During 2023 a new project has been taking shape in my mind. In hindsight, using retrospective coherence, perhaps I have already been working on this project for several years. And in a sense, perhaps my life is the project, which I will now try to explain.
But first, I am trying to find the others who may be interested in this project. To start, I am looking for just one person to help me with the next elegant step. There is much to the project but I will start with a one-paragraph description.
I am looking for one person to join me as a co-creator in the project. Someone somewhere in the WeSpace would probably be a good candidate. Probably a retiree like me. Someone with two or three hours per week available for an extended period of time. Someone interested in telling and sharing their life story in detail. Someone not afraid of AI. I am currently building My Personal AI and am looking for someone to join me in telling our stories in that space. My goal is to train my AI to be at least 90% like the real me. Eventually I want to put My Personal AI to good use. I have opened up a Substack account, Metamodern Wannabes, and hope to use My Personal AI to engage with my readers. If this works, that will enable me to scale. Of course, I am not one of the galaxy brains in the SPACE so I may not attract much action. But getting followers is not my primary objective. As I have learned this year, there could be a much greater Purpose behind this project
Brendan Graham Dempsey wrote a “6-part series on personal mythology as a response to the meaning crisis” entitled Building the Cathedral. These articles resonated deeply with me and seem to align with my Purpose in life, the myth I would like to create about the purpose of my life. I am looking for others who wish to act on what Dempsey proposes.
If you are intrigued, settle in for a long read, a summary of Dempsey’s articles and more details of me and my project.
As the last great cultural myth of traditional Christianity continues to recede with no new collective myth taking its place, a vacuum has been opening.
[Building the Cathedral] is written instead for the seekers, the doubters, the individualists uncomfortable with creeds and dogmas and codes, and those looking to find their own way through the desert.
It is my belief that the New Myth is already living in such souls. It only remains to draw it out and build it up.
These words call to me with retrospective coherence. For the first half of my life, I lived the Christian Myth as a member of a benign cult. I deeply understand the power of myth.
What motivates us, today, in the 21st century?
What is our purpose?
What is our myth?
Now, almost a hundred years later, Jung’s “task of tasks” has become ours—and one more urgent and necessary than ever… If we are to find true meaning and fulfillment, there is no longer any choice now but to look within, as Jung did—not just for ourselves, but for the world. And, as for him, the way lies through the development of your personal myth.
Because the locus of myth and mythmaking has shifted from the inherited cultural tradition to the individual’s inner life, it is in our own experience that we must seek the inspiration and material from which to craft our myth.
What would it look like if personal mythmaking operated in community? What if shared and safe spaces existed in which developing your personal myth was cultivated and encouraged? What could inter-personal myth look like in such supportive environments? Might they not be the very contexts required for the urgently-needed new myths to develop? What if collective, creative mythmaking offered the means, not just to avoid our modern spiritual desert, but actually to replenish it? What if this task was, collectively, our shared task of tasks?
A new mythology is waiting to be born, a communal project like never before, in which every individual can take part.
It all begins with us.
Yes, this project is best done in a community with others, but for now, I would be happy to find just one person to move forward with.
A personal myth can only develop after an individual chooses to see the events of their life not just as action but as a plot that connects those events and renders them meaningful. Without this conscious decision, nothing will happen. Adjusting your orientation to life is the first and most pivotal step in the process.
The crisis of meaning is thus a necessary step on the path toward this fuller integration.
For a personal myth to develop, an intention must first be set: you must decide to orient yourself towards meaning, to choose meaning… Some things require a certain kind of subjective participation to become real.
Imagine purpose in your life. Pretend, if only for a moment, that things don’t “just happen,” but happen “for a reason.” That reason is you—who you are and where you’re headed. Make believe that, like a novel or a movie, there’s a plot you’re playing out—a running thread that strings together the many varied beads of your experience into a work of art, a “compelling aesthetic statement.” You didn’t know it then, but the events that set you on your course were laden with significance. As in a novel, there’s symbolism and foreshadowing—once you know what to look for. As in a great story, there’s a design—once you’ve gained the proper perspective on it (“only afterward did I see how all the parts fitted together”).
