The Psychology of Mythology

Psychology is ultimately

mythology, the study of

the stories of the soul. 

 ~James Hillman~   

Written by Mathew Naismith

Mythology is about how we react and think within a world or environment, of course how we react and think in relation to an environment, comes down to our own psychology. Our own psychology simply determines the way we think, this is anything from science to religion or materialism to spirituality, etc. Of course one’s own psychology can be influenced by a number of different variables such as the different variables of science to religion for example. Often we judge a variable as mythology through one or two other variables such as science and materialistic ideologies. To me, it is a huge mistake to judge one variable by another variable, especially if we psychologically see another variable as an opposing variable. I cannot see any sustainable viable logical reasoning in this kind of bias by the psyche.

The psychology of mythology is all to do with good against evil, the difference to night and day, male and female interactions, how the weather determines our mood, moral and immoral behaviour, life and death etc. Mythology is to do with all of what life is and how we interact within this environment. Anyone who has conducted any kind of research on mythology impartially, realises that mythology isn’t simply about story telling as the following will clearly show.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/cui-bono/201704/what-mythology-reveals-about-the-mind

Extract: Many years after the course was over, I would learn why. Apparently, narratives (stories) represent a particular way of constructing knowledge that comes naturally to us.

One writer has even gone so far as saying "Remembering is narrative; narrative is memory."

Research indicates that remembering a bunch of new, unrelated elements is difficult. But if the elements are part of a structured story, they are more easily remembered. That’s just the way the mind works. Research also indicates that memory is not a literal replaying of experienced events, like replaying a recorded video. Rather, it is a reconstruction of significant elements in a way that makes sense to us. We remember the past by making up stories in which the events relate to each other in a meaningful way.

My conception of science has changed over the years, partly because of my experience in my mythology course. I used to think that science was a way of establishing with certainty facts about the world, what is absolutely true beyond any doubt. As I read more about science and began to do science myself, I came to realize that in science we often attempt to model reality rather than establish indubitable facts. Scientific knowledge claims are always tentative and subject to revision. We strive for better models of reality, not just by looking for more facts, but by improving our insight and vision. A good scientific model is not one that attempts to capture every factual detail about reality, but is able to identify key variables that allow some accuracy in making predictions about the world. Just like a good myth provides enough insight about the world to help us navigate life's journey.

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Being variable in thought is to do with diversity or difference. What if we only looked at our environments scientifically or religiously, viewing our world through one or two variables only? Our whole reality is built upon one bias or another which is anything but of self-honesty. Of course there are ideologies that do incorporate various variables, even supposed opposing variables such as science and religion. In a reality conditioned to self-deception and self-dishonesty, any variable, such as isms and ideologies, too variable in thought are not going to be very popular. How popular are people like me today!!

How many of us looked and look upon mythology as something irrelevant in the modern age or have disdain for mythology period due to our own biases and self-dishonesties? This is while totally ignoring the obvious psychological importance of mythology. Is human consciousness evolving by not being diverse and different in thought? It is obvious, to consciously evolve we must be diverse in our thinking but many of us are doing quite the opposite at present. Of course psychology is only one variable that observes mythology as being worthy of consideration.

If you are interested in researching this further, the following should assist in this. Remember, like any variable, they all only answer one part of an answer as no variable on it's own has the answers to everything, only one part of the answer.                         

https://ejop.psychopen.eu/article/view/351/255

https://theartofenchantment.net/2016/09/08/the-psychology-of-mythology-or-why-the-otherworld-is-just-as-real-as-this-one/

Helping the Empathic

Written by Mathew Naismith

If you only relate being empathic to the spiritual or spiritually aware, bare with me as this is not the case. Psychology recognises the existence of being empathic for a very good reason but before we go into this, I think we need to define what being empathic is.  

