Invoking Kinship, with Ben Murphy
In this conversation with bard, somatic practitioner, coach, and student of myth Ben Murphy, we explore the mythic imagination, re-villaging, and what it might take to heal the broken kinship ties that so many of us feel in relation to ourselves, our human community, and the land.
To connect with Ben, visit https://www.bend-in-gratitude.com or @bend_in_gratitude on Instagram
Click here to listen on Spotify
Click here to listen on Apple
You can also play the episode via SoundCloud below!
Under the embedded player, you’ll find a written transcript for the show.
Megan: Welcome to A Wild New Work, a podcast about how to divest from capitalism and the norms of modern work and step into the soulful calling of these times we live in, which includes the call to rekindle our relationship with the earth. I'm Megan Leatherman, a mother to two small kids, writer, amateur ecologist, and vocational guide. I live in the Pacific Northwest, and I'm your host today.
Hi friend, welcome. Thank you for being here. I'm so glad that you are here and that we're sharing this little corner of the internet together. Um, I'm curious how you are doing right now. We are really into the heart of winter now. The winter solstice is only nine days away, so we are fully into the descent into the darkest point and we will stay there for a while. I think it will continue to feel dark, you know, for at least a few weeks, if not another month or so before things start to shift in that late winter, early spring time.
So I've been thinking about what can really Guide us in the darkness. What is sturdy enough and tried and true enough to guide us in times in our lives and in our collective journey that are mysterious, difficult, complex, where the pressure feels like it's been increased, where maybe we are facing a lot of you know, so called demons or monsters and trying to figure out how to navigate these times.
And what really guides us is not usually sort of mundane facts or analysis or spreadsheets or logistics. When we're navigating true mystery in our lives, whether it's the mystery of just how to live right now or how to make changes in our lives or how to find the work that we're meant to do right now or just how to be with the tragedies that we see around us, what seems to offer really sturdy guidance are things like myth, like poetry, like art, music, old stories that people have turned to again and again.
Those are the things that we usually reach out for that can actually guide us right now. And so I'm really honored to have today's guest, Ben Murphy, on to talk about living mythically, about initiations and returns. and about re villaging. I met Ben through Megan Hayne, who was my guest in episode 108 on Cyclic Power, when Megan took me to one of his live storytelling circles here in the Portland area.
And I just really enjoy talking to Ben about these topics, and I think this conversation is going to offer you a lot to chew on, and some really hearty nourishment for these Colder, wet, darker times, which are not a bad thing at all, but we need different things in these times. So let me introduce Ben to you formally.
Ben has guided people into deep states of embodied presence through breath and body work for over ten years. During his musical studies in Portland, Oregon, he found himself drawn to the mythopoetic movement of the 90s, and his formal study of music soon became woven with an avid exploration of myths. His current work involves the intersection of trauma healing, initiatory experience, and cultivating mythic imagination in the threshold times which we live in.
So before I take us into this conversation with Ben, I just have a couple of quick announcements. One, I want to say thank you to Sasha for supporting the show financially.
Thank you so much. If you're listening and you have the means and desire to support the show financially and make this work sustainable, or more sustainable. You can pitch in once or monthly at buymeacoffee. com slash Megan Leatherman. A little bit goes a long way and I really appreciate all of you who have or are continuing to support the show in this way.
I also wanted to let you know that there's one more episode after this one until the end of this season of the podcast and it has been such a rich and joyful season. I hope you have loved it as much as I have. I'm planning to release the next season of the show at the end of January into February. And I'll share a little bit more about what the topics are going to be probably next week.
I'll be taking some time off from mid December next week to mid January and I haven't decided if I'll be releasing encore episodes in that time, but. I'm leaning toward not. I think I need to just trust that it's okay to actually fully stop for a time, um, which is hard for me too, and it's not even, it's like a month, but still my mind is like you know, gets hooked on this idea that I need to be putting things out regularly.
So I'm leaning toward not releasing anything until the new episodes come out in late January, but I will let you know if that changes.
Okay, so with all of that said, why don't I read us our opening invocation and just invite you to settle into your being, your body. You might notice the weather around you, or the sky, or if there are wild beings around you right now.
May each of us be blessed and emboldened to do the work we're meant to do on this planet. May our work honor our ancestors, known and unknown, and may it be in harmony with all creatures that we share this earth with. I express gratitude to all of the technologies and gifts that have made this possible, and I'm grateful to the Cowlitz and Clackamas tribes, among many others, who are the original stewards of the land that I'm on.
Well, Ben, thank you so much for being here with us today.
Ben: Thank you, Megan. I'm excited to be here.
Megan: I thought we could start by talking a little bit about what it means for you to sort of live with a mythic perspective or orientation, like what does that mean to you and anything you want to pull in about how it has sort of supported you since working with it in your personal experience?
Ben: Yeah. Thanks for that. Well, it's a, it's a big one to tackle kind of like right off the bat. It's really just like going into it. Right. Um, I, I think that to, to. Live mythically, to think mythically, I think that there's a big need for story, and specifically very old story, myth, this word myth, you know, we have a particular definition of it that we use kind of in common parlance in our world today that just means falsity, you know, the, the, for instance, you know, like And maybe it's not even exactly to say that it just means falsity, but Gabor Mate has a book out called The Myth of Normal.
And that word, myth, specifically means, like, oral storytelling. And that oral storytelling that it's referring to is something that's, like, accumulated over long periods of time. Like, a story has taken its time moving through people. Moving through cultures, accumulating wisdom, accumulating potency. So to think mythically is to be with stories like that, and to allow them to illuminate life.
