Creative Writing

Employing a Mythic Imagination

The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer tended to be a rather grim and stoic character. With the benefit of age and having lived quite a self-reflect life, he was able to eventually find a sense of interconnection with the cosmos.

Schopenhauer had this to see about how empowering it can be to see yourself as the hero of your own story:

“When you reach a certain age and look back over your life, it seems to have had an order. It seems to have had been composed by someone. And those events that when they occurred seemed merely accidental and occasional and just something that happened, turn out to be the main elements in a consistent plot. Who composed this plot?

 

Just as your dreams are composed by an aspect of yourself, of which your consciousness is unaware, so your whole life has been composed by the will within you. Just as those people whom you met by chance became effective agents in the structuring of your life, so you have been an agent in the structuring of other lives, and the whole thing gears together like one big symphony, everything influencing and structuring everything else.”

Narrative Therapy was born as a personal development tool to help people identify themselves as being distinct from their problems in order to employ their own strengths to move toward change.

The Writes of Passage Journey is designed to help you take the reins of your life through recognising the life passage crossroads and applying a mythic understanding to them.

Albert Einstein was asked for advice on how to make kids smarter. He responded by saying “Read them fairytales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairytales.”

The childhood tendency to entertain possibilities, be open to learning and experience the richness of imagination are qualities that often become lost in adult-erated life.

By drawing on an archetypal model to write our life stories we can view our journey as we would any other great narrative with settings, themes, characters and plots – just like in any movie, book, historical account or legendary fable.

Although most of us don’t formally explore the concept of archetypes, the novels, television and films we soak in all centre around archetypal patterns, which speak to us at a deep level.

Gaining an understanding of the archetypes and what they have to teach us about the stages of life development, unearths rich material to write about our own journey.

Author Caroline Myss captured the value of understanding archetypes when she said:

Archetypal patterns are about what makes us who we are and what drives us. They hold the key to our inner mysteries, power symbols, dreams as well as our cravings, fashion sense, and spending patterns. Everything about us is connected to one or more of our archetypal patterns.

Through this writing course, you will explore archetypal pairings that reflect a time period of your life.

For example, the strongest archetypes during the period of youth involve the Innocent archetype (childhood and predominately the light aspect) and the Orphan archetype (adolescence and predominately the shadow aspect).

Gaining an understanding of the archetype and its role can help clarify and colour the stories you write about this period of your life.

Seeing aspects of your life story in this new light helps with reframing - a narrative therapy technique designed to help facilitate a shift in your thinking and how you embrace the future.

After a writing session, I work with you to polish and edit your pieces while helping to draw out the larger narrative your life reveals.

Read a blog article about chronicling the year you're living