Empathic; showing an ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

It is important not confuse being empathic to being of empathy. "Empathy is the ability to comprehend or imagine what another might be feeling. Whereas, the Empath can literally feel what another person feeling." It is also wise not to only relate being empathic to being spiritual, in actuality being empathic has nothing to do with being spiritual or spiritually aware, you are either sensitive to other people's vibrations or your not. This is like my wife can't hear a mosquito in the room but I can, my ears are obviously more sensitive to the vibrations of the mosquito flying than my wife. At other times my wife can hear/feel vibrations I can't.

Look at it this way, how many people are more sensitive to what is going on in the world to other people, other people who are far less emotionally involved to what is occurring in the world. Yes, I am relating being empathic to our emotions therefore vibrations for everything that is of energy vibrates. A less emotional person is not going to feel what is going on in the world to the same degree as an empath. Yes, certain atheists, materialists and scientists, are more objective, a state of mind not influenced by emotions, than spiritually aware people. This does not mean that spirituality brings on feelings of an empath but it can certainly help. Spirituality simply works by teaching or conditioning a person's consciousness to be more subjective, a state of mind influenced by emotions.

Sadly, a lot of objectively minded people only see being empathic as a bias, a mind influenced by our emotions giving us bias evaluations of ourselves and our environment as a whole. You could put this another way, giving subjectively minded people a distorted sense of reality. Yes, this is what objective people think, which is also of a distorted reality based purely on objective thinking, one way of thinking and being. This is while none of us are truly unemotional or unbiased by the way we think, either it be objectively or subjectively of mind. Yes, objective minded people think they are not biased by the way they think, even when they primarily think objectively!!          

               

Everything is of energy therefore everything vibrates, so if my wife doesn't hear or feels the mosquito's vibrations in the room, the mosquito doesn't exist? The same is with ghosts, they don't exist because we are unable pick up on a ghosts vibrations. Yes, some people are more sensitive to certain vibrations than others, just because certain other people are insensitive to these vibrations, doesn't make them unreal. The question is now, is an objective mind, conditioned to certain vibrations only, less sensitive to other vibrations outside of objective thinking? To a person like me who subjectively and objectively thinks, the answer is too obvious.    

Now, how do we help a subjective mind cope better with being empathic? I should point out our objective part of our mind copes a lot better with being empathic. 

As the following will show, there is a psychological way of dealing with being empathic, however, if you prefer to do it another way, my suggestion is through a sense of unconditional love. This does not mean you have to force yourself to love everyone and every situation you find yourself in, this is highly impractical in a reality such as the present reality. All you have to do is have a sense of unconditional love, in other words a general conscious awareness of the existence of unconditional love. Of course if your mind is conditioned to being primarily objective, even a sense of unconditional love doesn't exist, very much like the mosquito in the room.

In a state of unconditional love, it is impossible to feel negative or toxic vibrations, for the love of being unconditional in your thoughts dispels, negates or neutralises the affects of negative/toxic vibrations. Think of it like neutralising the mosquito in the room, dispelling any vibration that is not in tune with your own vibrations. Yes, often I have heard negative /toxic vibrations being expressed while at the same time being expressive of the existence of a sense of unconditional love, which of course is impossible. Make no mistake, being aware of a sense of unconditional love doesn't dispel negative vibration but it does take the toxicity or the ill affects away from negative vibrations. The negative vibrations simply become nullified or neutralised, for one has no sense of conditions. Basically, a sense of unconditional love releases our mind from the numerous conditions we put upon ourselves and the rest of our environment.

I have simply lost count in how many conditions there are on being spiritually aware these days!!               

https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/emotional-freedom/201602/10-traits-empathic-people-share

Extract: The trademark of an empath is feeling and absorbing other people’s emotions and/or physical symptoms because of their high sensitivities. These people filter the world through their intuition and have a difficult time intellectualizing their feelings.

http://emirateswoman.com/uae-one-of-the-most-empathic-countries-in-the-world/

Extract: It’s perhaps not the first accolade you would think of when think of the UAE, but it is an accolade none the less.

A study looking into the psychology of countries and their residents revealed that three countries in the Middle East – the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait – are three of the most empathetic countries in the world.