To allow them to illuminate things that we wouldn't necessarily see. If we weren't getting to see them through story, uh, one, one image or motif that jumps out at me is this image of a golden ball. I encountered it three times in different stories. One is the story Iron John, then the story Tatterhood.
And then another one that I've told recently called Go I Know Not Wither, Bring Back I Know Not What and there's this curious thing about what is the golden ball like it just appears as in the first one Iron John, this little boy loses his ball and rolls into the cage of a wild man who's been captured, and he wants it back, and the wild man says I'll give it back to you if you go steal a key from your mother's pillow. And so he does it and he gets the ball back by then, like the boys realized that he's like broken his mother's trust and he is like afraid. And so the wild manager was like, well, I'll take you into the forest now. And so it's just like, what did this golden ball, what is the, you know, relevance of this golden ball in this, in this instance that he wa he was such a, an innocent little boy and he wanted it back, and then suddenly this wild man's taking him into the forest.
In the story Tatterhood, this girl encounters somebody in the forest. And she starts tossing the ball back and forth, back and forth. And it's over this like edge area. And the whole story kind of unfolds with this, this dichotomy between this innocence and this wildness. So there's kind of a similar motif between those two.
And then the third one, Go I Know Not Wither, the main characters given a golden ball to follow as he's been sent on this quest that is utterly impossible. Like the name of the story is Go I Know Not Wither, Bring Back I Know Not What, and that mission is given to him by a king is sort of like this, you know, sounds like a wild goose chase.
And his wife was like connected to the other world, gives him this ball and says, you know, follow this wherever you go. And it leads him somewhere. That he ends up being able to get to the next step to get to the next place where he needs to go. So, you know, it might be different in each of these different stories, but in seeing this motif show up.
In multiple different instances, it's like this curious thing of like, what, what is this actually representing in our lives? It's not, it's not a, a literal thing, right? So getting out of a literal mindset, we get into a mythic mindset by getting out of a literal mindset. Everything isn't reduced just to what it looks like or what it is.
It's, it's representative, it's symbolic, it's relational. It's asking us to be in relationship with something that we might not see otherwise. Um, that's, that's one answer, and I'll just pause, let you, if there's anything bubbling up for you.
Megan: Yeah, thank you. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like some of the keys of what you said were that it's sort of turning your ear to older stories that have been really worked out for a long time. We're not talking about like, you know, the myth of Netflix, like what is in modern culture right now, necessarily. And then noticing recurring or strong symbols that come through that for some reason. You know, for some reason, you notice the golden ball and each of those stories, someone else might pick up on some, you know, a different symbol, but there's some sort of resonance for that image for you.
And then maybe you could talk a little bit about, like, how would you then bring that image into your life or, like, work with what it might show you, on an individual level.
Ben: Yeah. I mean, I bring up the, the golden ball just cause it's a super interesting one because it, it's like so clear, just a clear description of something that shows up in these different stories.
But what you described is exactly what, you know, we as, you know, in the storytelling culture that I'm a part of that, what we're trying to invite is we tell a story and we ask people who are present, like. What's grabbing you? What image or what moment in the story is really kind of working you or sticks with you in some way?
And that can look different in different contexts. In that story, go I know not wither, for instance, go I know not wither, bring back I know not what, one moment in particular that stuck out to me, and it wasn't even an image that was in the story, so as the storyteller, I'm like, I'm in relation with like all the images, right, and some draw me in more than others, but in the last telling I did of it last month, I found myself, as I was preparing to tell it, Um, I went outside and went for a run, and I was running around in, you know, a track around a park in, uh, near my house, and I found myself thinking about this mountain that's in the story that's sort of the The extreme end of his journey.
It's the furthest place that he goes to before he turns back looking for this wild goose chase item. This, I know not what, and as I was circling around the track, I had like the image of the labyrinth. Come up, you know, this circular, long circuitous, and I never told it that way. It was always like, he ventures out to this mountain and then he comes back.
But I was imagining this, I was feeling this spiral around the mountain and like, I didn't tell it that way in that moment, but I found myself wondering, I wonder, I wonder if I might tell that story in that way where he's being directed this way and that it doesn't make sense to him, but finally he's circling around to this point that he's been journeying towards the whole time, this center point. So in invoking that image of the labyrinth, you know, and I kind of said it a little bit there like there's this circling around the edge of something so that you can come to the center. And you can't get to the center until you've gone to, like, all four corners, tread, like, as far, as far, you get, I think, the way the labyrinth is constructed, like a, a classical image of a labyrinth, you actually come as close as you can to the center before you have to venture back out to the middle, and then you, like, go around the whole thing, and then finally come back into the actual center, and, and that image is a, a, a map for life is, is potent.
It asks us to accept that we can't go straight to the middle. We have to meander. We have to do this winding path. To get to the place where we're at the center of something so that that sort of bring that sort of another answer to the question of like, what is thinking mythically, and it's, it's using those like images or those stories as maps.
It's using them as a way to like kind of map reality so that we're more oriented when we feel like we're out completely in the unknown so even if you are in the unknown. You can feel a sense of like, well, this is where I am. It's associative. It's like, it's, it's grappling with what is.
Megan: Right. Yeah. I think it's really different than if you might say like dominant Western sort of communication is really direct.
So like, it's different than you telling someone "you just can't get there in a linear way" versus like, let me tell you a story about a labyrinth. And like, it just feels different in your body, you know, um, and it's something you can really grab onto.
