“You have to live your own gospel and create your own myths”
Miguel Conner
Throughout time, it is collective narratives that have structured the psyches of societies: myths during pagan times offered narrative structures on which beings could identify and organize life in society, give meaning to their lives and to society. ‘universe. Then with religions, it was sacred texts like the gospels, which brought meaning and content to the collective consciousness.
The values and socio-cultural references depend on the eras and come from its founding texts/myths. But during periods of transition, when these foundations lose their meaning and their structuring forces, many difficulties appear. They disintegrate during the end of cycles of each major historical period.
Two general trends appear:
– on the one hand, beliefs and traditions tend to crystallize and then block human vitality. The narratives in this case become dogmas and fanaticism, and seek to impose themselves by force and threat in their most rigorous forms.
– on the other hand, they become empty and dry forms, then divorce from their traditional aspects to become parodies of their lost splendors: they lose their evocative power by becoming distorted by caricatures, imitations in accordance with fashions and the fantasies of the moment, with the transgressions and imaginations of various artists and creators.
This is the dilemma of our time, caught between authoritarianism and progressivism. This double impasse cuts us off from the depth and meaning of these collective narratives. It dries up our vitality and needs for direction and meaning. Faced with the anguish of uprooting and the upheaval of society, people suffer and out of spite or despair adhere to authoritarianism or progressivism.
But everyone misses the true relationship to these lost collective narratives. They cling to authority, institutions or distorted works as a lifeline, as a source of security. Because most people are unable to tolerate so much change and uncertainty simultaneously. Beyond dogma and distortion, the disintegration of collective narratives signals an inevitable end of the cycle and a need to create new narratives adapted to new consciousnesses: without being dogmatic or parodic (each of which supposes an attachment to the past) it is it is up to each of us to create our own individual narrative, to write our own gospel and to live our own myth.
The collective scale being exceeded and condemned by the law of cycles, it is at the individual level that the New can be created. Freed from the weight of past narratives, it is up to each person to become sovereign of their own narratives and their references which structure and bring meaning to the world. These individual approaches will become the foundations of future human cycles.
The task is difficult, but we must accept this period of transition as it truly is in its cosmic and spiritual dimensions. We must draw our inspiration from these new narratives through our inner center, through a greater understanding of ourselves and through a courageous confrontation of our historical situation.