The role of sacred myth has been replaced by a mode of being in the world that is dictated by a materialistic idealism, where the highest goals are material success and wealth, and the aims of our legacy amount to what we are able to accumulate and consume; a practice upheld by modern advertising and public relations, mythologized by ’The American Dream’.  The use of the term ‘Dream’ in advertising has distorted the last direct connection we have with the mythic time - that connection being the connection with our literal dreams and dreaming as a cultural practice.

There is a dire need in modern American society for a cultural practice that fills the role of sacred Myth; a practice rooted in sacred time rather than profane time that simultaneously fits the needs of a multi-cultural society.  “To the primordial myth belongs the conservation of the true history, the history of the human condition, and it is in this that one must seek and find again the principles and paradigms of all the conduct of life.” (46) Mythology for our ancestors were not fictional stories reserved for the stage or fairy tales, rather they are living, breathing stories taking place eternally in the time before the beginning, before the, as we would call it in the Judeo-Christian West, “fall”. For our ancestors the events of Myth are available and accessible through sacred acts and processes, contemporaneously informing our mode of being in the world and are the foundation of social life, culture, institutions and civilization as a whole. But we are not in the world of our ancestors. So what happens when we live in a multi-cultural society where there is no a general agreement on Myth? No agreement on the origins and purposes of life, the gods, the beginning and the end? What happens when we all come different backgrounds with uprooted myths and traditions, torn apart and buried in the sands of time and war, but still need to live and act in accordance with each other? What happens when, as Nietzsche puts it, “god is dead?”  How can we honor our differing roots and histories while simultaneously growing a common spirituality connected and informed by the deeper origins and sources of our life? 

Our ancestors recognized two different kinds of time- historical time and mythological time or, profane time and sacred time. Our modern lives have become nearly entirely secularized, and for this we are suffering, living our lives from information and ideas sourced from profane time exclusively, and towards goals pertaining to thus which propagates profane ends. As Jung says “myths are no longer lived by the whole human being. They’ve been reduced to words and gestures deprived of life - fossilized, externalized, and therefore no longer of any use to the deeper life of the psyche.”  For this, we are suffering. The secularization of life as a result of the uprooting, destruction and mixing of cultures for thousands of years has left a hole where the sacred myth once stood it’s ground, leaving open for discussion the question of how we construct our mode of being, place and purpose in the world. My suggested solution is that we use our own individual dreams to re-spiritualize our lives as individuals so that at least we, one by one, are able to find purpose and place in the world for ourselves, on our own terms, informed by and in honor of a deeper reality. As we grow and share this deeper reality with one another by sharing our dreams, we will come to see the commonalities of humanity that connect us all in the eternal world, and will be able to grow a mutual dynamic of acceptance and understanding that surpasses circumstance and temporalities.