mythopoesis

Mythopoesis: the making or creation of story. I first came across the word in Darren Middleton's "Novel Theology: Nikos Kazantzakis's Encounter with Whiteheadian Process Theism" and in conversations with Bradley Olson.

Each of us is a receiver and creator of story. Each of us has accepted and refashioned a Story Of What Is Going On. Each of us is born into a story community. The story is told through the actions and the teachings of the community members. That story provides a basis for our being, for our consciousness, for our actions.

Some of us believe that story for the rest of our lives. Some of us rebel against the story and stay in continuous rebellion the rest of our lives, thus living in accord with the old old story of anticonformity. Some of us range out beyond the story's bonds and look to create new story: wider, deeper, more inclusive. These latter are the mythopoets of this day.

condensation

I seem to live in a micro moment universe of great vastness. All, all comes into existence and passes away, births and dies, rises and falls in and as this micro moment. All past, all future is here in this eternal now. I go about my daily business as this vastness condensing into human form.

talem eum vidi qualem capere potui

We receive according to our capacity to receive. We see according to our capacity to see. We receive knowledge, understanding, wisdom according to our capacity, our capaciousness. When full of ourselves, we have little or no capacity. Some of us decide to stay full of ourselves until the body dies. Others of us look to increase our capacity.

How does one do this? Through centering and opening, through mindful lovingkindness, through relentless surrender, through calm action. All eight practices increase our capaciousness and thus room for knowledge, wisdom, understanding provided directly by That which calls us into Being. 

clanking into the fray

We clothe the core of our being with plan and desire. We wear a cloak of expectation and should.  We do not hear the words: "Throw off all your clothes and trample them beneath your feet." We pitch little fits of exasperation, insisting on donning the latest fashion of ourselves. We refuse to stand naked and vulnerable and open. We clank around in our armor. Our souls chafe. At times, despite our best efforts, we fall into joy. Joy needs no protection, no garb. Joy is open radiance with no end. Until we end it and decide that we must "go to work" or "face the world" or whatever other hypnotic suggestion of containment with which we trance ourselves. No joy for us! We contract rather than condense. We protect ourselves by becoming more dead. We ward off the expected assassin's strike by stabbing ourselves. We put on our armor and clank into the fray.

more public art

We once made Cosmic Maps which included the Planets, Angels, the Names of God, the Elements. Now we have, this current society has, relegated those aspects of the Cosmos to the Museum of Incredulity. We now live in a Cosmos devoid of such beings.

We began to worship Number. We made Number the basis of all Things. We work for Number. We are paid in Number. Those who have the most Numbers are seen as having power. Everyone wants to be Number One. This is a view that will seem absurd to our descendants and is beginning to be seen as absurd even now.

My forecast is that Number will be teetered off its Throne and come crashing to the Ground of Existence. We are trying through Number to eat the Earth alive, to transform the Living Womb of our Being into Number, into ever more numbers which can then be traded for ever more Things which are constantly replenished by eating the Earth alive. In doing so, we are becoming numb-er.

What will replace the numbness of Number? Art. Ourselves as Art. Our lives as Art. Art performed publicly. This is already happening. As we awaken out of our numbness, we will discover that our Cosmic Map is that of a friendly Location more than willing to assist us in the Creation of our lives in the most Artistic way.

Replace your Autism with Artism. We are Works of Art, Plays of Art.

The folk who are painting a mural on a wall in our town gave me a little sticker that I stuck to the bookcase immediately in front of me as a reminder of the Motto of the New Cosmic Map:

More Public Art. 

the consciousness state of the world

Past symbols of consciousness have come down to us, or over across to us: Jacob’s Ladder on which angels ascend and descend, the Caduceus with its intertwined snakes of healing and their chakra points, the Star of David which is a Jacob’s Ladder without the angels and the rungs, the Kabbalah: the lightning bolt of the emanations of God, the Enso or empty circle which inflates into a sphere with no surface whose center is everywhere, and so on.

What is the symbol of today? A skateboard. A flat surface of small dimension that rolls along on four wheels in a more or less straight line that one pumps with one leg and allows one-leg standing while tuning out the world through earbuds while texting. It’s also good for breaking up concrete.

You may think this does not apply to you because you are older. Well, it certainly does. It is the symbol of the world today, of the consciousness state today. You have your little piece of the action you claim as yours and you stand on it and possess it and pump furiously on a horizontal line through the day headed for your daily destination of non-pumping. You keep your ears full of the daily chit-chat: NPR, Facebook, text messages, and all the other background music that accompanies your pumping. You use one leg of your dualistic split to stand on (your conservative stance no matter how liberal you are) and its other leg (your liberal or liberated leg) to pump furiously on a horizontal line to nowhere except pump rest. This is your consciousness. This is your consciousness state.

This is the consciousness state of the world.