Six years ago now (May 2002), I began to write an autobiographical novel in the form of a personal myth. That 'novel' ceased in its writing a month later when life took over, and the next few years of my life became in many indirect but nevertheless obvious ways a dramatic enactment of the story I had just written. This suggests to me that there is something quite fateful going on in all our lives.
It's a paradox of conscious (writing the story) and unconscious (actually living it without knowing at the time) play-acting. As the story unfolds, the complexity of its message deepens and the challenge is to somehow bring it all together on a path of understanding. This weblog is an attempt to map and track the wild and mild path of my life from my Soul's perspective in a way that I hope will inspire you to do the same.
As a person who feels alternately a rootless wanderer and a global citizen, a rational scientist and a dreamy artist, I tend to be rather broad-ranging and to mix my myths. In the past I've felt apologetic about this but now I'm old enough not to care (so much). As time passes, the hidden agenda of the mysterious part of ourselves called Soul reveals itself in harmonious or chaotic patterns ... but patterns nonetheless.
These are the shifting, changing patterns that delight and frustrate each of our lives by turns. If we can somehow get a sense of continuity in that process, then our lives might become more like magical adventures. Even if we are feeling stuck or limited by circumstances, we can have a sense of something weaving its gold through us. I have this sense and I am hopeful that by sharing it, it will strengthen in me.
I'm recovering from a personal crisis. In one fell swoop I lost my (supposed) life partner, my (supposed) life's work, and the first home I had ever felt rooted in. It was a terrifying, inevitable, shattering of illusions. It was chaos. I have been down in the belly of the whale and I am now emerging, hoping that some of what I have learned can be shared. It wasn't the first crisis in my life but it was the one that got me to notice.
What I noticed was that my life is not exactly my own - other characters have been along with me for this ride. The concept of archetypes is not new but when you discover yours it can be either shocking or consoling or both. In the process of writing my unfinished novel*, I was continually excited by the links my unconscious was able to make between events in my life and the unfolding stories of my half-fictional characters.
The book was a fusion of memory and imagination, fact and fiction. Weaving contemporary events into a parallel dreamworld, I attempted to uncover an eternal form of myth through the lives of characters that were made up of parts of myself and parts of people who have affected me. What I did not expect was that a story drawn on my past would carry me into my future. This has a warning message in it.
Whatever I focus on, or dream up, or write about, is quite likely to manifest itself in some form or other. I have discovered that it is not quite so simple, however, as writing your blueprint or manifesto for an ideal life. The characters or archetypes, gods and goddesses, that you draw to yourself in this way have certain demands to make of you. There is responsibility attached to a life led by Soul.
Another thing I noticed was that out of the chaos of all my efforts to become something, came the hint that I already contain everything. We are each creative beings with the potential to live in harmony with all that constitutes the manifest world. This sounds rather grand but to me it means that we are no greater or less than every other thing on the planet. We (and everything that touches our lives) have a role to play.
Whether individually or collectively, we make choices as we move through life. By becoming more conscious of this, often unconscious, choosing, we have the potential to influence outcomes for ourselves and also for our species' survival and the survival of our planet home. This sharing is part of my attempt to become conscious of all that is unconscious and wanting to be revealed through my own life.
Perhaps the only way to reveal this hidden life to ourselves is through art - of any kind. Here, I am writing because writing about this inner life is one of my passions. It's something I have done ever since I could, though I soon began to feel that it was somehow self-indulgent and not useful to the larger world. Now I have accepted that, far from being self-indulgent, it as essential to me as water - shape-shifter and life-giver.
In introducing my aspirational novel I wrote: If, as my friend JP DeVierville says, Water is to the Body as Dreams are to the Soul and Dreams are to the Individual as Myths are to Culture, the written creative expression of my water dreams in the form of this story may contribute in some way to healing the rift between masculine and feminine, between body and soul, between man and nature. Water has been the portal to this mystery for me.
In my other websites, you'll find more on this extraordinary element. The one you are exploring here is the personal side of this journey through water. I hope that you enjoy it. And also that you will feel free and inspired to comment or share with me from time to time: your own personal myth; your own mythological path through life; your own archetypes and gods/goddesses; your own creative story.
Sulis (aka Sara Firman), November 2008, Greenwood, MO.
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*My unfinished novel was tentatively titled: African Avalon: A Quartet of Dreams ... perhaps I'll finish it one day.
