In the introduction to his ground-breaking work The Symbols of Transformation, C. G. Jung asked a question simultaneously simple yet profound: “What is the myth you are living?” That fundamental question is one which, in their related, yet different, ways both religion and depth psychology seek to address. In a larger sense, this question of finding symbols and stories through which we may discover the meaning of our lives seems to be a perennial one, as old as human consciousness itself.
Up until the end of the Middle Ages, this question of needing a myth to live by simply didn’t exist. All mythologies were communal and collective in nature, equally relevant to each member of the community and equally binding. For more than a thousand years, that shared mythology in the West was provided by the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Even after end of the Middle Ages, most Europeans still continued to draw their guiding mythologies from the Christian Tradition.
It was only with the coming of the Enlightenment and steady decline of the influence of Christianity in the West that people were for the first time in history expected to live outside of a shared mythology for meaning-making. What makes the asking and answering of Jung’s question particularly significant and urgent is that we find ourselves living in a time when the collective culture offers little alternative to wrestling personally with this question and deriving answers from the core of our individual experience.
For the majority of people living in the modern, secular world, however, a more basic issue must be addressed before attempting to answer the question “What is my myth?” Bluntly stated, first we must ask “Why bother with myths at all?” For many of us, it would appear that we are living well enough without a mythological context and that, as a species, perhaps human beings have outgrown the need for mythic consciousness. What remains invisible to us is the inevitability of unconsciously living out an old, limiting, ill-fitting mythology if a conscious psychic process has not disclosed a larger, more valid and meaningful one to take its place in our lives.
Since collective mythologies no longer generate a sense of existential meaning for many people, the alternative has been to turn mythic consciousness inward and attempt to find the mythic dimension of each person’s life story, to seek what we today call a “personal mythology.” That said, what do we mean when we speak about having a personal mythology?
Depth psychologist Stanley Krippner offers us a basic sense of the value of this concept. “Personal mythologies,” he writes, “give meaning to the past, understanding to the present, and direction to the future,” adding that personal myth perform the same functions of “explaining, confirming, guiding, and sacralizing human experience just as cultural myths once served those functions for an entire society.”
Since Jung was among the first to observe the mythic nature of our personal stories, it’s not surprising that one of the very best examples of someone recounting their personal mythology is Jung’s memoir Memories, Dreams, and Reflections. Indeed, in the prologue of this work, published in 1961, Jung declares “I have now undertaken, in my eighty-third year, to tell my personal myth.” Through this retelling, Jung offers deep insight into both the psychological and spiritual possibilities for meaning-making that emerge when we revision our lives through the mythic perspective.
Much of the power of personal myth derives from its ability to refract common historical, cultural, and spiritual images and symbols through the lens of our individual life stories. Indeed, one of the most compelling qualities the mythic perspective offers as a framework for more deeply understanding of our life experience is the way it provides us with a larger, more universal, and timeless context for our individual life stories.
One of the ways that a personal mythology provides that larger psychological and spiritual vision is its ability to draw upon a vast array of archetypes and archetypal figures. Commenting on this deeper level of meaning implicit in our myths, Robert Atkinson, a specialist in human development, reminds us that recognizing the archetypal patterns in our stories gives us an awareness “that we are participating in the same mystery as our ancestors before us and our descendants after us.”
For example, a key theme in my own personal mythology has been my relationship with the archetype of the Mother. Not surprisingly, an important source for this aspect of my mythology was the complex and powerful relationship I had with my own mother, a figure who could, quite rightly, be described as “a force of nature.” In my spiritual reflection The Sacred Stories of Our Lives, I describe how that relationship, in the aftermath of my mother’s death, was transformed – indeed, transfigured – into a profound connection with the divine figure called the Great Mother. That metamorphosis, both miraculous and redemptive, while very much grounded in the biographical details of my life story, feels as mythic – and as sacred — as any story we might encounter in the world’s many mythological and religious traditions.
For more information about the sacred dimension of our personal myths, see Faith in the Journey: Personal Mythology as Pathway to the Sacred.
Resources for exploring your personal mythology:
The Mythic Imagination: Your Quest for Meaning Through Personal Myth, by Stephen Larsen
The Mythic Path, by David Feinstein and Stanley Krippner
Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation, by Joseph Campbell
Storied Lives: Discovering and Deepening Your Personal Myth, by Craig Chalquist
Your Mythic Journey, by Sam Keen and Anne Valley-Fox