You can also find the golden thread of your own personal myth. We can also test and cultivate this mythic resonance within our own lives. Holocaust survivor and renowned value investor Arnold Van Den Berg has discussed how resonant quotes are a way that he believed his unconscious communicated its values to him.9 Places your attention is drawn to and “sticky ideas” that you just can’t let go of are key indicators of your values. Dissonance shows the gap in your own model of reality.

Van Den Berg compiled a book of 5,000 quotes on every subject. I performed the same exercise several years ago, and it had a quite staggering impact on me. I went on an three month elimination diet, when all rich foods and stimulants were removed from my diet. My energy steadily increased and I was drawn to start writing. I wrote a sixty page book compiling all the ideas, quotes and stories that had ever resonated with me. When I realised the common thread running through all of them was my unique “soul”, the articulation of my unconscious values, I immediately experienced a spiritual awakening that changed the course of my life forever.

“For the most important inquiry, however, there is a method. Let the young soul survey its own life with a view of the following question: “What have you truly loved thus far? What has ever uplifted your soul, what has dominated and delighted it at the same time?” Assemble these revered objects in a row before you and perhaps they will reveal a law by their nature and their order: the fundamental law of your very self.”

-Nietzsche

Tom Morgan • "Accelerating Wisdom" Episode 5: Myth's Hidden Wisdom