Could you guide us through the sort of hero or heroine's journey, um, that Joseph Campbell laid out?
And I don't know if you would call this like a myth or a map of myth, or I don't know how exactly like you would describe it, but I think it's really interesting to sort of map it onto the seasonal cycles. And here we're headed into the darkest point of the year. So would you mind giving us just Whatever overview you would like and however you want to describe the hero's journey.
Ben: Yeah. So it's an, it's an interesting one. I've spent a lot of time thinking about the idea of a hero and hero's journey and like, have like lots of like critiques of that. And so this was... It's an interesting thing for me to look at and coming to it with a like, okay, what is this? What is this?
Actually, I think the simplest way to look at it, and this is not like exactly how Joseph Campbell lays it out, but the simplest is just, you have the ordinary world, a separation from it, some sort of experience. where transformation occurs, or the word initiation is relevant there. I would kind of think of the whole thing as initiation, but transformation. And then, uh, the return or the reincorporation or the reintegration. That's the simplest way I would put it. Campbell in the story arc, you know, it's sort of a meta myth. It's this, uh, deep structure of a lot of myths that, um, Campbell was seeing. And I think that his steps go something like: ordinary world, so you're just in the mundane, um, then the call to adventure. So something happens that evokes some need to venture out. Next is the refusal of the call. So there's often a hesitation to go on that journey. Um, and sometimes that looks like the people of the ordinary world saying, Oh no, you can't, you know, you shouldn't go there kind of thing. It's not always the, the protagonist who's refusing the call.
And then the meeting with the mentor, which is some venerable or wise character who kind of gives a little bit of a reassurance, like, or some sense of like, Oh no, this is really needed or something that helps get. The protagonist to the, uh, the, the end of the ordinary world zone, which is the crossing of the threshold.
So it's sort of the first phase and then the second phase, and this is kind of distilled from, from Campbell's work. It's not exactly the way he puts it, but the next stuff is the road of trials, which involves tests, encountering enemies, finding allies. Then what's called the approach to the inmost cave.
So there's like a, kind of like a, just a deepening into the journey, a deepening into this unordinary world, this other zone of experience, and then the ordeal, which is sort of the, I would think of it as sort of like the, the deep best part. It's not like the climax. It's not the, the culmination of the journey, but it's this low point.
And then, uh, what's called the finding of the elixir. So it's like this breakthrough moment from the ordeal. And then I think that from that, and that's sort of like the, if I'm remembering right, that's sort of the other world transformational part of the journey. And then into the last part is the return, the road back, and then, uh, I think the height of the action, typically, like the confrontation, this might be called the resurrection moment.
And then, finally, returning with the elixir. So it's like you've completed this journey and you've brought back something from the other world to the ordinary world that, that was probably connected to that call to adventure from the beginning.
Megan: Cool. Thank you. Yeah. I could see sort of, as you're talking, like you might say that in the autumn and winter, we're headed into the approach into the, that cave or into the ordeal.
And that as like this, as the light returns, we're on that road to return and coming back to the mundane of, you know, spring or summer when things are a little more above the surface or light, if you will. You sort of alluded to this earlier, but what are some of the, like risks or critiques you have to this sort of orientation?
I feel like the hero's journey is so ingrained in the way we think of like personal development, um, story, obviously, but what are some of the things you see? You know, you mentioned in our other conversation that you see it as sort of a young way of looking at things. It is relatively new. So. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, could you speak to some of the things that you're curious about, I guess, or critical of?
Ben: Yeah, we'll see which thread I end up going on. Um, so one thing I want to say before going further is I encountered this phrase that I really like that apparently predates the, the, uh, crystallization or the coining of that term by Campbell, the hero's journey, and that's the medicine journey. Which, to me, strikes me as much truer to what was probably the deep structure that Campbell was trying to see. And this is, uh, coined by a scholar, anthropologist, writer named Mircea Eliade, I think his name is how you pronounce his name. Carl Jung drew a lot on his work.
So, the idea of the medicine journey strikes me as much more compelling, um, because it gets out of, What I think Campbell kind of fell into in thinking of of this journey as is almost like, uh, it feels to me the way I the way it lands to me in our modern culture is a masculine escapade and. the idea of heroics or that there's this battle, this facing of the monster.
It ends up translating to something like fighting. And I think that might be a product just of the way it's been used in our culture to create movies. It's been used as famously, uh, George Lucas used it to write Star Wars. And so it's just like mapped onto that very like straightforwardly. So I think it's important to say that.
I think in our previous conversation, I framed it as it's like relevant to an immature mentality, and that's not to say bad because it's necessary for the maturing process. And I think it's to think of it as an initiatory journey is also a really good way of framing it too, because you're getting initiated from a place that is more self involved.
You know, the refusal of the call is there for a reason because it's scary to go and face the unknown, and you're afraid you might die at the most basic level, going into the unknown is facing death on some level. And to take that journey willingly for the good of others takes you through a transformation.
And to come back from that journey having shed some of one's self involvement, I think is ultimately the purpose of it. So, it is an immature story because it's supposed to take us into a level of maturity. So it's necessary, important. The heroic mentality is needed to break out of the gravity of comfort.
It's not, it's probably naive, it's bold, it's brash, and we need that sometimes. If that's, and this is, this is where I get really critical of Campbell calling it a monomyth, that is a phrase he used, or the monomyth, as if like you can condense all myths to this structure that he coined, is that we, we totally lose multiplicity in the kinds of stories that we're encountering and the variations of what that story might look like.
