Introduction: Myth Making

Every culture has its own origin story, but they all tell of a Golden Age when humans were innocent and pure. They also relate the loss of perfection to some form of corruption.

In the Christian version, Adam and Eve were kicked out of Eden because they ate of the Tree of Knowledge, the one forbidden fruit in the Garden. The Bible story blames Eve by way of a tempting serpent, but what really happened? Patriarchal mythology aside, how did we lose “Eden”?

My belief is that the human species experienced an evolutionary event. In short, consciousness evolved and humanity woke up to a new reality. We moved as a collective from a state of innocence, of not knowing, into a state of mind, of thinking and concepts. The Biblical story describes the moment we became self-aware. Adam and Eve realized their nakedness and covered it up. Ken Wilber describes the evolution of consciousness in his wonderful book Up From Eden, providing a timeline and description of the various evolutionary stages of human consciousness.

This evolution is observable in the development of our children. We watch them grow from pure innocence and compliance into willful disobedience as they begin to think for themselves. We also watched this moment of awakening in the classic film “2001: A Space Odyssey” when an ape-like creature playing with bones suddenly realizes that the bone in his hand could be a weapon. That single thought changed reality.

It must have been a shock for our ancestors to suddenly see the world differently. It must have been terrifying! We left Home in exile, bearing the guilt, feeling the shame, left to labor and suffer in a strange new world. We felt deep loss, much like a baby feels when the breast is withheld. We were innocent and knew nothing. We had to fend for ourselves. We had to face the darkness and our greatest fears. Imagine the confusion! What happened and why? Eventually a story evolved to explain it.

We have made it all the way to the 21^st century, carrying this baggage, bearing the consequences of our beliefs about who we are. We have been amazingly creative, and we have been staggeringly destructive. We live in conflict and haven’t learned how to live in peace. That’s because we believe we are fallen people. We are flawed. We are evil. We deserve to be punished. And so we behave out of our shame and guilt and fear of discovery, and compete with each other for resources.

Our current myth got us this far, but no longer serves us. We have outgrown it. We are awakening again. Our consciousness is once again leaping orbits, like electrons in a fuzzy atom. We are opening to a whole new awareness, seeing vistas of new possibilities, realizing who we really are, not exiled criminals, but evolving spiritual beings. We are beginning to envision a new world, as glorious as the paradise we left behind – one in which we give up our struggle and our competition; put down the burden of shame and step into a new future, not as exiles, but as explorers. And we’re starting to ask new questions: “What amazing world could we create if we worked together? How much could we accomplish if we gave up self-interest and focused on what’s best for the whole?”

Evolution happens through the development of systems. The word system describes the functioning of diverse parts within a whole. Our bodies are made of many systems – the circulatory, the digestive, nervous etc. What if all the blood cells in our circulatory system, for instance, decided it was dog eat dog? They had to compete for nutrients? They started to kill each other off? The whole would die – our bodies would expire because we need all of our parts to work together.

There are metaphors everywhere that mirror the destructiveness of our competitive paradigm. Cancer is a big one. What does it mean when cells go rogue and devour organs? What does it reflect about the way we live? We can also think of crime – individuals shooting masses of people, or blowing them up. We can consider corporations gobbling up smaller enterprises, or countries grabbing resources. We could even look at children bullying other children.

There’s a lot to say about the current state of our culture. Over the next few months, we’re going to explore the mystery of what is going on now, how we got to this point, what we believe about who we are, and who we really are, seeking hints from a great source of synchronicity – the heavens.

A significant celestial drama is unfolding above us just as our human drama is playing out below. We’ll spend time with the cast of characters, parse out their secrets, look at how their heavenly play reflects back to us the challenges, as well as the solutions, to our multitude of problems.

It’s time to create a new myth, one that speaks of triumph over ignorance, salvation of our beautiful home, escape from conflict and war, evolution and transformation of our society into a peaceful, creative, cooperative system in which every part thrives to make a healthy whole.

Next week we will start with our leading celebrity: Pluto, Lord of the Underworld.