The Forbidden Heights - Your Life is a Myth

Whatever you are currently doing and whether you know it or not, you are living by some kind of myth. You are acting it out. You are a vehicle for it.

A myth is a symbolic story of the relationship between your life and the world. It is a paradigm that is whole, coherent and forever unfolding. It can also be described as a psychological reality that moves without coincidences. It is laid out like a pattern or a track from start to finish, and your life follows it. If you could look at it from a bird's eye view, you would see the beginning and end simultaneously, as part of a unified movement.

A myth in itself is never right or wrong but is simply the reflection of your chosen relationship with the world. But that choice, which you have already made, may have you living your life uniquely and creatively or sleepwalking through it.

Absolutely no one, no parent, teacher, preacher or savior, is able to tell you what your myth is or should be. It is your dynamic, unique story that only you can stifle or help along to blossom like a flower. You may never be able to fully see and understand your myth because it lives beyond the borders of static concepts. It is in many ways paradoxical, but getting in touch with it may prove to be the most important thing you will ever do...

At one point or another during play, every child pretends to have supernatural powers and may even dream of having a book of magic spells. With the utterance of certain secret words or sounds, ordered in a particular sequence, one could bring to life a slew of otherworldly creatures or alter physical reality. But one must be sure to utter these sounds correctly; otherwise, a mispronunciation could have dreadful consequences and unleash a monster that could devour the earth, for example. Ironically, this is not far from the symbolic truth and children intuitively know it.

Many of our mythologies and religions recount tales of the beginning of the world through the utterance of a few ordered sounds by some deity. Whole cultures and societies are sustained and organized through customs, taboos, superstitions, ideologies, propaganda, advertising, fashion trends, etc. These are all founded on systems of communication. But that's not all. While we recognize that the world operates through different types of language, there is something much more astounding of which we have a subtle, intuitive sense in the back of our minds. It is that the world itself is language, an open book of enchanted words of sort. And for better or for worse, those who learn to read its symbols can mold the world as they see fit.

From the beginning of time, we have always been aware of celestial objects dotting the night sky. These planets and stars were traditionally associated with astrology, myth and religion. With time, we began to demystify these heavenly bodies, measure their orbits and movements and unite astronomy with physics. We spoke of distances in terms of miles and kilometers. Then within a matter of a few centuries, we have come to realize that we are living in one galaxy among countless galaxies in the Universe, and we began measuring space in light-years.

And now a few decades later, as we aim to identify the outer edges of Space, we are coming across some evidence suggesting that our Universe is but one of an infinite number of universes, and we are starting to talk not in terms of distances but of dimensions. This pattern of discovery at an increasing rate seems to point to something fundamental about our reality and, more importantly, about us. As we stare deeply into the fabric of time and space and ask questions about our origins and our environment, we find that fabric to be rapidly expanding and its borders getting further away from us. As a result, we are enlarging our perspective and redefining our world and ourselves, but we never seem to be able to stand on solid ground.

You are seated on a train facing a woman. She is quite old and looks to be alone. What thoughts come to mind as you look at her? Do you see perhaps a lonely widow whose days of glory have come and gone? Do you feel sorry for her? Are you somewhat put off by the wrinkled, saggy skin and the age spots on her hands? Do you avoid eye contact as you suspect that she is a crabby old curmudgeon whose daily routine now is taken up mostly by the maintenance of an old body through various medicines and doctor visits? Are you struck with an uneasy feeling, perhaps fear, as you see your own impending demise reflected in her face?

Or perhaps you are struck by the shimmering silver color of her hair or the hidden wisdom in her melancholy, deep-set eyes. Do you take the lines on her face to be a retelling of a marvelous story paradoxically laid out and yet hidden before all the world to see? Do you suddenly behold a constellation of stars, even an entire universe on her body in the form of moles, freckles, age spots and creases in her skin? Perhaps you see your own mother through those old, gleaming eyes. Do you wonder if she could have been an important person of sorts in her day? Maybe a beauty queen? Perhaps even a prostitute? Could she be a goddess from another realm who has chosen to sit in front of you at that moment, seemingly by chance, in order to impart some wisdom into your world?