We, because, you know, especially in our time, like we're not going. necessarily having big confrontational battles, you know, fighting imagery is not that relevant to most of our lives. And if you impose that on all lives, you might feel like you're not actually doing what you should be doing if you're not fighting something.
What is lost when our entire mentality is oriented towards this battle or this big confrontation?
Megan: Yeah, I find that a really compelling observation. I just had a conversation with someone about how, um, Rachael Rice, who was also on the show, about how we're so obsessed with this idea of like winning at life or like success, you know?
And so death becomes this epic failure because we didn't win, you know? So, yeah. Even the idea that there may be other myths that are not about a battle or overcoming that I can't even like really wrap my mind around that. I'll have to sit with that for a little bit.
I guess 1 of the threads of that that we could pull on is what you said earlier about how we need this maturing and this call to do something or transform. You said for the good of others. And I think that's something that a lot of us are really missing and that was compelling to me and my own, my own individual wilderness vigil I did this summer. It was very clear at the outset, like, you're not doing this just for yourself. You're doing this to go heal and recover something for your community.
And I was wondering if you could just say a little bit more about that. Like, I guess, how do we dedicate our personal work or healing or talents to the good of the community? Like, what could that, what does that actually look like maybe even on a practical level? And then maybe we can also tie it into the sort of idea of like return or bringing medicine back.
So I'll stop there, but anything you could add about that?
Ben: I had a similar conversation for me in my experience of going to do a wilderness vigil in the summer of 2022 as well. There's a lot of conversation around, like, this is for the village.
This isn't, you know, about going and having some big triumph. There's, this isn't about glory and actually, and this is, this is like, probably quite contrary to the idea of the hero's journey, which does feel often associated to me with a kind of a glorious. energy is that that journey is actually a diminishment.
And like what we're talking about around the, the shedding, the breaking open that transformation process, I think is very much characterized by rupture and by, by discomfort. And by stepping into that discomfort willingly. We're opening ourselves to things that we're maybe not completely aware of that we're capable of.
What that means in terms of bringing that back, I think that that's the work often of returning is figuring out one helping getting well clarified. What it is that we are bringing as a gift. And I think that there's some shared language we might, you know, bandy about from like Bill Plotkin, for instance, around the idea of an eco niche and the, the idea that in an ecosystem, every, you know, there's the, the way that any species is going to have its role that it plays within a greater network or greater body of being, but even within those species, there are individuals or even groups of individuals, but then individuals within those groups that serve a particular function for that group and that particular ecosystem that group is a part of.
So like every, this individual tree is going to be casting shade in a certain way, and it's going to be near the river in a certain way that creates that, that ecological environment very particularly. And so to wonder into, you know, what is it that I'm bringing as an individual that then feeds this greater body of being that I'm surrounded by and that I'm in connection to, and for humans, I think that's, at this point in time, quite challenging because we have put ourselves into contexts that are very separate from most ecology. We do have our human communities. I think that the huge challenge is finding out how to continue to bring that gift back to the land. And that might feel kind of like abstract for a lot of people.
I know it has for me and continues to at times. But practically what that means, I think it involves really Knowing where we're most alive in our giving and where we're feeling because it's it is, you know, it's like we said at the beginning, like it's, you know, we're doing this for other people. And it's not just for other people.
It's for ourselves, too, because there's, I would say that there's probably no greater belonging than feeling like we are really consequential in our Environment. In our village, in our community. So that that sense of belonging is like a deep human need that I think, you know, it's quite a difficult thing for a lot of people these days, given that separation that I'm referring to.
So, whatever it looks like... I think it can be easy to reduce this to like a vocation where one is getting paid. At times, we're in this environment where everybody has their own brand and there's all the, you know, everybody's just their own business, but like, it can mean, you know, creating, you know, what if it meant creating alters on land from natural like materials.
What if it means mothering in an excellent way. What if it means having a relationship with unseen beings like ancestors, spirits of the land. Like these are all like, like, what is, what is the gift that we, each individual is bringing is so unique and it's, you know, might not be, it might be hard to see without reflection from others.
And that's, I think that's a really key thing in Plotkin's rendering is this process of metamorphosis after the initiatory moment that he calls soul encounter, involves getting reflection, really like get it, you get a sense of what the gift is. It's like some kind of transmission, some kind of like, yeah, I feel that and it can be a peak experience or maybe it's something that's built gradually.
And then you start to embody that and experiment with stepping into that in a way. And then you see how people react to you and you learn about the gift through that process. And then, you know, all the better if you have elders and mentors who are like. You got something going on. Like, I wanna, you know, reflect that back to you, help you foster it.
Like, I think that that's a huge thing that we're missing in our culture without those tiered generational relationships.
Megan: Thanks. There's a lot of richness there. Yeah. I think it's just I don't know how you feel, but I feel like there's a lot of talk about initiation and sort of, I don't know, I don't even know what you would call it.
It's not like new age speak, but I don't know. There's just a lot about initiation, which is so beautiful and like necessary and people go through it and it's hard. But I just find that there's not as much about the return. And Martin Shaw talks about how we're a culture of severance, you know, we're really good at like, "I'm going to leave, I'm going to go to a new city. I'm going to get a new job or leave this relationship," but it's harder to come back and like re integrate that and, and know what your medicine is and try it out and get it reflected back. I don't think I even have a question. I just want to say like how hard it is inside of capitalism to like, get a glimmer of something that you might be good at or really want to do, but no one's going to Pay your pay you to make alters on the land, you know, and so I just feel like we're all sort of walking this edge of like, you know, trying to do a return and like do good in the world.
