everal
years ago I began experiencing interesting dreams and
vision-like experiences from time to time. These encounters
affected me greatly, and I began a personal study into dreams
and similar manifestations in an attempt to find some meaning
to these experiences.
Consequently,
I learned quite a bit, not the least of which is that I am not
alone. More and
more, men and women are experiencing similar dreams and
visionary encounters which demand respect and consideration
from their "waking" consciousness. Since the
beginning they have formed an integral part of our life
experience, providing, perhaps, an alternative method of
providing meaning to our lives.
I
began to understand that dreams seem to be inextricably
interconnected to our cultural mythologies. Neither
dreams nor myth may be reasoned with literally, or understood
by an appeal to the physical senses. They speak to us,
rather, in a visual and emotional language of symbolic
archetypes half remembered.
Extending
back in time before written history, all races and cultures of
man have cultivated intricate bodies myth, not dissimilar from
each other, which are firmly embedded in our collective
consciousness. Nurtured over countless thousands of
years, these mythic formations of our society form the very
foundation of of our identity and beliefs.
The
roots of our history are grounded in our mythology, and
watered by our hopes, dreams and ambitions for the future. We
record our history diligently, and call it the story of
mankind. But it is a story largely shaped and determined
by stories already told, if but vaguely recalled to mind ...
our MythStory.
Is not our future determined by the choices we make in the
present? Each
day dawning is set before us as a banquet feast, wherein we
dine upon choices prepared for us by our yesterdays.
Thereby we consume our past that we may then live our future,
which lay before us as a mirror.
Acting
on the stage of the present moment, we record our deeds as
history, pretending we are not now what we have already been,
all our choices having been molded of our character and
beliefs formed long before our first histories were first
recorded.
What
goes around, comes around, so they say, and all is
vanity. That which has been before will be that which
must be again, and "there is nothing new under the
sun," saith the Preacher (Ecclesiastes). It is not
possible to change our stars.
*
Or is it? Perhaps to change the future, we must change the
past. If is a story book we are trapped in, then it is a
new story we must now tell, a new song we must sing, a new
dream we must foretell. You see,
Nothing
truly happens until somebody tells a story.
Our history does not
determine the stories we tell. It is the stories we tell
which determines our history.
My research
has led me to reconsider the mythological formations of my own
race of the Gaoidhel. I am convinced that through
a synthesis of the dreams and visions we are experiencing today,
and the ancient myths and legend of our fathers, a holistic
paradigm of meaning and existence will emerge.
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