Spiritual Growth

Within the realm of the unknown is both the impossible, that which we currently do not have the skill to do, and the potential for positive growth or change. When we approach the chaos of the unknown with care and a plan, the potential within the chaos of the unknown can be turned into a positive learning and growth experience.
Culture, protects us from the unknown. Over protection of culture becomes tyrannical. Suppression of exploration will, over time, lead to a breakdown of the cultural. Now if a Hero, of mythic type, comes and restructures the cultural norms, the pain is lessened because the discovery of the potential, by the Hero, is a deliberate act. And this discovery of the potential growth, while painful, can be incorporated into the culture before it breaks down. This discovery of the potential is deliberate. But if the tyranny becomes too suppressive and the Hero's not allowed to act, painful though their acts sometimes are, then the culture will not grow but eventually shatter. The unknown of chaos will over take the culture and the culture will be violently changed, which is more painful than the Heroic approach. The cultural change will be determined by the chaotic forces and it will become randomly restructured. This often results in war and violence. Myth, religion, and the ritualistic acting out of myth in religious rites, when it becomes an intra-personal process, generates the Heroes that the culture requires. This allows for the culture to evolve over time and embrace necessary change. By doing this at both the individual and social level, embracing change, the culture becomes actually safe both as a cultural protective device and as a place wherein it is safe to dwell.

The Force of Language

Recently I was discussing what mythological archetypes mean in regard to how we behave and believe. Joseph Campbell in the Power of Myth states that there are two main type of myth. these are sociological myth and archetypal myths. Archetypal myths tell stories that are true for all and sociological myths are those which form a bounded group, you and your family my country and clan. He gives the Biblical mythological story of the giving of the laws as an example of the bounded myth the sociological myth. In one chapter it states "Thou shalt not kill" the next chapter says "Go into Canaan and kill every one in it." They the Canaanites are outside the group and thus fair game. In the church where I sing we have a new priest a nice guy. Many people complained that he had changed a lot of things. He gave a sermon on how he had not changed anything. Unfortunately he was wrong. He changed the approach to the language of the mythology in the church. Since he came into the church everything sounds explicit and literal. Unfortunately it is not supposed to be taken that way and that church community had never approached the Spirit in that manner. As a result people knew he had changed things but were unable to explain what. It took me a long time to realize what had been changed and that mostly because I looked in from the outside and had a good view. The tendency of most Christians is to make 'God' a concept. This removes the transcendent and unknowable nature from what can not be known.
This is what was happening within that community and as a result the true spiritual path was changing. Language has real power and force. Unfortunately when trying to speak about the transcendent nature of the Creator we are stuck with a limited imprecise tool called language. And we use this tool to try to explain what we know and feel about something we, in our limited capacity, cannot understand.
It was the intangibility of the change, a change in language and seeming meaning that was making people uncomfortable.