And also we live inside of these really difficult structures. Maybe you could speak a little bit to your own experience with that and sort of how you're piecing it together and finding your way.
Ben: Yeah, this is a whole, whole Pandora's box of things to open here. I'm going to say some things and then, you know, maybe if I'm getting like, kind of like in a meandery place, you can pull me back and we can like refocus the question into this, this topic.
Because first thing that kind of comes to me is this, which is very much relevant to the, the word initiation is an alchemical model. So in, and I think there is even more than just three phases, but there's, there's three phases, really clearly named I've seen in multiple places. There's the black, the negredo, the white, the albedo and the red or the rubedo.
And so there's this, the rubedo is what's associated with gold. So before getting to gold, there's these other things that we have to do. And one thing that. In reading a book by James Hillman called Alchemical Psychologies, he's talking about how being ready for the black is actually an achievement. It's not, you don't go straight from, from, um, like no self awareness and no, like conception of what and who I am to being able to go through the black. You have to, there's something that you have to do before you're even ready to go through that first phase, which I think is probably the most like we could say like torturous like that's that's the part that I really feel like is the trans Trans, it's a rupture part of the alchemical process.
So one thing to name is just that folks like just jumping into initiatory experience without having any process of building this inner knowing of self will likely result in, in maybe you'll probably get insight. One would probably get insight, but it might not be insight that's ready to be acted upon.
And I think that it can be tricky, you know, with this, you know, people keep coming back to these like initiatory experiences say like ayahuasca or other psychedelic experiences or even doing, you know, wilderness vigils year upon year, and they're looking for clarification they're looking for that, that deep sense of knowing about what it is.
Yeah, I mean, for myself, if I think about these things, I think back to being in 12 step programs like 10 years ago and starting a process of self reflection that even at that time, I was frustrated with, with the way my sponsors would see me. And talk to me as if I'd done no self reflection. I was like upset at them for not seeing me and the work that I'd already done in my like, you know, late, late tween teens and early twenties.
And, you know, there's like a foundational, you know, layer that got laid there. And then having, you know, this self reflective process over years and years, then gets me to a point where I kind of feel like now, very recently in the last couple of years, It's really hitting me like, Oh, now I'm, now I've got some clarity now I've can see all the things that I've been cultivating over, you know, let's just say like 10, 11, 12 years to get to a place where I'm starting to see that reflection coming back to me from, um, from mentors, a couple of different mentors and the last in this last year after I went and did a wilderness vigil, them seeing me in a way that gets me, um, You know, in a way like, okay, great. I need your help.
So I mean, and that that ask - to know that I need help - I mean, like layers of cultural deconditioning and like reading and trying to understand. That the way culture is structured right now is not the way it has been for most of humanity, and that we do need mentors, and that there are mentors there.
Like, I, it's hard for me to say, like, I'm like, did I just get super lucky and having two people come into my world in this last year that. Are older, like more than a decade older in one case and more than twice my age in another case that were like willing to just be like, yeah, no, let's, let's work with this.
Maybe I'm super lucky. Maybe there are elders out there who are waiting to be fostered because as I, as I'm told by, you know, one of these, these mentors of mine, at least is that that that's a huge untapped resource is out there. Our elders, they're waiting to be asked. And that's the way to do it. It's not just they approach you.
It's I need help, you know, um, so there could be something in that as well, like the difficulty of the return coming from, like, Oh, we don't see our, our elders. We don't see our mentors. To just say that they're not there might be a bit of a, like, there is this cultural idea of like, Oh, we just need to be the mentors that we've been looking for.
And I think to some extent there's like, yeah, we need to step into a place of taking responsibility, but I don't think that that means that we can do that by ourselves without being fostered first, because truly, I don't think you can know how to foster, given what I'm experiencing right now, I don't think that I would be able to foster a gift in somebody without having had it done to me. Like that's the whole notion of parenting essentially. And like your parents can't do this part of the process.
Megan: Yeah. I really appreciate what you said about there needing to be some sort of foundational level of introspection and processing - that you can't expect to sort of have all these peak experiences because they won't get made into something if there's not this initial, just the sort of like day in, day out practice of knowing yourself and your body and processing. And that's like the boring, hard, Work that doesn't, you know, isn't like shiny or exciting all the time, but it's laying that foundation.
And I find that when I'm doing that well enough, then I can, like, recognize and work with the mentors that show up, but it's hard to be ready for them or recognize them. If you're not sort of doing that inner stuff on your own 1st.
Ben: Yeah, absolutely. And yeah. I think another, you know, thing to name in here too is that, you know, we can use the word community.
I found the word community to be oddly hollow for me, like the word village carries the energy that I'm really hoping to be able to like speak to, in that like, I can talk about like the dance community and I, and I can like be a part of the dance community. And all that means is that I go out and I dance sometimes, but I don't actually have connections to those people.
But if I talk about like having a village, it's like, I have circles, concentric circles of people that maybe there's intersection between these different circles of people, but there's multiple contexts that, that do intersect to some extent that foster the kinds of things that I'm talking about, like this, like self awareness. I really love the word spoken to me for a long time, Sangha, which is a, it's a Buddhist term.
It's like the, the Buddhist community is built on, or I don't know, it's like, cause it is, that's the word that refers to community. But it's like Sangha, Buddha and Dharma, I believe. So the Dharma is the teachings. The Buddha is the teacher. And Sangha is the community and specifically the community of the adequate.
