Mind That Ego

Myths are the underlying universal truths playing out in all of our lives, all the time. They are an encounter with the deepest dimensions of the soul, and as the hero, Odysseus represents the development of human consciousness. Much has changed since Homer's original poem, over 2,500 years ago, and at the same time, not much has changed. In The Hero's Journey, Joseph Campbell urged:

“You’ve got to live on myths of the olden days! The elementary ideas are constant, they remain, they remain, they remain. The problem is the inflection. How are the myths represented? The function of the artist is to present these eternal mysteries in terms of a contemporary context of life.”

If The Odyssey is a prophecy, decrypting what the myth is trying to communicate to us, and through us, is a sacred task. To interpret in this way, we have to subvert the conventional way of knowing. This isn’t an intellectual exploration. Like transformative private dreams, mythological potency is all about feeling, intuition, and sensitivity to imagination. My latest essay is an attempt at this sacred task.

In Re-Imagining 'The Odyssey,' Nolan Has Birthed a Prophetic Myth If Nolan's interpretation is a prophetic myth, deconstructing its themes is a sacred task. This is my attempt at this sacred task.

✍🏼🔥 New essay available now on MindThatEgo: In Re-Imagining ‘The Odyssey,’ Nolan Has Birthed a Prophetic Myth. It’s full of spoilers, naturally, so avoid reading before watching the movie, to retain the freshness first viewing. Then, read it!

After watching it a few weeks ago, I was so inspired, I got home and sat writing for hours, over 3,000 words poured out - then I realised Nolan’s creative changes, and it completely change the direction of my thought, or more accurately, how to put thought to what I felt whilst watching.

If Odysseus is our hero, representing human consciousness, Nolan’s re-imagining has given insight into the next epoch, the next stage of consciousness evolution. Decrypting the film’s myth, then, becomes a sacred task. This is my attempt at this sacred task.

Nisha Gupta PhD joins me for the latest episode of the MindThatEgo Podcast. Nisha is a tenured psychology professor at the University of West Georgia, a trauma-informed relationship psychotherapist, phenomenological researcher, and artist. I discovered Nisha through her recent paper: Can Psychology Be An Art? A Journey from the
Human Sciences to the Psychological Humanities.

Nisha explores what a more beautiful psychology might offer a wounded world. We discuss psychology’s origin as “the study of the soul”, beauty’s life-saving role in su***de prevention and offering hope amidst violence and injustice, and redemption amidst guilt and remorse.

We look at artificial intelligence as a reckoning for humanity, reverence, grief, and rage as portals to God’s love, art’s role in transmuting both the sacred and the shadow, and why the anima, aesthetic sensibility, and divine feminine should sit on the throne of psychology’s future. Episode available now on YouTube, Spotify, and all popular platforms.

Final preparation for this week’s MindThatEgo Podcast dialogue with Stephan Bodian. I highly recommend his new book, Infinite Awakening. It’s a well-rounded, rich, depthful, nuanced overview of awakening and psychospiritual development. Addressing lots of misconceptions with an abundance of compassion. Episode will be released mid-August 🙏🏼🧘🏻‍♂️

This moved through me a few weeks ago. In many respects, it’s a prayer. I was unsure when to post it.

After hearing the news of last night’s attack on Berlin, a place that will always hold space in my heart, home for many people I hold dearly, during Pride, a movement towards embracing love, and acceptance, the time felt right, though I share through fear, of both the timing, and the sentiment being misunderstood.

Never refuse to love. Never forget the power of love. Never let anything other than love win.

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God is love. If I ever forget that, I will feel disconnected, I will be looking for God outside of love, in addition to love, after I’ve “found” love, when I feel loving or lovable. Any of the infinite conditions or qualifiers or reasons or excuses. God is love without an object, where beloved and lover become one — God is union, God is bliss, beyond mere mortality. Why, then, is the veil of doubt and ignorance so strong in moments, so convincing?

Have you ever felt like you struggle to breathe? Then stopped, completely, to even think about, measure, reflect upon, breathing? Yet here you are, so you were always breathing. Have you ever worried about your heart’s beating? Notice palpitations, questions its strength to carry you? Then stopped thinking about your heart beating, and gone about life, spells of relaxing, spells of intense activity, sleep and dreaming? Yet here you are, this whole time, your heart’s been beating.

It’s a trick of the mind, like forgotten memories that resurface, or qualities you possess that, in times of struggle, you disown. The truest testament to this, is that when the veil lifts, and the light of love floods in, you don’t say — what is this?! — you say, aha!, I remember, this is it, where I’ve always been, where I’ve always wanted to be! And that light of love saturates forgotten moments, they all come to life, every breath, every heartbeat, smiling at you, lovingly, for the innocent mistake of forgetting.

Doubt is not diminishment, it is not failure, it doesn’t mean love isn’t there, that I am not there. The process of life incarnate is one of veiling, veiling, and revealing, hide and seek, where nothing is truly hidden, and nothing is truly sought. Yet the cycle begins, creating a simulacra of love, and the belief that it can be lost, can be unfair, or unjust, or not work ‘out there’.

Look for reasons or excuses — you will find them in abundance. The world stage will reflect your unworthiness, your myriad of whys and why nots — the state of the world, the state of it! Climate change, genocide, transhumanism, AI, hate, bigotry, dominance, violence. These are NOT reasons to doubt love! These are the manifestations of doubting and forgetting! Love isn’t an innocent, naive, denying response! It is the solution! For when people are ‘in love’, they will model and express love, the world will reflect love to them, and loving solutions will be found — love breeds more love in expression!

The worst response to manifestations of doubt, expressions of evil, is to begin doubting yourself. Doubt is a contagion, it moves through those who have forgotten, they seek to find their doubt met, and affirmed, for its the only way they can sustain their immoral deeds, for if the light of love came flooding in, the remorse would be too much to bare — that’s the trap they’re in, do you see? That’s why they must be loved. Not to condone, or justify, but so their own doubt can dissolve, and the unbearable remorse can be held by the only ‘thing’ that can hold it — love.

The doubt within you may doubt that ‘they’ deserve love - but again, we return to the same cycle, because love is not ours to choose who is worthy of it, so that doubt, that denial, keeps the cycle moving, because those in doubt are then met with doubt, which affirms their doubting.

Please note, unconditional love doesn’t negate relational and relative consequence — justice and love co-exist, reptentence and love co-exist, anger and rage and despair and love co-exist. Yet love is always there.