pull at us. There is no one myth or religious tradition to pull us together through inspiration other than the original vision of our founding fathers. Only fear remains as a negative unifying force, and when this happens, fear awakens a military response to all perceived national threats and power defines all international relationships.

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But while a new national myth has yet to emerge in this country, the individual can seek out his own myth to give meaning to his own life, for as both Jung and Campbell made clear, we each have a personal myth. Our myth may emerge from our past traditions or religious training, or may simply arise out of the Collective Unconscious. Man’s needs include these issues, and where these needs for religious experience have been unmet, we become sensitized to numinous symbols-images which evoke awe and mystery within us. We constantly seek these symbols as we live each day, often unconsciously, but often with a sense of lack, emptiness, or an unmet for love and meaning.

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How to Regain Myth in our Lives

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As individuals, we must conscious seek out these symbols and meditate upon them; let them ‘work on us.’ Our myths are first encountered in our childhood years. There, when we go back to our childhood years in memory or dream, we find again the symbols and stories, the enthusiasms, which moved us to excitement, to intense interest, which awoke needs in us that were all consuming. But in growing up, most of us lose those images and put them aside as ‘unrealistic’ or childish. In repressing them, we lost that energy, that passion for life we felt as children. We become lost in the demands of lower needs for economic security, accumulation, sexual expression, relationship, prestige, and other lower needs. In those lost images and forgotten needs of childhood lie our forgotten myths. In those forgotten needs is our own True Self. They lie just below the veil of consciousness, waiting to be remembered and recalled into our lives.

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Next, study comparative mythology: read, join internet discussion groups, and subscribe to mythological journals. Search for the mythic stories which light up your heart and fire your soul with meaning.

Third, begin paying attention to your dreams, for in dreams the myths live. Begin learning dream interpretation and begin journaling your dreams and thoughts as you go through each day. Your myths are constantly trying to break through into your conscious daily life, and it is only your busyness of mind and pre-occupation with mundane issues which block them. Begin asking for your myth and guidance before you go to bed. Begin to pray and reach out to the numinous, whatever you conceive the Divine to be.

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Fourth, study Jungian psychology and read books written by Jungian psychologists about the process of individuation and becoming whole. Read books by Joseph Campbell and other mythologists about the mythic journey. Learn about what has happened to others as they sought to uncover their personal myth.

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Finally, expect these activities to cause a disruption of your existing life. For to engage in these ritual activities of “seeking your true self,” such as asking “Who am I?” invokes a response from the As Above which brings one into crisis. This event can be profoundly unsettling. It is not a journey to peace! It is more like the proverbial “Dark Night of the Soul.” If you are one of those who doesn’t wish for their life to be changed by these experiences, then don’t seek your personal myth and don’t become a seeker of your True Self, for evoking this issue breaks the barrier between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind and the contents of the unconscious ‘flood in.’ That flood, like the ancient legend of Noah’s Ark, sweeps the old world and old life away.

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Jung did this and experienced what his colleagues called “a nervous breakdown,” but that his students and historians have since recognized as a ‘shamanic journey into the Unconscious.’ He had to stop work for years. But he began living his myth, and it became the most important and meaning experience of his life.

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The breakdown comes because one has to give up trying to be the person one has tried to be one’s whole life. Normally, this event is scheduled for midlife. This is the mid-life crisis. The persona, or false self, has to be given away. Personal weaknesses have to be confronted. Lies one has told oneself one’s whole life have to be given away. And new ways have to be slowly put together to live one’s life in a new way.

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Living one’s personal myth means a total revision of one’s life and way of life. The experience is both destructive and creative. What must be destroyed are all those facets of life which stand in the way of one living their life as who they really are. And then a new way of living life must be created, often from scratch, so that one can go on with life in a new way by living the personal myth.

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From ancient times, Swans symbolized the Beauty of the Soul. Totem of the child, the poet, the mystic and the dreamer, the coming of Swan intensifies the emotions and the feeling nature within man and woman, as the Soul rises to the surface to feel its way in the Sunlight of Earth.

In myth, swans pulled the god Apollo’s chariot across the heavens, signifying that our own lower selves are pulled along in the wake of the Soul’s own journey.

The Soul’s Beauty is too great for this weary world, and she comes only occasionally, preferring—like the Swan--to remain in her own cold realms of inner conscousness. But when she does come, she is so bright, so bright, that many fall beneath Her spell. She calls many to tragic ends seeking a Beauty which is not for this world.

In ancient Greece, the Elders taught that no animal sings so sweet as the swan as she dies. In fantasy and faery, swans transformed into beautiful women, drawing men into hopeless yearning for that which could never be possessed. Swans were sacred to Aphrodite, goddess of Love. Once touched by Swan, men can feel their hearts, and the music of poetry awakens within them. Yet Beauty is also perilous, for once men have drunk of Beauty, they cannot live without it. Passion denied is the dark side of the soul’s need, for men destroy the things they love.