So it's the people that who have something of this on board already. So when I talk about, you know, a 12 step community, that's like an example of a community of the adequate. It's like a group of people who are at varying degrees of attainment in, you know, being versed in what this thing is talking about.
And maybe it's not so, you know, uh, Canonized like 12 step is or a Buddhist community is or Christian community is it or a Jewish community is. Maybe there aren't scriptures, but there's some sort of shared language that's happening that allows people to be on the journey with one another. That's, that's another piece of the puzzle that feels pretty - can be - difficult to find but, and I think that one of the things that we're hitting on in both of these things is naming these things and being able to look for them.
Because what you, you know, said a second ago about, um, chasing these peak experiences, it's like, you know, the question is, what is that for? Because sometimes it feels good, sometimes it just feels good, and, and people just get drawn into the feeling good of it without understanding that it's going somewhere, it's, it's, you're getting that peak transmission.
So that you know, so that you know yourself better so that you can give your gift and so that it's no longer about you having the peak experience anymore. It's about you being in service and being part of this greater body, having more, you know, a more even arc of experience, not just all up in the highs.
Megan: Yeah, I really agree with you about this, this difference between sort of community and village, and it may just be semantics, but I feel the same way. And I've always, I have had this image in my mind of a village, like, not a, not like an intentional community, but just an actual village in the woods somewhere where people just live, and it's really a compelling image, but I'm wondering if it's less about like trying to make that real in the way that my mind sees it and more like trying to live into what village might mean right here in Portland with like all of these isolated little houses, you know. And one of the things that feels hard about that is like you alluded to, you know, I'm not religious, so I don't, I'm not, I don't feel drawn to like, A Christian village or a Jewish, you know, but there, there does need to be some sort of like common language or culture, right? And, you know, I think Resmaa Menakem says, like, capitalism is white people's culture, you know, and so a lot of us are trying to come up with something else that's life giving, you know, but we're not religious. And, um, I don't know, maybe story is the way through, but stories are rooted in cultures and places.
And it just feels, it feels like a big lift and also very exciting. And I'm curious about it to like, what would it mean to create a sense of villaging, you know, based on a new or different really like deep, rich, ecological philosophy or way of seeing the world. And it feels hard because we're, you know, we're starting with where we are.
Um, but it's a really exciting and compelling idea. So I'm glad to hear you're already sensing some concentric circles. And I heard about someone, a group of people starting like a pagan monastery in Europe. And I was like, Wow. Cool. Like, what if there was sort of these earth based kind of places where people could gather and have a sense of community, or villaging.
So yeah. Anything you want to add about that idea?
Ben: Yeah. I'm just like drawn back to that first question of what is it to think mythically? Like that image of the village is a mythic image. It's not something that, you know, necessarily manifests literally. Beautiful if it can, I am a part of a group of people who's trying to make something like that happen.
And I, I, you know, I feel like drawn to feed that dream. And I also understand like, yeah, it might not happen. I've heard a lot of people talk about trying to start intentional communities. And I've heard a lot about different intentional communities, you know, for whatever we're using that phrase, intentional community villages trying to be started that then just run into all of these like political divisive moments that then they fall apart.
So Wondering into what a village experience is like and feeding, you know, on that image, I think is really valuable feeding on the image, which I like. I love the etymology of to think about the etymology of words, a lot different words image connected to magic, connected to imagination, means something like "holds power."
So that image by definition holds power and to, to be able to use it, to connect to a feeling that, you know, you're looking for, we are looking for, I think is just, that's a, this example of mythic thinking to have a village to return to, you know, that's, that's a big thread in this whole conversation. It's like, how do we return?
Well, we need a village to return to. There there's something here in you know, connecting to the power of that image and the yearning for that experience that we're missing. There's, there's an importance to me, I believe in staying connected to grief in that process, because we're not experiencing that and the, you know, the, the high feeling of it, the like beauty of that image also will, you know, we'll be confronted continuously with the fact that we're not experiencing that when that's something that's like kind of encoded to experience.
I think that's an important part of this process. And to get that it might not manifest in our lives if we were trying to feed that, but that doesn't make it any less worth feeding the image feeding that dream. There's a, you know, this whole hesitating to call it a meme, because that's so like modern and kind of gross to refer to this, this thing, you know, like the thing that is referred to in. I'm failing and embarrassed almost that I don't know what tribal people this is associated with and maybe it's multiple, maybe it's all of them, just the idea of seven generations, think about seven generations out from our own, you know, what do we need to do for them. And what do we need to start now so that they have what they need?
That's the kind of mentality that, again, this is, this is speaking to the difficulty of all, all of this stuff that we're talking about, the return. We're conditioned so much to just think individually, think individualistically. And if we're thinking individualistically, we're not thinking about generations out, even if we don't have kids, like the villages is a body that isn't, you know, it's not contingent on whether you have, you bear children to yourself, it's an organism that exists beyond you that you're a part of.
So finding that web of connections, cause it, I think it can exist. And it does take work. All of this takes work to invest and to at times, you know, do things that maybe. You know, as an individual, I'm not comfortable with, I'm not happy about having to do certain things for, say, my roommates. I'm annoyed at my roommates for doing certain things continuously.
And yet I get that that's training, like that's training for being in relationship on a deeper level where our, our fates are shared. Like we, we are existing in close enough proximity that if I'm not willing to pick up slack where they're dropping it, then we all kind of go down. So , I mean, finding those kinds of people that, you know, you're willing to go to bat for like that, who have, you know, maybe it's about shared values.
