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One of the things that can happen to us at this troubled time on earth is that the spirit of our lives can become diminished or overwhelmed by the weight of the huge challenges and dangers that we all face. The great ache in the modern world, like the deeper sufferings within each soul, cannot be cured by a new drug or another technological invention. In the dark times, what is missing and increasingly needed is the medicine made from mythic imagination and the primordial spirit of life.

The old wisdom found in myths says that what is broken or wounded in this world can only be healed by the “otherworld,” the realm of great imagination and the dream of life. We could also say that the truth that has gone missing in this world must be found again in the deep realm of imagination where big dreams and genuine visions come from.

The lack of imagination causes increased psychological suffering and alienation as people fall out of stories and out of the dreams of their own lives. Myths can offer an inoculation against the despair and nihilism that grows where the threads of meaning have been lost. Imagination is the deepest power of the human soul and the missing ingredient most needed to turn things around and change the course of life on earth.

Without mythic imagination and a sense of the importance of our own souls, we become unable to envision ourselves surviving the troubles we face and incapable of imagining how we each can contribute to the healing of the earth. Mythic imagination can renew our sense of meaning and our sense of purpose precisely when the world seems increasingly hopeless.

Dreams and myths present us with the facts of the psyche, with the eternal images, ideas and patterns that keep recurring throughout our lives. Dreams and myths open us to immediate feelings for the great wonders of spirit, as well as for the limitless territories of the heart and the soul. This deep sense of connecting to the spirit of life makes the most sense when nothing else makes any sense.

Something of the otherworld is trying to reach us, trying to awaken us, trying to bring us into a greater vision and understanding of our own lives. We are the current inheritors of the deep human longings for truth and beauty and for the life sustaining capacity to transform. Each time we allow ourselves to be touched by the beauty of the world or be stirred by the fleeting spirit of life or be moved by something or someone that we love, we become the spiritual seeker at the edge of awakening and a keeper of the dream of life. 

If we allow ourselves to be captured by the living imagination and the dream of our life, we take another step on the path of our own soul. And each time we take another step in the search for meaning and beauty, we are living in truth. When a person regardless of age, orientation, education or background acts from the depths of their own soul, they draw upon the energy of the otherworld, they add imagination and meaning, presence and beauty to the common world.

Something that is both primordial and enduring is trying to catch up to us, trying to inspire us and rejuvenate us so that we can become conscious keepers of the dream of our own souls and contributors to the healing of life on earth. In the dark times, when it's easy to become discouraged or lose our sense of self, we have to find our connections to the otherworld of great imagination and the underlying spirit of life itself.

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