In the youngest children, the soul stirs and feels its “inferiority.” This is why children relate so well to the Tale of the Ugly Duckling. For in their innocence, they yearn to be loved, as does the Soul, for itself. And adults wonder about the shining eyes of their little ones as they gaze uncertainly upon the world in which they find themselves.

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Guardian of the Gates to the Underworld (the Unconscious),
Guardian of Mystical Treasures and Wisdoms,
Primal Energies of Birth, Death and Initiation,
Ferocity, Fury, Viciousness, Destructive Power,
Keepers and Protectors of All Knowledge,
Primal Mother, Fertility and Power, Fecundity,
Vegetation, Hypocrisy, Insincerity.

Crocodile guards the Gateway to the Underworld of the Unconscious. Her great mouth is the entrance into the Waters of the Unconscious, which is the domicile of the Great Mother. She therefore symbolizes the unconscious aspect of the Sacred Feminine.

To be swallowed by her is akin to Jonah’s being swallowed by the Whale. Her bite is death, and in her jaws the seeker is torn to pieces so she can be reborn as a new person. This is the Shaman’s Death which begins our Hero's Journey.

The waters of the Collective Unconscious are dangerous waters for the unwary adventurer, for many get lost here and never find their way back from the Underworld. Madness lurks there. But here is where the Seeker must venture to discover the lost aspects of her self. They are also protectors and guardians of the wisdom and treasures to be found into the dark waters of our minds and hearts.

Crocodiles are excellent mothers. They guard their young and nurture them. Occasionally however, they suddenly turn and devour their young. Unpredictable, primal, savage, and ferocious, they symbolize both Life Mother and Death Mother.

Sigmund Freud, popularly known as the ’Father of Psychiatry’, perceived man as caught between the biological drives of sex and ambition. Building upon the theories of classical liberal economists and political scientists such as John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Hobbes, Adam Smith and others, Freud hypothesized that man’s psychic needs derived from his biological nature. Therefore, he argued that under our ’social contract’, Man surrenders his individual liberty only in order to protect himself from the violence of others; man is essentially an animal, potentially violent, and self-interested. When a man surrenders his liberty to be and do what he pleases to participate in the marketplace or work place, he expects to be protected from the violent intentions of others and enabled to meet his biologically based needs.

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The marketplace and work place, Freud maintained, was not only a hostile place; it was a truly terrible environment unlikely to meet most men needs. So as a man goes out into the marketplace or work place to satisfy his needs, he inevitably encounters failure and frustration of his needs. As a result, every man must inevitably experience rage at himself and at others for his inability to meet his needs. Every man inevitably learns to hate himself for giving himself away to get what he needs from others.

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According to Freud, man seeks satisfaction of his needs from his base of biological instincts; the result is the stimulation of his lust (greed and desire to possess) and anger-- each drive working in opposing directions--the one demanding pleasure and satisfaction for oneself and the other blaming others for the failure to get one’s needs met. The two drives are ultimately uncontrollable and incompatible, resulting in painful feelings of guilt (that he would seek to overpower others).

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As infants, both of the drives are self-reinforcing. Both emotions are initially reinforce one another then, resulting in self-love and the identification of others (e.g. mother father) as ’extensions’ of one’s self. But as maturation proceeds and the growing child encounters frustration of his needs, these drives have to be turned out towards others, resulting in the loss of self-love and increasing self-hatred. The growing child realizes that he must do for others instead of himself, and this causes him to deny his own needs to get approval from others. This denial of self generates self-hatred, which soon becomes projected outward towards others and society. Modern man thus becomes haunted by self-hatred projected onto others, which becomes hatred towards and violence against others.

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In Freud’s theory, Man suffers from his inability to get his needs met but is controlled by guilt and self-judgment. He is also held in place by society’s moral codes, its rules and laws, and his fear of annihilation by society’s power. He is unable to escape his fate and unable to meet his needs. This intolerable situation, which Freud saw as terrible for us all, is a fact of life because reality is essentially heartless.

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Freud felt that the young must surrender to this reality as they mature and adjust to living in this unfeeling reality. The price of that surrender and anger at others, however, is the self-inflicted violence of guilt and hostility to life itself. Thus, the guilt which is socially required for individual survival threatens the survival it is meant to insure.

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Freud was justifiably famous for his recognition of man’s unconscious, conscience, and instincts; and for his recognition of the importance of man’s dreams as revealing man’s unfulfilled wishes. Dream interpretation formed a major part of the therapy patients received from him. He was perhaps the first to recognize that patients must be helped to bring the rage and fear experienced helplessly during childhood into conscious awareness to heal and free them from neurotic or psychotic behavior. Nearly all neurotic behavior, Freud believed, could be traced back to sexual fixations upon one’s opposite sex parent. Once aware of the causes of his neurotic fixation, the patient could integrate the new knowledge into daily living and live a more acceptable life within the hostile world man has created for himself.