Posted by FERAL EXCRETIONS on October 06, 2002 at 23:24:48:
Categories of the statures of ones will or personal power. One could even call it SOUL.
Actually because of the stature of ones will at birth the subject title should read: Deities, Myths, Warriors, Humans.
As a newborn there is nothing closer to a diety stature. As we grow into adults we fall into lesser stature due to corruption and missinterpretation of reality.
Finally in our death beds we are nothing but Human. But, at the very last attempt for our Ego to try and hang onto life we snap back into a Deity stature of pure awareness, eradicating the Ego into what it was always. Nothing, nothing at all.
The myth is the perennial hope of humans who, in spite of their faults, go on dreaming of the possibility of a life free of contradictions, free of oppression and violence and the maelstrom that make up a good part of life in society.
The myth is to society what dreams are to the individual. Therfore, the myth represents the dream of human beings, which whispers in their ear the promise of beauty and liberty.
From the myth of Christ, a man who through a life of purification and service was transfigured and converted into God, to the myths of Hercules, Quetzalcoatl, Wiracocha, Buddha, and many others, the theme is always the same: that of persons with profound aspirations living in a world of very low level ambitions, of the conflict between the society in which they live and the aspirations of their spirit, of the struggle with the doubts and the tests through which they must pass to finally achieve their dream: to transcend the chaos and miserable aspects of the human condition.
At the same time, myths also serve as a guide for action, a map by which we may arrive at the magical realities they describe. Far from being a form of entertainment, myths serve to promote methods of conduct and concrete action that permit us to leave behind the chaos in which we are accustomed to living.
When we do not prove ourselves equal to our myths and are consequently not capable of acting on them, we convert them into dogma and found a religion. When this happens, the myth loses its role as liberator and becomes, rather, an instrument of oppression. I would say that it ceases to be a myth. A myth is something to be lived, dogma is something to be believed, the first invites action, the second invites submission..
dog-ma = A principle, belief, or idea, one considered to be ABSOLUTE TRUTH.
*; =qq(