Did you know you were the Mything Link?

Well, you are.

You are the living connection between the great stories of all times and places and the playing out of these stories in everyday life. Beneath the soil of your everyday world lies the vast root system of the Once Was and the Could Be.

You will feel this if you have ever gone in quest of something–a new job, a place where you feel at home, a lost love, a new way of being. In every quest you have wandered with Percival in search of the Grail, followed the yellow brick road with Dorothy trying to get back to Kansas, labored with Psyche to be reunited with Eros, meditated with Buddha under the Bodhi tree determined to reach enlightenment.

Storytelling is the oldest form of teaching and the basic vehicle for the transmission of culture from one generation to the next. Cast yourself back five thousand years or more to your own ancestors, gathered around a flickering fire, huddled against the cold. Your great-grandmother many times back begins a story of being lost in a dark forest. Your great-uncle many times back picks it up and tells of strange beasts seen, walking spirits encountered, magic talismans discovered. Your great niece, many times back, shudders in fear and delight, draws closer and asks, “What happened next?”

This scene has been repeated many times down through the generations of your family, until today you gather around the flickering screen of the TV or movie theater, thrilling to a tale of long, long ago in a galaxy far away, where in the dark reaches of outer space heroes encounter allies glorious in their wisdom and with them battle the forces of darkness.

Story is the juice through which consciousness and culture moves.

If Jesus had taught in long, dry lectures instead of parables, do you think anyone would have listened? If the great epics of the Mahabarata and the Ramayana were not marinated in the soul of India, would the culture be as fertile in spiritual riches?

If a visitor from another planet came down and asked the human race, “What exactly are you?” we would have to reply, “We are story tellers.” Stories are the currency of human growth. As they are told and retold, heard and reheard, they reveal their deeper meaning.

Tags: Buddha, Dorothy, Dr. Jean Houston, Eros, Jean Houston, Jesus, Mahabharata, Mything Link, Psyche, Ramayana, storytelling

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