1. Our
pathway finds guidance by continuously searching for resonance within the oral
narrative of teaching-stories. By actively engaging the archetypal material
coded by spiritual guides into the cultural lore, we attend for textures that
throb against our unique fingerprints and the passion in our heart. A “hit” signals connection between “inner
knowing” and a universal, archetypal source of vitality. Because the archetypal
ocean stretches into mystery and out beyond human capacity to encompass, our
attempts to articulate such material are therefore clumsy and incomplete,
fragmentary at best. Although humbling and uncomfortable, a recognition of
limited knowing avoids the dangers of arrogant presumptions that result in the
proverbial pitfall (e.g., Proverbs 16).
2. To
navigate the unknown and to control harm, cultures draft and enforce laws,
norms, and moral codes. As civilization and consciousness advance, these norms
sometimes become restrictive and are broken. The storyteller, like other
artists, dances at this edge. For example, in the story of “The Visit” (cf. the
Russian tale, “Maiden Tsar”), this break is represented when the protagonist
does away with the tutor who was preventing connection with the beloved by
putting the youth to sleep and colluding with the dominant rule, represented by
the stepmother.
3.
Despite the difficulty, the frustration and frequent failure in attempting to access
the great unknown, our destiny depends on attempts to decipher the inarticulate
points of resonance. The process of articulation, of focusing the abstractions
coming from the source material, proceeds through amplifying the resonance
across other teaching stories and then translating the archetypal images into
local and individual levels.
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4.
Because archetypal spaces are expressed in a variety of representations, the
amplification typically and productively yields multiplicity. For example, the
archetypal guide may be presented as a small voice (dwarf or haystack figure),
in an apparently ugly or threatening form (Dame Ragnell/Beauty’s Beast, Baba
Yaga), or in a disappearing beloved (e.g., Kuan Yin).
5.
This multiplicity almost always yields feelings of uncertainty, but it also
allows for individual instantiation of the archetypal field. In other words,
each person has the opportunity to collaborate in his/her unique destiny. The
work/play involved in digital media production offers a generative space for
exploring the uncertainty, for constructing enactments in the possibility space
making connections with the resonant moments from teaching stories, and
translating toward the particular level. The particular level is the immediate
experience where the multiplicity gets resolved into a best-fit response to the
contingencies presented in situated truth-making. In relation to the particular
level, hermeneutic phenomenology points to the importance of caring and
commitment, and of self-forgiveness for unintended boo-boos. Our study of
contemporary human development emphasizes our opportunity to cooperate to a
degree beyond previous capacity in order to advance social good.