The Purpose of Mythology

The purpose of mythology is to make you realize that your ego is keeping you from your destiny.

Maybe we shouldn’t say “your” ego because that emphasizes the sense of separateness that the ego function engenders. The definition of ego is the belief, or rather, the sense that you are separate from the outside world, from nature.

So, its purpose is to break that lock and allow the “waters” of the universe to flow back through you, and the breath (the Tchi) of the universe to once again fill your lungs. Just as your physical body would die without water and air, so your “subtle” body (what we in the West may call ‘Soul’) will die without the ‘divine’ water and air. Because, though, it is wrapped in a story that may be historical untrue, rationally untrue, it contains within it the kernel or seed of a transcendent truth. It’s this very transcendence, the “womb of creation” as Deepak calls it, that’s made, and continues to make, everything we know. It’s desire is to come up through you and “marry” these two worlds, that of the internal and that of the external.

Your ego stands exactly in this middle ground between this external infinity (which our telescopes show us) and this internal infinity (which our microscopes show us), and also this transcendent infinity, which our heart shows us. There’s a trinity for you. A trinity that wants to be “Re-Ligio” or relinked, which are the Latin words that our English word Religion, synonymous with Mythology, actually comes from.

So think about this. Religion actually means to “re-link.” It’s the re-linking of eternity with immanence.

“There’s something that wants to be known, a presence.” 

See, that something, which is real and transcendent, can’t be known when an Ego function serves as a sort of ringed fortress, blocking it out.

So the purpose of the mythology, religion, is to break that Ego sphere, and allow the transcendental to pour forth, both up from within, like a hidden spring, and down from without, like a great waterfall or rain.

How to Meditate – Post #3

“Yoga [meditation] is the (intentional) stopping of the spontaneous activity of the mind stuff.” – Yogasutras 1.2

“Throw open the gates, put self aside, bide in silence, and the radiance of the spirit shall come in and make its home.” – Kuan Tzu, P’ien 36

“When you enlarge your mind and let go of it,
When you relax your [qi ?] vital breath and expand it,
When your body is calm and unmoving:
And you can maintain the One and discard the myriad disturbances.
You will see profit and not be enticed by it,
You will see harm and not be frightened by it.
Relaxed and unwound, yet acutely sensitive,
In solitude you delight in your own person.
This is called “revolving the vital breath”:
Your thoughts and deeds seem heavenly.” Kuan Tzu (24, tr. Roth 1999:92)

To me it feels like every thought we have is blocking out our true nature. It’s also blocking out what would be a true life experience: both because the inner self can’t get out, and the outer life is blocked from showing forth its true nature and transcendence. “The Kingdom of God is spread upon the earth, yet men do not see it.” Thus every thought we have is distracting us from the ‘real show’ or ‘real adventure’ of our lives, which is our destiny. It’s like the Polynesian saying, “We spend our time fishing for minnows, all the while standing on a whale.” The “minnows” are thoughts, distractions, making us ignorant of the “whale” of our true nature, our true destiny, which is something much bigger than we ever imagined, and much more interesting than the sideshow of the mind trying to catch “little minnows.”

The sublimity of our essence is trying to make itself known both from within and from without. Thoughts are blocking that “knowingness.”  This is the reason for the practice of yoga, or what we call meditation. To re “yoke” this awareness which would initiate a marriage of the eternal with the imminent.

“There’s something that wants to make itself known, a presence.”

“No one has yet lifted my veil.”

A New Poem: Go Through The Hills

Go Through the Hills

by Stephen Pickering

You are my tree.
because you have set me free.
An orchard garden grows
on land that once only snowed.

I’m under a spell
Only Ishtar can undo
Down, down her Roman well
I’m falling too.

I am the bird.
My life is the worm.
I see her cold, dark eye
bury me in the blood red sky.

There’s a tick.
The doors unlock.
I’m just a hick,
but I know when angels knock.

I don’t deserve this.
But here I am:
An Italian mist
Where Dante swam.

There’s a nickel sky,
and a lone star.
Gray clouds cry
wondering where you are.

That girl will come.
I feel her blinking again.
A bouncing little Sun.
She knows exactly where I am.

These beings inside
If you climb their stare
Feed the stillness of the night,
the castle that’s always been there.

I cannot breathe.
Your eyes are the hidden stone.
The gateless gate to the golden stream.
Unfold the night no man’s known.

©2013 Stephen K. Pickering