I believe in three main ideas:

1. The Information Age has allowed us to do more. It’s up to us to balance and optimize our expanded lives.
2. We were given natural equipment – our body, our mind, our emotions, and our spirit – and yet society is sorely lacking a manual for how to use these gifts. I call my framework the Mythic Manual.
3. Our lives when cast into myth, or a story, take on an impersonal tone from which we can conquer the difficulties of life and create lives of mythic proportions.

The Information Age

A major insight behind the Mythic Man, is the fact that we live in an unprecedented time in human history. Thanks to the internet, we have access to the largest amount of information ever before available. As pattern-recognizing and meaning-making beings, we are given the opportunity to use this information to enhance our lives.

What is particularly important in my mind is the collection of world philosophy and sacred texts available at our fingertips. Typically in human history, the average individual has been deprived of the books from history’s greatest philosophers – those who devoted their lives to the pursuit of truth. With their labors only now readily available, we are poised to prosper.

The greatest minds that have ever walked the earth left trails behind them ready for the truth seeker to tread.  This availability provides us with the incredible opportunity to explore the depths of human understanding, compile the wisdom, and integrate it into our very own lives.

It has been noted by many physicists that profound insights of modern scientists echo the words of ancient mystics. Long ago, science grew out of “natural philosophy”, then morphed into the reductionist science of the Enlightenment Age. It seems with the advent of quantum physics, science is again bumping into more philosophic questions about life and the universe.

The book refers to the process that the newly acquired computational power of humanity has allowed us to use data in order to view macro trends. Thus, we have far more insight into humanity as a whole than the ancients ever had.

The conjunction of ancient literature and the Information Age can help us gain key insights into our health, wealth, relationships, careers, creative pursuits, spirituality, and our contribution to the world.

The Mythic Manual

We were each given the most complicated set of equipment in the known universe – our own bodies, minds and souls – and yet we are left with no instruction manual. I believe we can change that.

I believe that the complexity of life can be simplified using a framework. The technology of today has allowed complexity to be grasped and patterns to finally come to light. These patterns assist in effective decision-making.

The individual human experience has all of a sudden become exponentially involved in the collective human experience. 

Never before can a single average person have access to his or her own genetic makeup, ancestral movements, control of personal banking, global communication, infinite personal documentation, and infinite education opportunities.

We can reach broad as much as we can reach deep.

The ultimate goal is to live in harmony with the laws of the universe. This might be surprising to see so concisely the goal of life, but if you think about it, what more could you want out of life?

There are rules of conduct written into the fabric of life. There are the basics such as food, water, sleep, and hygiene to more complicated like love and purpose.

The Greeks believed in natural laws such as Justice that a manmade government could never legislate. Geometry, for example, constitutes natural law.

The more we know ourselves, the better we can listen to our intuition and what is being called for at the appropriate time. A famous piece of scripture highlights this point:

¹   ” There is a time for everything,
    and a season for every activity under the heavens:
²     a time to be born and a time to die,
    a time to plant and a time to uproot,
³     a time to kill and a time to heal,
    a time to tear down and a time to build,
⁴     a time to weep and a time to laugh,
    a time to mourn and a time to dance,
⁵     a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
    a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
⁶     a time to search and a time to give up,
    a time to keep and a time to throw away,
⁷     a time to tear and a time to mend,
    a time to be silent and a time to speak,
⁸     a time to love and a time to hate,
    a time for war and a time for peace. ” ~Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

Although intuition is a large part of decision-making, information is its integral counterpart. The more information we have (through the use of modern technology), the more our intuition has to feel into in order to guide us. Likewise, our intuition can be used to feel into our core values, what is important to us, then we can use technology to enhance and protect those values.

This juncture in human history is pivotal. With sincere apprehension and hope, I endeavor to live my life to the best Transhumanist way, in the original sense of the term:

“Liberty: that is to say, the chance offered to every man (by removing obstacles and placing the appropriate means at his disposal) of ‘trans-humanizing’ himself by developing his potentialities to the fullest extent.'”~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, in the Future of Mankind 1949

 

Why the word “Mythic“?

The word Mythic, as used in this context, is in stark contrast to the perhaps more commonly viewed definition of “myth” as being a falsehood, fiction, or fairytale. Nothing is further from the truth.

Whereas science fiction and fairytale writers make their profession from intentionally melding and blending the lines of reality and fantasy, the ancient writers of myth first searched for the wisdom of man in the universe and then sought to teach their profound truths through allegory and symbols.

The resulting myth stories, on the superficial level, resemble those of merely made up fantasy stories. However, the intentionality and most sincere benevolence behind the myth stories imbue the symbols with a power that speaks directly to the soul of man.

In a similar manner as Joseph Campbell whose career is characterized by comparing the world mythologies into a “Monomyth”, I seek to compile the world’s philosophic traditions into a practical sort of globally unified framework of modern times that can be found useful for anyone willing to seek the truth of themselves.

Of course, many have pursued this same vision, and in the air of cooperation, I will look to their integrated systems for inspiration as well.

Therefore, in a vision that includes every man and woman living today as the hero of their own myth – as the sole proprietor of their own spiritual impulse – I propose that now is the time for educated spiritual growth free from doctrine and dogma separating us from our common birthright.

I furthermore wish that the term Mythic Man immediately reminds you that you face all the challenges of the myth stories, possess all the power to overcome obstacles and that you have the awe-inspiring privilege of being a cooperative agent in the very fabric of reality.

Each and every one of us has the supreme opportunity to be part of existence, to be creators on planet Earth, and live life with equal magnificence and dignity of the greatest spiritual masters and of the honorable heroes of the world’s myths.

In this blog, I will explore various philosophical traditions and endeavor to extract relevant truths for the sake of identifying a common thread amongst them. I will endeavor to provide insights by unraveling this common thread and to provide a practical nugget of truth for your own life.

I wish you will find this blog intellectually stimulating and nurturing. At a minimum, if all these conversations amount to one person taking the next step on their own journey of inner awareness, then I have done my job.

This blog hopes to indicate a path of action for the reader; though illumination itself must always be a silent individual pursuit.

 Let’s begin