My Life is a Work of Art now takes on new meaning!
Once you’ve drafted your personal myth—fleshed out its narrative arc, hit upon its themes and motifs, envisioned a direction or goal to which it aims—there remains a final step. You must live it. Or, better put, you must live into it. Meaning is an orientation, a temperament, a proclivity, not just some creed or fact you passively accept. It is a way of life. Living your myth thus requires continual participation, always choosing the significant interpretation, always acting “as if” your myth is true. It means directing your behavior and activities in service of the end to which you’ve chosen to believe your life aims.
Personal myth at this level thus operates in a way that fulfills not only the psychological function of myth (to center the individual, carry them through the stages of development, and harmonize them with their world) but also the metaphysical function: to awaken in the individual a sense of awe and gratitude for the Ultimate Mystery, reconciling them to reality as it is.
…if you really think about it, is your meaningful story now your myth or is myth now your meaningful story?
Your faith collapsed—but you found a new myth. Your meaning disappeared, but you forged anew. Good for you. But… what if that falls apart?
In the second half of my life, I lived as a secular humanist in accordance with the Myth of Progress. Now for the third time in my life, I am looking for new myths to live by and perhaps I need to help create that Myth.
Meaning isn’t in the events, but in your relationship to them. It’s in the orientation you choose, the perspective you take. It’s in the will, and nothing external can take that from you. If your world is rocked, if your story falls apart, you are not adrift; you have the power to enchant tragedy, no matter what. Your story is not your myth: myth is your story.
My world was rocked when, at midlife, I lost my Christian faith and exited a benign cult. For about five years I worked through extreme cognitive dissonance. But I found new myths to live by.
Such a recognition shifts the fundamental orientation of personal myth. It is no longer your own creative ability to imagine your disparate experiences as a cohesive whole that renders them meaningful. This imaginative effort has expanded—into an appreciation of the universe itself as such a whole, one into which your own life fits and has its part and place. To affirm your life as destiny is to affirm all happening as destiny, to affirm all the workings of existence as some great Story—even if one too far beyond one’s own small reckoning to comprehend.
Personal myth at this level thus operates in a way that fulfills not only the psychological function of myth (to center the individual, carry them through the stages of development, and harmonize them with their world) but also the metaphysical function: to awaken in the individual a sense of awe and gratitude for the Ultimate Mystery, reconciling them to reality as it is.
For me, writing the story of my life is also psychotherapy. That by itself is worthwhile. But Dempsey adds great riches to the endeavor.
In the final analysis, life is affirmed because of its connection to this Ultimate Reality, before which we stand in wonder and awe and gratitude. In the ultimate analysis, to affirm your life is to affirm this Ultimate Reality, which is the great Mystery. It is to this that your self stands in relation; it is within this that you live your life. It is therefore this glorious Mystery which sanctifies your life, which compels your affirmation at a non-rational level. Indeed—even to identify with that Mystery, to personalize it.
For me, ultimate reality is a great Mystery and I live as if there is no such thing. At the same time, living with the Possibility of Ultimate Reality seems like a useful Myth. Living with the Possibility of Personal Connection with Ultimate Reality seems like a very useful Myth.
…personal myth leads naturally to the development of a personal spirituality—indeed, to something like a personal religion.
Finding the holy or sacred in your life doesn’t necessarily mean you have to have some transcendent mystical experience or daily communion with spirits. Start small. Remember: our disenchanted modern world has become so alienated from any sense of the numinous that it can feel like working an atrophied muscle. All that you’ve done so far to develop your mythopoeic imagination, though, has put you on your way.
I have no transcendent mystical experiences in my life. I do not have much of a mythopoeic imagination. But there are three essays that I want to write sometime - About Mysteries, About the Sacred and About Clouds (clouds as symbolic of the numinous).