Maybe it's sharing this kind of a dream that's speaking to something in my world that, um, I see kind of on a daily basis, that's. Part of that process.
Megan: I love that idea of just feeding the image, even though, you know, I have no idea what to do next, or it's not clear, just continuing to come back to that image, you're right, it does hold power.
And it's really easy to negate or ignore because it's not like a tangible thing, but yeah, you're so right. It has a lot of power.
Ben: Again, referring to how do we come back, how do we return, it's like I'm hearing you speak to a clarity that you have about that image for you, and you don't know what to do next.
But you have that image, so, you know, being just in the now, present with that image and letting it draw you forward. And, you know, it's like, Oh, you know, it doesn't go from, I don't have it to I have it. It's like, there's so many steps in between. Right. And just understanding, like, what does it take to go from where I am to, to there, and then being able to see those opportunities as they arise is the power of having that image so far down the road that may never be achieved in, in this life. But, but it's, it's giving you the step, the next step and the next step and the next step. Ideally, that's, that's one way I would think about it.
Megan: Yeah. And I think it can sort of guide you because it has a very unique like energetic imprint like it feel I feel it You know in my being so when I encounter other things or people or experiences that have that same sort of Feeling it's like a little magnet or a little compass I can use, you know.
Ben: Yeah. There's a cognitive science term I really like called relevance realization. Relevance realization is like, I think banana, suddenly any banana that's in the, in, in the environment. All of a sudden, I can really hone in on it. Right. The, the, the question gets asked, the answer is presented.
And that's very much a function of, of a certain cognitive, you know, ability that we have as humans is, oh, I'm looking for tracks of animals. Boom, there they are. Like, there's like just a draw to them. So the relevance realization capacity, I think, is really like, it's a, it's a cool thing to harness.
Good questions are important.
Megan: Right. This has been really rich. Thank you. Before we sort of transition out, are there any particular myths or stories that are really up and, you know, relevant, realizing for you right now in this moment?
Ben: Yeah. So I want to defer a little bit to a creator named Rune Rasmussen.
His channel is Nordic Animism. And so he talks about Ragnarok, which is, you know, sort of the Norse apocalypse. The power in that story is recognizing that the thing that brings about the end of the world is broken kinship ties. It shows up in a lot of different moments, specifically, you know. The way that the Ragnarok myth starts is Balder, who's like beloved and Balder the beautiful is having bad dreams and he's having dreams of the end of the world and his own death.
And the response to that when he brings that to his parents, Odin and Frigga, is that Frigga goes on this quest to and extract promises from all of the beings of the nine realms that they won't hurt him, they won't kill him. And so she, she goes through the entire nine realms, but she misses one thing, which is the mistletoe and Loki, the trickster catches wind of this.
Now, to, to understand Loki, you got to understand this relationship between the Jotuns, which is loosely translated as giants, and the, the gods called Aesir and the Vanir, there's two, two groups of them even, um, that live in Asgard, and there's like enmity between these two groups, but at the very beginning of it all, They're like, if you read the, um, I believe it's the Poetic Edda, the Voluspa specifically, is this particular poem.
It's like, where, where is the difference even between these two groups? Because they're born of the same beings. There's, there's, it's so early in time that how could you make a distinction between, but Loki is one of the Jotuns, and yet he is like amongst the Aesir constantly. And he's constantly feeling like he's left out.
He's constantly feeling othered. So, you know, in his like, kind of like final act of revenge, he creates a poison dart from the mistletoe. And the gods are all playing this game to basically play with the fact that nothing and everything is promised not to hurt Balder. They're like breaking things over him and throwing things at him and nothing will hurt him.
So like, it's just this funny game. But then Loki tricks Baldur's brother, who's blind, into shooting a bow with a poisoned dart and he kills Baldur. And then Loki is like, bound and put under this mountain and he's had like, he has poison like, dripped on him. And then the earth shakes and eventually these events lead to the end of the world.
Which is the thing that Baldur was seeing in the first place. So there's And this is, this is unpacked beautifully in an episode of the Emerald podcast, um, called the, the revolution will not be psychologized part two. And the discussion kind of speaks to the fact that like, they're sort of trying to nerf, Frigga is trying to nerf reality.
She's trying to make everything soft so that Balder won't be hurt. And inevitably something is missed and the, and the trickster finds that out. And then trickster is bound and given like, you know, it's like no, you will never you won't move anymore You're not allowed to be a part of the world anymore And then you know, that's what brings about the end of the world Which speaks to me of again this broken kinship tie like this reality that that nature is not predictable That there's no way to fully bind the variables that will create pain, that will create harm, that will create death.
So the, the attempt to, to make the world safe, the attempt to avoid discomfort and pain is, is by its nature going to lead to the destruction of everything. So, you know, coming back to all this stuff we've been doing about, we've been talking about, about initiation, like really understanding, like the discomfort, the, the rupture that is required in order to, to move beyond this self- absorbed orientation.
A lot of people know about the story of Orpheus and his like journey to the underworld after losing his wife, Eurydice. What I don't hear spoken of as often is the story that precedes that and the story that is after that. The story that precedes it is, I mean it's Essentially something along the lines of the, the way that Orpheus walks, walks through the world, he's sort of an acolyte or a priest of Dionysus, typically, I think, more often than not, the acolytes of Dionysus were female, like the, the Minads is what they were called. So I don't know if it's super unique that he is, but it's notable to me. And he, you know, he sings to the world. He sings to trees and they, they uproot and they follow him. He can sing to the, the, the, the stream and it'll shift the way it moves.
