mythology and storytelling

People are made of stories. Our memories are not the impartial accumulation of every second we’ve lived; they’re the narrative that we assembled out of selected moments. Which is why, even when we’ve experienced the same events as other individuals, we never constructed identical narratives: the criteria used for selecting moments were different

Psychologist David Feinstein describes living mythically this way: “To live mythically is to seek guidance from our dreams, imagination and other reflections of our inner being, as well as from the most inspiring people, practices, and institutions of our society. To live mythically is to cultivate an ever-deepening relationship with the universe

This was the missing piece that finally illuminated my own personal myth, what I felt was the mythology of my life. Yes, I was passionate about helping people unlock the creativity inside of them because of my own experience, but the reason it felt like this passion was the deepest calling of my heart was because my own

Another useful way to speak of soul is as story. Psychologist Jean Houston, for example, speaks of the larger story each person is born to live. This larger story — much deeper than your prosaic personal history — expresses the ultimate meaning of your life, its true significance, in the same way a myth communicates truth or gnosis. To be living

Myths, fairy tales, and archetypal stories give us a sense of cohesion because we recognize the patterns, even unconsciously, as bone-deeply familiar. Stories serve to remind us that whatever difficulties we might be experiencing have been encountered many times before. We are not alone; we are connected to an ancestral storehouse of experience,