Episode #9: Reconciliation: I Carry All My Stories With Me
Mythic Imaginations: How Stories Shape and Change Our Lives
Release Date: 12/14/2024
Episode #29: A.I. & The "Anima Mundi": Where Soul Is To Be Found In An Artificial World: Part #2
Mythic Imaginations: How Stories Shape and Change Our Lives
With the advent of Artificial Intelligence, or A.I., humanity has now embarked upon a new Promethean fantasy of the soul. It has also opened up a new "Pandora's Box," with which we now have the tools and the power to make ourselves, the human race, obsolete. Amongst the very real existential crises and challenges this new technology potentially brings to our daily living, the quesiton of where soul is to be found is perhaps more prescient and vital than ever. An exploration of the Anima Mundi, or "soul of the world," may have something to teach us about how we can bring soul back, not just to...
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Episode #28: A.I. & The "Anima Mundi": Where Soul Is To Be Found In An Artificial World: Part #1
Mythic Imaginations: How Stories Shape and Change Our Lives
With the advent of Artifical Intelligence, or A.I., humanity has now embarked upon a new Promethean fantasy of the soul. It has also opened up a new "Pandora's Box," with which we now have the tools and the power to make ourselves, the human race, obsolete. Amongst the very real existential crises and challenges this new technology potentially brings to our daily living, the question of where soul is to be found is perhaps more prescient and vital than ever. An exploration of the Anima Mundi, or "soul of the world," may have something to show us about how we can bring soul back, not just to...
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Episode #27: The Psychology of Fundamentalism: A Monotheistic Vision of the Soul
Mythic Imaginations: How Stories Shape and Change Our Lives
Through the lens of James Hillman's theory on archetypal psychology, I explore the phenomenon of "fundamentalism" as a psychological one, primarily. Arguing that this is an aspect of a monotheistic vision of the soul, I explore the implications of its cultural, religious, and political impact on the world, and how this relates to the rise of an authoritarian impulse we are currently witnessing worldwide.
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Episode #26: The Faustian Bargain For Power Over Eros
Mythic Imaginations: How Stories Shape and Change Our Lives
As a species, we humans traditionally do not handle paradoxical tensions well. Whether in the individual human soul or in relationship to each other, our failure to understand the wisdom of certain tensions and learn how to balance them well inevitably leads to war. History bears all the scars of our repeated cycles of war and peace (or breaks from war). We live in a moment of history where unbridled power, cruelty, dehumanization, and a collective insanity are exerting themselves in a way that is overwhelming, violent, deadly, callous, and indifferent. In this episode I explore the aspects of...
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Episode #25: The Tale of the Half-Man
Mythic Imaginations: How Stories Shape and Change Our Lives
Philosophers, theologians, and storytellers alike have been grappling with the phenomenon of the 'Self' since time immemorial, trying to describe what it is and what it is not. We all experience the paradoxical sensations of both separateness and unity. The Tale of the Half-Man is an exploration into what happens when part of a unified whole chooses to separate itself and make itself a distinction. In the case of this story, taken out of a chapter of my book, "The Fire That Never Dies: Dragons of the West," and retold here; it is envisioned within the context of a paradoxical tension between...
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Episode #24: My Religious Deconstruction Story, Pt. 5
Mythic Imaginations: How Stories Shape and Change Our Lives
In this final chapter of my religious deconstruction journey, I talk about how my relationship with the faith and religion of my past looks and feels today, particularly in the context of tumultuous social and political upheaval in the United States. I acknowledge both the gifts I have received from the faith and religious community of my past, as well as a continued and growing anger and frustration in the face of the rising popularity of Christian Nationalism. I also express my raw and candid thoughts about the institutions that have seeded and nurtured the obsession to replace liberal...
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Episode #23: My Religious Deconstruction Story, Pt. 4
Mythic Imaginations: How Stories Shape and Change Our Lives
As my religious deconstruction story continues, I come full circle to the memory of my father, David, where nearly 20 years after his death I find an opportunity for inner reconciliation and peace. With the help of a good friend to walk me through a healing ceremony out in the wild deserts of Southern California, I find forgiveness, healing, redemption, and release. This episode concludes with a song...the only song I have ever written about my father directly. It walks through all the complex emotions I've had in relationship to him over the years. The children's voices at the end of the song...
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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...
info_outlineThe work of inner reconciliation is not the work of getting rid of different parts of ourselves, including our own darknesses. The work, instead, is about accepting and taking responsibility for every part of ourselves, continually learning to bring them into balance with each other.