And so he's got this relationship that we might call like animistic. Like he's, he's able to sing to the world in a way where he's in deep, deep relationship with it. In a lot of indigenous cosmologies, the function of humans is to be singing to the world and to be calling its name and to be imbuing that beauty back into it.
So after the tragedy of Eurydice's death and his, his failure to bring her back, you know, he rejects worship of all the other gods, which includes Dionysus, except for Apollo, which is his father, god of light. God of, of harmony and beauty. And it's like, who wouldn't want to be devoted to these things? And yet He's not in any, he's not in a worshipful or reverent place with any of the other gods at this point.
And so I'm going to read this poem here that, um, this is one of the sonnets to Orpheus by Rilke. It's the last, there's two, two parts, two sets of poems, and this is the last one in the first set. So I'm just going to read this and maybe I'll like quickly unpack it, as we kind of turn the bend to close here.
It goes, But you, divine one, still intoning to the end, Falling prey to the minad throng, You wove with their shrieking. An artful harmony brought forth from destruction a song, no matter how they raged and wrestled, no matter, no harm came to your head or lyre, the stones they threw were softened.
Blessed to hear you, they soared, inspired. Mad for blood, the throng finally had its fill. But your song rang on, rang on amidst rocks and lions, trees and birds. In them, you sing still. Oh, you lost god, you never ending rout. Only cause hatred tore and scattered you, do we listen as the ear of nature. Do we sing as her mouth.
So Orpheus is torn apart by a throng of minads, acolytes of Dionysus, who are in a Bacchic -like trance, let's say. And They, they tear him apart. They're, they're like screaming and yelling at him and throwing things at him. And his, his song is like dispelling, you know, it's like the, the, the rocks are blessed to hear his song and they just soar inspired and they don't hit him.
But then finally the fervor gets to such an extent that they, that these women do tear him apart. But it is in doing that that his voice is imbued into all of nature. And that there is this like, call and response that we get to have. So I feel like it's an answer to the, the Ragnarok myth, the story of broken kinship.
And, and it's, it's one of tragedy. Like it's, it's like not pulling any punches. It's not a fun, like we can be Disney princesses and have like the, the, like the animals come and like carry our dress behind us. It's no, we get torn apart. There's some, some fertilization that happens in going through these like initiatory experiences that allows for something to retain because Orpheus is like, his head is separated from his body at one point and it's like part of the story is that it lives at the the origin point of this stream. So his, his song flows outward into the land through his through this stream. That's what I got.
Megan: So beautiful. Thank you. Two just really, um, yeah, powerful and evocative stories. Thank you so much for bringing those in.
Where can people find you, follow along, hear more about all of these things? Yeah.
Ben: Yeah. Yeah, um, just a couple of different, different places. So my website and Instagram are basically the same: bend in gratitude. com with dashes in between the words for the website.
So bend dash in dash gratitude. com. And then my Instagram is the same just with underscores. Bend underscore in underscore gratitude. And so, yeah, I'm not, there's nothing like on the docket currently. But there's scheming around like courses in the works with collaborators of mine. So that's a good place to just kind of keep updated with what I'm doing.
I will say I am in the first year, nearing the completion of the first year, of training through somatic experiencing, um, somatic experiencing internationals. It's trauma healing work. So if folks are interested at all in that kind of work, or just, you know, the, the way I frame myself on my website is as a mythic coach.
Working with these, these, you know, this mythic way of seeing things, you know, coupling with this idea of of trauma, which, you know, it's like this whole rupture dynamic we've been talking about. I feel like working with trauma is a huge way to like work with this initiatory journey. That's something that people can reach out to me about through the website, my emails all up on there, and then to be like, just in more community with me, there's an online community that I've been a part of since, since its inception called the School of Mythopoetics.
So you can find out more about the School of Mythopoetics through their website. And that's a place to find regular storytelling and people who are of this, you know, mindset, thinking mythically.
Megan: Great. I'll put all of those in the show notes so people have them easily. Thank you so much, Ben. This has been really nice.
Ben: Yeah. It was wonderful to talk to you.
Megan: Okay, my friend, I hope that you loved that conversation. I encourage you to connect with Ben via the links in the show notes and learn more about the work that he's doing in the world. Next week will be our Winter Solstice episode. It's the last of the season.
I'm excited to share some ways that you can work with and learn from this really potent time and let it create some momentum for you as we head into the light, brighter part of the year. If this show is meaningful to you or has been helpful to you in any way It would be lovely to receive your support. You can financially pitch in for the show at buymeacoffee. com /Megan Leatherman. If that's not something you feel like you can do right now It's still really supported to share the show on social media or to leave a review on Apple podcasts or subscribe Or just share it with a friend. All of that really really helps and I appreciate it so much. I love hearing from you all and hearing how the show, um, is supportive to you and helpful to you.
I hope you take such good care. Be well, and I will see you on the other side.
Show Notes:
To connect with Ben, visit https://www.bend-in-gratitude.com/ or @bend_in_gratitude on Instagram
The School of Mythopoetics: https://www.schoolofmythopoetics.com/
If you enjoyed this episode, please help get it to others by subscribing, rating the show, or sharing it with a friend! You can also pitch in to support the show once or monthly at: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/meganleatherman
Resources mentioned on the show:
The Myth of Normal by Gabor Maté
Bill Plotkin
Alchemical Psychologies by James Hillman
The Revolution Will Not Be Psychologized, Part 2, on The Emerald Podcast
Nordic Animism by Rune Rasmussen
Sonnet to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke