I have discovered a key to crowlaborating with the great mystery, and aligning with our ephemeral human range of experience, is to locate yourself in your own mythic story. As a great lover and student of myth, and an innately symbolic thinker, asking for an image that helps me establish my place in the greater story of my life is something that has always been natural and helpful to me. When I can see that I am winding, blindly through the labyrinth, or on a quest for the hidden well, battling the demons at the gate of my longing, or reuniting with my lost love, these mythic images give my experience a home and a deeper meaning. The image offers my various human states a place to rest especially when feeling is unsettled or despairing – finding the image helps me know where I am on the map. This practice, of asking for an image, a poetic phrase, or a mythological counterpart to my present experience, cultivates a deep knowing that my life is an unfolding story and knowing that the page will eventually turn helps me know this is only a chapter, there are more to come, and this too shall pass.
It’s also helpful to mark your place in the story because it illuminates more clearly the soul’s task in that particular moment on your quest. If you are falling into the underworld your task may be to surrender, to let go of your attachments and identities so you can encounter more deeply, the part of you that has been under the surface. If you are at the kitchen table of the crone, then your task is to be honest, for she will know when you are lying. If you are curled up, cold and shivering after many, many, many days searching far and wide for the elixir that will cure the ailing King, then your task is to cultivate your fortitude and change your perspective so you can see the fairies pointing the way.
One of the simplest mythological frameworks to apply to your life comes from the myth of the hero’s journey, where the quest for personal transformation and evolution is thought to occur in three phases. 1st Phase: Leaving the village, hearing a calling, moving away from home, a break from the familiar, the loss of what we know, the death of identity, 2nd Phase: The liminal, the in-between, the ordeal, wandering the forest, skinless, raw and re-organizing, 3rd Phase: The return, integration, bringing the gifts of the journey back to the village, opening to a new sense of identity.
We can always find ourselves somewhere in this mythic framework. In certain moments, particular areas of our life will be in different phases at the same time. Such as, my husband and I are really integrating the experience of having a child two years ago (3rd phase) but I’m feeling a restless call to leave my business I’ve been working at for 20 years and I’m scared to leave the safety (1st phase). At other times it feels like EVERY single area of your life is impacted, that across the board you feel lost, rudderless and without an anchor (a good sign you are in the 2nd liminal phase).
Take a moment to ask yourself what phase you are in? Ask for an image that will help locate where you are in the process of your unfolding story.
Sometimes the image comes to me from within, but more often the image comes to me from my everyday experience. For instance, today, as I was ruminating about what feels like an insurmountable list of life challenges, and watching myself trying to push my way towards resolution, peace, and order I felt how deeply this strategy was not working! I feel exhausted! When I paused for a moment my awareness came to rest on the broken bridge….what’s that you may ask?
Well a month ago, I attempted to tune my girlfriend’s cello and with exuberance (and a heavy hand) I started to turn the pegs and wound the string so tight, that with a thunderous SNAP, I broke the delicate wooden bridge!! Ouch! Last week, in frustration and impatience, I decided to super glue the bridge together – I was determined to fix the problem and get this instrument up and running no matter what!! I tuned one string, the bridge held, I tuned a second string, the bridge held, I twisted the peg on the third string and SNAP, the bridge broke again. And when it broke this time deep, grief-filled sobs broke free as well – that’s when I knew there was more to this broken bridge then I was aware of. After I fully allowed the tears there time, I settled into this practice of asking for an image. I could see that I was just at the end of several years of wandering the dark, unknown forest after my divorce three years ago, and that as I stepped out from the trees, thinking and hoping the ordeal was behind me, I had come to a chasm, a large impassable drop. I needed a bridge to walk across but nothing I tried was working. I felt panicked by my options; does this mean I have to go back into the forest? It was hard and scary in there!! Will I ever feel connected to the world again? I felt frantic to find or build a bridge, I could see that I was sprinting up and down the ravine looking for a way to cross.
And then I imagined I was reading this story to a child. I was raised on The Lord of The Rings and my mom would always stop reading for the night at a particularly perilous and unknown moment of the book. I loved going to bed not knowing what would happen and couldn’t wait to read the next chapter when she put me to bed the following night.
So I asked myself, can I let the heroine of my story be right where she is!? Can I find the adventure and excitement of this unfolding story? Can I let this broken bridge captivate my enthusiasm and open my imagination? Can we feel excited anticipation at the most mysterious and terrifying moments of our story, even when we are living it?
Image: The Broken Bridge by Laura Tabet (iPhone camera)