The Mythic Pull Of Pathways
I can’t pass up a photo of a pathway. I have dozens of them; all images of roads of one kind or another stretching to a narrow point in the distance. From time to time I puzzle over my attraction to such images. I sense something is at work that I cannot explain with any of my habitual ways of interpreting reality, something mysterious, at least to me.
I once heard the poet Robert Bly theorize that there is a form of human energy beyond the four that we usually consider: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. He called this fifth form of energy “mythic.” Since I cannot find the source of my attraction to pathways in any of my usual sources–the familiar forms of energy–might it lie in the realm of mythic energy?
Mythic energy is found whenever we humans express archetypal themes in our lives; whenever we act, for example, heroically, god or goddess-like, or as a wise elder or trickster. Archetypes, so the theory goes, actualize through us; they come alive in our lives.
I scoffed at Bly when he said that these are “real beings” that we dare not ignore. Now I am not so sure what he meant by the term “being” and not so sure that my scoffing reflected anything more than my own intellectual arrogance and ignorance of myth.
Does my attraction to these images spring from the well of mythic energy? Is an archetype at work here? I suspect so.
In mystic and author Caroline Myss’ Gallery of Archetypes, she describes one archetype as “Seeker”:
This archetype refers to one who searches on a path that may begin with earthly curiosity but has at its core the search for God and/or enlightenment. Unlike the Mystic, which has the Divine as its sole focus, the Seeker is in search of wisdom and truth wherever it is to be found.
That’s me all right! Examples of the Seeker archetype in modern American popular culture are Fox Mulder of The X Files, Gil Grissom of CSI, and Jessica Fletcher of Murder She Wrote. I’m happy to be in that company.
The question–why am I attracted to images of pathways?–is yet another pathway that leads to an uncertain destination and so attracts me in the same way that I am attracted to the pathways in these photos. It seems that certain phenomena, be they photographic images or unanswered questions, draw me in because I cannot see where they lead–they invite me to seek and so allow expression for the mythic energy of the Seeker.
For me it is one hell of a lot of fun and immensely productive to be in the grip of that energy.
Here is an interesting and useful exercise:
1. Have a look at the Gallery of Archetypes to see if you recognize archetypes that consistently attempt to find expression through you.
2. Ask yourself if you allow the archetypes that you recognize to express themselves or if you fight them, ignore them, or otherwise dismiss them.
Come back here and tell us what you found.
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Tags: archetypes, Caroline Myss, gallery of archetypes, myth, paths, Photography, Robert Bly, seeker
Ahhh, what a stimulating post!
I’m probably in the Healer category, Dick, maybe wounded Healer at that, but there is another archetype that’s not on the list that lived through me for many years: the Ferryman. You know, that shadowy figure whose boat you need to get across the stream? A relative of the “psychopomp,” those spirits who are guides to the afterlife, the Ferryman shows up in lots of places, including Siddartha, by Hermann Hesse. In my work as an organizational and personal “helper,” I lived by these words from Hesse:
I am only a ferryman
and it is my task to take people across and to all of them
my river has been nothing but a hindrance on their journey.
They have traveled for money and business, to weddings and and on pilgrimages;
the river has been in their way and the ferryman was there
to take them quickly across the obstacle. However, amongst the thousands
there have been four or five, to whom the river was not an obstacle. They heard its voice and listened to it, and the river has become holy
to them, as it has to me. The river has taught me to listen;
you will learn from it too. The river knows everything;
one can learn everything from it.
Some time ago, however, I began to feel a certain arrogance and insecurity in the role and a certain desperation. If I was the Ferryman, was that simply a way to avoid crossing my own rivers? Could I have a relationship that was NOT the ferryman role? Over time I have found myself increasingly letting go of it (and it of me), and that process has brought me, I think, a different kind of freedom and peace. The download from my site, called, “This Raft of Self,” describes some of this journey.
Dan,
Thanks for the thoughtful and equally stimulating comment. I am trying to refrain from seeing the archetypes as categories that I may or may not fit into, and see them instead as energies that may or may not work through me. Not an easy task for someone with a history in psychometrics, which is all about categorizing. But I find in this new way of looking at it a certain freedom. It isn’t about me. I don’t own it. So I have a choice as long as I remain aware.
Healer? Ferryman? Yep. Know those two. Don’t do much of that anymore, but I wouldn’t mind revisiting those energies because I believe that I could now keep at bay the ego that brings arrogance and insecurity along for the ride. Maybe.
Will check out “Raft of Self.” Thanks for the clue. And, for anyone else here who wants to have a look, here is the link: Raft of Self. (Dan offers this for your personal use, invites you to distribute it, asks that you attribute it if you draw upon it, and that you not use it for any commercial purpose.)
One of my earliest dream memories is of canoeing down a stream, pure adventure, letting myself be carried toward fresh discovery. I suspect it was inked out of reading some boyhood adventure novel. Some of my happiest times where when facing an open road in an old beater with little money and no known destination but the freedom to explore.
I’ve walked cow trails over fields and through streams in my bare feet.
I suspect we just like to be going somewhere some of the time as an expression of the hunter gatherer part of our nature, or in the hope that we will find something larger than ourselves around the next corner.
Thanks Dick,
Nick
If you are following this thread, go have a look at Deb Call’s post titled, Words That Give Me Pause.
Nick,
“I suspect we just like to be going somewhere some of the time…”
Yes. And hopefully not all of the time, and maybe never at all. I recall way back in my college days being terrified by classmates who, as freshman or sophs, had their lives planned out. I knew that wouldn’t work for me even though I didn’t know at the time what would work for me.
You might enjoy this entry, Dick:
http://learningvoyager.blogspot.com/2009/11/finding-your-way.html
Terry
Terrence Seamon´s last blog post…Finding Your Way