2024-04-22
Tell me about mythology.
Mythology is the deep stories; those that hint at more than what sits on the surface.
You know, I read last night that in Christian mythology, Lucifer falling was a metaphor for Venus in the sky, which in turn was a metaphor for a historical event around that time. That story makes a lot more sense through that lens. Suddenly, it came from somewhere and has something more to say.
Funny that the meaning has taken another leap to teach against disobedience of authority within religion.
Yeah. That's something that bugs me, actually. Tangent time. A big part of why I'm not Christian is that I can't believe in a god that would torture people for all eternity or cast someone away for questioning the rules. If god is supposed to be all-loving, then that behavior sits wrong with me even if the person was a serial killer. There's only so much punishment a person can endure before it becomes disproportionate to the crime. And the whole "he does it out of love" defense sits just as wrong because that's the same argument used to condone abuse of kids.
You still wonder sometimes if a religion would feed the spiritual dimension you feel you are missing. Trial runs of religious beliefs and services have not sated that need.
Even without hell or torture in the equation, there's a lot of religion that feels wrong or misses the point for me. There's good there too, but I'm not following a truth that doesn't feel right for me. Something about the organized nature of religion goes against what I'm looking for.
But it is right for other people.
It is, and I'm happy they've found a framework that's positive for them. It's just not for me. What's felt right has been figuring it out on my own, connecting to other living things around me and feeling into what ties us together.
Tell this one about mythology.
We've all got our own stories about the world, and about ourselves. Sometimes those stories are more than stories. Sometimes they're your reality. A story can hint at the truth if you know how to listen for it.
"[...] and in traditional wisdom, mythology is reality. So if an individual seeking healing is from a certain place, they would be well-steeped in the stories and traditions of that place, and the gifted healer works with them to align and relate to those stories so a person could connect to their personal meaning in that story.
[...] Needless to say, it is not a stretch to see the wisdom of a person working with their preferred metaphors and myths to help them understand themselves and what keeps them from connecting with wholeness."
-Dissociation Made Simple by Dr. Jamie Marich
There is a gap between the language and the experience, a war between the felt obligation to label and the felt truth of the words being unwanted, and an inability to express what feels true in a way that feels as though it would be respected or accepted by the world at large. Viewing it as the internal mythos rather than any external conception of what a self looks like has been what has opened space for some resolution, but it is still delicate ground.