LIVIN G WITH S PIRIT
mythic dreams that put us in touch with the universe
BELONGING
and keep us there Geoff outlines Joseph Campbell’s model of the hero’s journey and suggests it could be extended to include ecology as a true myth of the times.
By Geoffrey Berry
JOSEPH CAMPBELL CALLED myth ‘the literature of spirit’ because these spellbinding stories link us to sacred realms of deep meaning. For Campbell, myths have a magical quality with one great aim: to put us in touch with the universe and keep us there. But how do we work with these kinds of stories today, when for most people a myth simply means something that is not true? We could start right here at home, with our own personal dreams and visions of a better life.
28 OCTOBER 2015
Like his spiritual mentor Carl Jung, Campbell noted that myths are similar to dreams, as both contain imagery that arises from the unknown, a realm of mystery that sometimes seems bewildering or even confusing. In our dreams, hybrid animal/people act like gods, just as they did for ancient Egyptians; deities appear like planets in the night, to dispense favour or torture, as they did for the Greeks and Romans; ghostly, witch-like figures dispense prophecy, as if we were
Shakespearian actors; while ancestors and nature spirits speak to us in shamanic languages, whether we live in modern or in traditional indigenous societies. Through his decades of teaching
and listening to his students, Campbell noted that these archetypal forces, timeless patterns and powerful images continued to operate at deeper levels of our minds, for instance when we are asleep, or experiencing altered states of consciousness through meditation or creative visualisation. Contemporary neuroscience has proven this to be correct, showing that the brain can ‘link up’ different areas under different conditions, sometimes leading us to higher levels of awareness and functioning. The consistent experience of
meditation, for example, can actually train the brain to relax into that kind of alert but calm state. This is so well known nowadays that there is a phrase for it, which you may have heard: ‘Fire it until you wire it!’ The new science of neuroplasticity likewise shows that we can replace traumatic or troubling patterns with creative responses by engaging new areas of the brain in compensatory patterns.
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