Episode #7: The Wizard of Oz: An Exploration In Mythological Interpretation
Mythic Imaginations: How Stories Shape and Change Our Lives
Release Date: 12/02/2024
My Religious Deconstruction Story: Part 3
Mythic Imaginations: How Stories Shape and Change Our Lives
In this episode I recount the years where I was getting ready to graduate from college but having little to no direction as to where to go in life and what to do next. A serendipitous chain of events in my senior year of college opened the door to an unexpected pathway which led me to go to graduate school where I studied to become a therapist. This proved to be a frutiful time of personal, spiritual, and educational enlightenment and renaissance for me, and I still recount those years as some of the most fulfilling and illuminating of my life to date. In this period, new questions were...
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My Religious Deconstruction Story: Part 2
Mythic Imaginations: How Stories Shape and Change Our Lives
In this episode my story resumes around my early college years and the particular struggles I was having and developing around that time. Having covertly lost my faith in the church of my upbringing and my larger faith in God beginning to erode rapidly, I set out to look for answers and the truth beyond the familiar confines of my religious community; outside the borders of its theological tenets, assumptions, and presumptions. Giving myself the gift of this freedom did come with a cost. I had left my community and its various safety nets behind. This episode concludes with a prophetic dream I...
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My Religious Deconstruction Story: Part 1
Mythic Imaginations: How Stories Shape and Change Our Lives
Religious deconstruction is a path of transition, like so many other transitions that all of us go through in life. It has the components of loss, crisis, confusion, grief, and anger. It also includes catharsis, wisdom, joy, anticipation, and the opportunity for new life to arise out of the ashes of an old one. My deconstruction journey begins for me at the age of 10, when our family learned that my father was diagnosed with cancer and ends in the middle of my high school years, particularly at the age of 16, when my father lost his battle with cancer, and everything that occurred in the...
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Episode #19: Laura Lewis-Barr: Inner Work Through Short Films, Pt. 2
Mythic Imaginations: How Stories Shape and Change Our Lives
Laura Lewis-Barr is an award-winning screenwriter, stop-motion filmmaker, and educator. Laura writes comedy features. As a filmmaker Laura's focus is on animating fairy tales and mythic stories that explore personal and collective transformation. She is inspired by the work of Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, Jack Zipes, and Marie-Louise von Franz. Laura creates her short films in the basement of her house in Chicago, IL, where she resides.
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Episode #18: Laura Lewis-Barr: Inner Work With Short Films, Pt. 1
Mythic Imaginations: How Stories Shape and Change Our Lives
Laura Lewis-Barr is an award-winning screenwriter, stop-motion filmmaker, and educator. Laura writes comedy features. As a filmmaker Laura's focus is on animating fairy tales and mythic stories that explore personal and collective transformation. She is inspired by the work of Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, Jack Zipes, and Marie-Louise von Franz. Laura creates her short films in the basement of her house in Chicago, IL where she resides.
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Episode #17: Apokalypsis: A Time of Turmoil & Revelation
Mythic Imaginations: How Stories Shape and Change Our Lives
The term Apokalypsis is a Greek word that denotes a "revelation" or an "unveiling." It is the term from which we derive the modern word apocalypse. Unlike modern, fundamentalist religious movements that interpret this idea to mean the literal end of the world, the original term denotes something different, if no less harrowing. The moment of revelation, in both Biblical and mythical literature always heralds a change to come, and typically no small change, but rather something very big and profound which will impact an entire people, nation, or in our case today, yes, the entire world. It...
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Mythic Imaginations: Same Podcast, New Title!
Mythic Imaginations: How Stories Shape and Change Our Lives
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Episode #15: Stories With Bear, Part 2: Learning To Be "Hollow-Boned"
Mythic Imaginations: How Stories Shape and Change Our Lives
In this episode, Bear shares some of his experiences interacting with the Aboriginal communities he met with during his time Australia. Bear also introduces us to the concept of being “hollow-boned,” as he recalls his work in facilitating sweat lodges, which is a stance that a person must take in order to “hold space” for others. We also explore the power of intention and balance as mechanisms for both growth and healing in our lives, as Bear talks about using past traumas as more of a “springboard rather than an anchor,” as he puts it. We end our time talking about the importance...
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Episode #14: How To Walk Through Hell
Mythic Imaginations: How Stories Shape and Change Our Lives
The human race is in the middle of treacherous, tumultuous, and dangerous times. We are in the middle of what the Greeks called "Apokalypsis," which means a moment of "revelation," or a "lifting of the veil." Such moments in human history are accompanied by fear, confusion, and chaos. In this episode I talk about the psychological realities of hell, and how we can learn, collectively, to walk through such difficult times together.
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Episode #13: The Divine Feminine & Divine Masculine, Pt. 3: A Conversation With Dr. Amy Ferrell
Mythic Imaginations: How Stories Shape and Change Our Lives
In this third and final installment of my conversation with Dr. Amy Ferrell, we explore together how the human Shadow provides us with a potential path into the deeper wisdom of ourselves, as well as exhibiting a warning to us, should choose to ignore it. We explore how our current culture and society have been neglecting to deal with its own collective shadows and our observations of the results of this choice.
info_outlineThere are many different ways to engage and interact with stories. In this episode I provide but one example of the interpretation of a story where each character and component of the story itself is understood as being an aspect of the protagonist's personality, in this case, Dorothy from Kansas. From this perspective, the land of Oz is a metaphor for Dorothy's unconscious self, and all the characters in the story, from the cowardly lion to the wicked witch, are all different aspect of Dorothy's own personality.