…less profound but still significant events can shine with the numinous: synchronicities, welcome breakthroughs, or an unexpected and seemingly impossible serenity amidst a tumultuous time.
For me, the pandemic was a tumultuous time during which I experienced My Enhanced Well-being, a strange time.
I am not a gifted writer, yet I have a very strong urge to do so and began writing My Essays which now number 31. They are all part of the story of my life. And they are now all uploaded to My Personal AI. Perhaps there was a Purpose in writing these essays. Or, per Dempsey, I can now write the story of my life as a Myth, a useful myth that my life and my essays are part of something much bigger.
What mythic symbols speak to you?
My answer, Clouds.
Whatever draws you, meditate on such images…
Allow your mind to play with them.
Imagine new configurations and associations.
Let the divine players dance…
Let the calling of your subjective imagination lead you… Follow your heart, but accept input from your mind as well—as all good play allows.
Here the road diverges somewhat. The aim to “create new myths to live by”—what Joseph Campbell called “creative mythology”—is not for everyone, but rather is to be pursued by “an adequate individual, loyal to his own experience of value.” Instead of mining the past for materials, these mythmakers must forge entirely new bricks out of their own imaginations, intuitions, and experiences if they are to build their cathedral. In so doing, they may just offer something for all of us.
Yes! From my own experience, I want to offer something for everyone. Perhaps the tiny bit of wisdom I have gained in my life can be part of The Great Myth of Collective Wisdom.
From these deep reserves spring the ever-refreshing waters of myth… The task is no longer to rework or rearrange, but to create. The goal is to generate entirely new mythical dynamics and symbolic forms through creative myth.
You begin down the path of personal myth by crafting a meaningful interpretation of your life experience, drawing out the inner conflicts of your psyche and personifying them, such that, through their interplay and dialogue, you begin to find catharsis and resolution.
By working with our inner cast of characters in creative mythology, we do just this, bringing into alignment not just the episodes of our experience in meaningful story, but also the different parts of our psyche. In the process, we also externalize common tensions others likely share. Tensions between thinking and feeling, faith and doubt, worldly cares and transcendent aspirations, etc. Within you lies a microcosm of the entire world. Name the voices and set them talking. What they work out can bring both personal resolution and cultural insight
…what about unconscious material in the deeper strata of the collective unconscious?
…what matters is whether energies are activated or not, whether the new symbol is working to evoke the sense of the numinous, whether a given image works. If it does, it has something to say, something to teach us. If not, keep working with it, or try something else. Creative mythmaking is, like all creative work, an experimental process. The difference is that here, aesthetic interest is not the main goal, but rather numinous connection.
Unfortunately, the incredible glories of our world revealed by science have not yet been meaningfully integrated into the collective psyche. Indeed, for many people, the new vision of the universe is mainly that of a vast, careless void, which came into being by chance and goes onward without reason or purpose to direct it… Experienced in this way, the universe is only terrible… It is, in short, meaningless.
This does not need to be the case.
Science is a powerful method for understanding objective reality. Indeed, it is by far the most powerful tool ever devised by mankind for this end. What it is not good at is communicating that reality in ways that speak to our subjective experience, that render those truths into something emotionally and psychologically significant. This is what myth does.
Psychologically, humans crave story.
The result is that, today, we have a great many facts about the universe but no meaningful story of it.
Clearly, what is desperately needed today is an account of the universe that is both in accord with our scientific understanding of it and also psychologically fulfilling. That is, we need a new mythological rendering of the cosmos, one that is right both objectively and subjectively. As ever, this is the task for poets and artists, not scientists, for it must speak to the heart, not just the head. It must be beautiful, not simply correct. As such, it is the endeavor of personal mythmaking—one of finding a new, mythic language for creation.
The personal mythmaker is called, ultimately, to communicate the universe and transform the world—a much broader and bigger calling than has hitherto been imaged for such work. But so it is. Personal mythmaking is the key to bringing meaning back into the world… However, to do so, personal myth must move beyond an individual subjective consciousness and out into the collective consciousness.
