LIVIN G WITH S PIRIT


This is where the great stories known as myths come in, because they were traditionally told around the campfire, where the tribe would gather to hear from master storytellers in an atmosphere conducive to a very receptive kind of consciousness. This kind of attention is also found in conventional religious settings; a receptivity to the sacred realm, where all that lives is imbued with the most meaningful and valued qualities of life and love. Where much religious myth is generally concerned with reuniting people with their idea of deity, and shamanic myth often guides acts of healing or sorcery, we live in a world with a different core aim in mind. For modern myth is more concerned with progress and the evolution of technology. Where does that leave us, in terms of that great aim of feeling at home in the universe? Campbell himself began to wonder


late in his career if there was a new myth emerging, which would contain a genuinely modern form of spirituality


Joseph Campbell became famous for his television series The Power of Myth and books including The Hero with a Thousand Faces, claiming that myths told timeless truths in an endless variety of voices, each unique to the individual. Carl Jung similarly claimed that archetypal images arise spontaneously in each of us – new versions of ancient patterns.


of social media supplies an amazing set of tools for realising this possibility, helping us to respond personally and collectively to big picture issues such as environmental destruction, overpopulation, social inequality and widespread injustice. Even if this new myth helps us to


build new forms of community together, I wonder if it also needs to provide something more, if it is to help guide us through the times to come. Things seem to be getting better and worse at the same time: the increasing alienation and conflicts of the 20th century continue and are made even worse by the ongoing breakdown of traditional communities, yet there is also a shift towards a sense of our fundamental unity as a race and our shared dependence on a healthy planet.


and could draw all modern individuals together, across boundaries of race, culture and politics. He thought that it would be about the planet as a whole and it may be that we see this new myth in the idea of Gaia, a living earth, as proposed by scientist James Lovelock. This ecological idea is also a shared intuition amongst many who follow the idea that a great Mother Earth (or even cosmic nature) sustains all of us. And now today, the new age


30 OCTOBER 2015


It could be that the core quality needing to be addressed by the new myth is a sense of belonging, because if we don’t feel like we really belong here on this planet earth, we’ll never really begin to treat it as a sacred home.


When we feel we truly belong – at home in our bodies, at peace with our neighbours and others, at one with our environment – then we treat others


(and ourselves) with love, generosity and forgiveness. This could also help alleviate some of the ‘first world problems’ of overconsumption, because a sense of belonging provides us with an innate self-esteem that resists being drawn into that endless cycle of ‘stuff’ – getting it, keeping it, being amused by it and then moving on. Some people believe that the game of consumption even relies upon feelings of alienation and disempowerment, because we are more likely to respond to advertising that promises to make us feel better if we already sense that something is missing in our lives. The alienation of modern life from


the natural environment may also leave us susceptible to the psychological machinations of mainstream advertising. Most of us live in cities, which are basically the same grid replicated the world over, leaving us less in touch with the natural environment than we were when we evolved in jungles, deserts, mountains and forests. Powerful myths of progress and technology have often convinced us that we were always heading somewhere better: sometimes there would be mistakes, upsets, glitches in the system, but eventually we would make it to the promised land of utopian splendour that was always just across the horizon. Many of us no longer have faith in the machinery of progress and have found a more satisfying story of belonging to a new kind of community, which cares for the planet with love instead of merely using it as a resource. Today, we understand better that


every social movement has a mythic element to it; a way of providing a coherent image of unity and meaning, or some sacred quality, which we wish to defend. We have a choice as to what this quality is and understanding that there is a common or ‘dominant’ myth to modern society, as well as many creative responses, gives us freedom to start exploring just where we fit and how we can change for the better. If the mainstream media keep reminding us that we could always be enjoying the benefits of modern consumption – I call this ‘the eternal feast’ we are


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