Inner Mythology

8/26/2022

What does it mean to truly know ourselves?

There are different frameworks to view our inner world such as Internal Family Systems, Jung's Archetypes, and numerous categorization systems such as MBTI, astrology, and human design to name a few.

One of the concepts that recently caught my attention is the idea of building our inner mythology. It is an idea that I read about in Facing The Dragon: Confronting Our Personal and Spiritual Grandiosity. It is a book that has influenced my worldview recently and is now a cornerstone book, I will create a book review and series of articles for the ideas in the book.

Mythology serves as a container for the energies in our lives that want to be expressed.

Muses contain the creative energies that inspire us to create art.

Mythical kings and queens represent the regal energy and union of the masculine and feminine energies.

In the modern world, we've lost our connection to the mythic world. One of the core features of myth is being blessed by god-energy. An act of generosity from forces greater than ourselves that fills up our health bars, our creative reservoirs, and our connection to the divine.

The containers for these types of energies are lost to us because the rituals that sustain them are lost to us.

Inner mythology is storytelling. It's the storytelling of the world's within us that are created through active imagination. It gives us power because we can bring our voice to the unconscious that wants to be expressed. What is the conversation of our inner king and queen? What are the inner relationships we are developing with our muses for our creative work?

As we develop these inner relationships, we may find that our lives improve as we give voice to our hidden needs.

Some of the inner work I'm doing is around my inner child. In the same way I have a representation of my own inner child, I have representations of my inner mother and father. Redefining my relationship with these representations frees up emotional energy. A recent discovery I had was that I would always rush around and jump into new projects and overload myself with emotional stimulation. This behavior was a result of my upbringing, my parents rushed around and as a result my nervous system was constantly overloaded. My inner representations of my inner parents recreated the situations of my childhood as an adult. As I communicated with my inner child, I realized all he wanted was to rest instead of trying to do everything. Giving my inner child a break more often and showing compassion to him meant that I could finally calm my nervous system down.

Redefining my relationship with my inner child means following through with active changes in my physical life. It means reducing stimulation of my senses, taking a nap when I need to. It means realizing when I'm overloading myself with extra work and taking things off of my calendar. It means taking deep breathes and attending to my basic needs. It means acting without rushing, taking the time I need to figure things out and decide whether something is worth doing and is in line with my values.

I jumped into so many projects without evaluating their purpose first and building things without understanding why.

The inner child is one example of the relationship that can be developed. Just as our outer world is a network of relationships, our inner world is a network of relationships.

An exercise I came across in a few coaching programs and self-help books was the idea of the Inner Boardroom of Advisors. It's about creating a group of advisors of people you admire, fictional, non-fictional, alive, or passed away, to advise you on decisions you are making in your life.

Building out your inner mythology goes further by using your active imagination and developing stories that you can share with others. We learn more about ourselves by creating dialogues and stories and they can be the foundation for our relationships with others to share important lessons by connecting them to our personal experiences that are going on in our lives.

Creating a world of storytelling is how we start to transmit the ideas that will help us heal and develop collective wellbeing. In the same way myths served as tools for the ancients to share important lessons, we can start to create our own myths to connect with each other at a deeper level.

We can also revisit comparative mythology to find the myths that resonate with us and incorporate them back into our inner mythology. We can call them into our lives and develop a communicative relationship with them to ask for help or advice or support in our daily lives.

One of the areas in my life that I'm working on is the ability to ask for help when I need it. I've spent so much time as a lone wolf, believing I could do everything myself. But ultimately I'm just human and I can't do everything myself. The practice of asking for help from my inner relationships is a way for me to also realize the value of the outer relationships I've developed and the trust equity I've built up among my friends and network.

Instead of just paying for access to coaches, shamans and therapists, how can I start to ask for help?

Relationships are not transactional and an exchange of money. Relationships are developed over time through active communication. We learn from each other. We exchange skills and gifts.

In order to know ourselves, we must see ourselves through the eyes of our inner and outer relationships. Developing our inner mythology is one of the most powerful ways to create stories that empower us to accomplish our goals. With the support of forces greater than ourselves as well as the support of other humans in the physical world, we can have the courage to move forward when challenges come up in our lives.