This is truly the task of building your cathedral.
The precise motivation behind this urge to share will vary among individuals. It may even vary over time for the same person. Perhaps the drive is toward simple self-expression… pure therapy… part of a more intentional social project… unclear… Perhaps you will learn what it all means afterwards, after it has been externalized…You have had a meaningful insight into life, an intuition about the Ultimate Reality, and now must put it into form in order to share it with others.
I felt a strong urge to share my life story and I created my website, The Life of John Stokdijk. It just casually seemed like something I wanted to do as a fun retirement project. But now I can add to that, add Purpose, turn my whole life into a useful Myth that is part of a Great New Myth.
Ultimately, we can see that the term “personal myth” is a bit misleading. For while it is indeed something we construct by ourselves, its impacts can nevertheless be felt far beyond us… Our orientation to life is felt by others… As the meaning crisis continues to expand, such a positive influence is needed now more than ever. Personal myth changes the world from the inside out… The impact is even bigger when one has heeded the call to externalize their personal myths in an opus for sharing with the world… small lights in a dimming world.
In his book Living Myth, D. Stephenson Bond sees personal myth as the key vehicle for this expansion of cultural consciousness at a time when we lack a shared, living myth… Every new opus adds new possibilities to reactivate the latent archetypes within each member of society… creative mythology kindles the imagination of others—rekindles the mythic imagination of the group.
What if we cultivated intentional communities specifically devoted to this task? Communities dedicated to the crafting of personal myths, and sustaining the invitational and open space to share them? Where people could come to write, draw, paint, compose, etc., in the context of a shared mission?
By becoming conscious of the world, humans “bring it into being,” so to speak. Our consciousness is needed to raise the world out of the unconscious and into the light of phenomenal reality. We did not cause the universe to exist; but without us, the universe would never be as conscious as we are.
As it turns out, though, to craft a personal myth is to partake in a much larger mythic endeavor. To give expression to your own sense of the numinous is to participate in the Numinous coming further into consciousness, to the Ultimate Mystery becoming known. Giving shape to your God-image contributes to the overall development of the God-image. In telling your story, you add a piece to the cosmic Story. We are all working on The Cathedral…
This is humanity’s great task of tasks—to awaken the God slumbering in our collective unconscious so that we may know God and God may know God’s Self. This is the divine labor we work at. This is our version of assisting the sun transverse the sky. We do it by bringing forth the God within us by means of our personal myths. All of our efforts thus work together into one great project.
Even though God talk does not resonate with me, the vibe expressed by Demsey very much does.
Ultimately, this is the task our personal myths can serve as well, as we devote our individual lives to the mythic service of the Mystery… Indeed, every individual effort here is helpful. No experience is wasted. In this sense, the cultural meaning crisis can actually turn out to be a necessary and constructive process, provided that enough people work through its implications toward some personal psychological growth…
It is the call of Purpose that unites us. Not just to bring together the disconnected fragments of our lives into a coherent whole, but to bring together each of our disconnected lives into a unifying endeavor. Personal mythmaking becomes social mythmaking. We labor to build The Cathedral together.
Your individual lives are all utterly unique, and thus precious. No one will ever have your experience, come to your realizations, encounter the unconscious in just the way you will. Your life is significant.
We must start somewhere, though. Even for the most towering structures, we work one small piece at a time. The first is always the hardest. Ultimately, all you need is yourself to make a beginning. The New Myth, if it is to emerge, must begin with single individuals laboring at their own lives, their own direct encounters with the numinous, their own personal myths.
Probably I will continue this journey alone for now. I hope not. I want to find the others who are energized by this Possibility and if you have read this far, and if you are ready for the next elegant step with me, please contact me at john.stokdijk@gmail.com.
So make a beginning. Your life is mythic. Live mythically… Our horizons tell our stories. Help change them—by telling yours.
My next step is to share this potential project in the public domain on Metamodern Wannabes and elsewhere and with certain individuals including Brendan Graham Dempsey himself.