Tagged with Identity

Despite the exciting creative possibilities posed by new media, the danger presented by the presence of myth in modern media is paramount, and must be considered outside the mythic framework of industry, which reduces the material world to a matrix of profit and risk. (more)

Myth is so entrenched in the nature of business that it is often overlooked within the advertising rhetoric of capitalism, even if the building of a mythology is the centerpiece of all effective branding.  Myth may be encoded in any medium, but its defining characteristic is its psychological function. (more)

The actual lesson provided by hallucinogens seems relatively simple: let go. Hey look, the walls are bleeding. Let go. I'm fifty and my life is a wreck. Let go. That hawk headed God has giant tits and it's starting to unnerve me. Let go. If you hold on, it can become a demon, and if you let go, it becomes bliss.  (more)

A modern myth is a living myth, it cannot help but borrow inspiration from historical sources -- the lives and thoughts, myths and images of those who have come before -- but it is transformed, re-forged we might say, in the heat of our personal experience, and may come out looking quite different from any of those original sources. (more)

Initiation is evident in one form or another in nearly every culture prior to the industrial age, at which point it became notably absent, at least on the surface. This absence has produced a widespread psychological crisis. In many ways the initiatory impulse has merely transferred itself, oftentimes to behaviors and beliefs which only shallowly fulfill that impulse. (more)

To deny or distrust our own perceptions is to reject our authority as author of our own experience. It takes courage to stand for our experience when our perceptions are not validated by others. In not disassociating from our experience, we are on our way to becoming autonomous individuals.

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When I first drank ayahuasca the insights I received were as numerous as the swirling colors and out-of-body visions. As my relationship to the medicine has deepened, the insights I keep close to my heart have become simpler and less material. Part 1 in the series Meditations from the Medicine. (more)