Mythic Imagination Update
By Michael Karlin
Co-President — Mythic Imagination Institute
[Images: Moses and the Burning Bush
© Phillip Ratner and the Ratner Museum
Photo © Anne Parke Photography and used with permission.]

It is very hard to believe that it has been almost a year since the last Mythic Journeys. It's even harder to believe that it is now time to begin planning in earnest for Mythic Journeys 2008. As the remarkable team of Mythic Journeys volunteer leaders begins to assemble to begin the long road to June 2008, it falls at a very appropriate time on the Jewish calendar.

We have just finished the holiday of Passover, the remembrance and celebration of the Jewish exodus from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Holy Land. In a few weeks, we will celebrate the holiday of Shavuot, which commemorates the traditional date of the gift of the Torah, the Hebrew Bible, on Mount Sinai. For those familiar with Judaism, you know that the Torah is filled with laws, commandments, and prohibitions. It contains hundreds of dictates on how to live life: what you can eat and what you cannot eat; when to work and when to rest; how to treat strangers, widows, and orphans; how much charity to give and to whom; even which shoe to tie first when you get dressed in the morning. The question is often asked, "Is this freedom?" Did the Jewish people simply exchange one dictator for another? One enslavement for another? Is this really freedom?

What is freedom? We often think of freedom as the state of being able to do whatever we want to do, whenever we want to do it, but this definition can be easily misunderstood. What looks like freedom from the outside can often be a form of ego enslavement. Noted psychiatrist and rabbi, Abraham Twerski states in From Bondage to Freedom: The Passover Haggadah, (the Haggadah is the book used at the Passover meal that recounts the story of the exodus):

"People may be addicted to power, to greed to lust, to acclaim from others. These people, too, may be helpless in regard to whatever drive dominates them and dictates their behavior. They may think they are acting as free people, but nothing could be farther from the truth. They are slaves to lust, to money, to power, to acclaim, and there is no respite from these taskmasters. In their sleep as well as in their waking hours, they are subject to this dictatorship."

Most of us walk around under the impression that we are free, when in fact much of the time we are driven by our addictions, impulses, and wounds. This season of the year is a time to re-examine our lives and to try to figure out that to which are we enslaved. From what must we break free?

The period of time between Passover and Shavuot is a time of spiritual ascension. This period reminds us that the Jews in the story metaphorically ascended from a state of complete spiritual and physical slavery to a place where they were spiritually elevated enough to hear the voice of God directly and to receive the Torah as an entire community.

Returning to our first question, is the receiving of all of the laws on Sinai really freedom or just another form of enslavement? Why at the pinnacle of their spiritual purity did the Jewish people require a body of rules and restrictions?

The clear message of this story is that freedom is not the ability to do whatever you want, whenever you want to in a hedonistic way. True freedom comes in putting your life in service to something greater than yourself. Just as the enslaved person often looks free from the outside, the truly free person often looks enslaved from the outside. The person who works all hours to house the homeless, or forgoes basic comforts by moving to Africa to help fight AIDs, or risks his or her own life to stop violence and injustice — these people may look as if they are living like slaves, giving up their freedom. In a way that is true. They are slaves. They are slaves to an ideal that is greater than themselves, and that makes them free.

The work we do at Mythic Imagination Institute is hard work. We all make tremendous personal and financial sacrifices to do this work. The core leadership team donates literally thousands of hours of creativity, love and passion. Hundreds of thousands of dollars too. It is intense work. Yet, we would have it no other way. We are slaves to it, because it is meaningful work, and we feel like we are doing something that is needed more now than ever. We are living in a world where the misunderstanding of myth and metaphor has put us on the brink of world war, environmental disaster, and human injustice of myriad form and unprecedented scale. We are falling into fundamentalism of all flavors, because we can't understand our stories and what they are meant to do for us as individuals, communities, and a planet. We need to change this insanity.

Mythic Imagination Institute is now embarking on our journey through the desert. It will not be easy. We are under-funded and understaffed. As I stated from the stage at the last Mythic Journeys, we almost cancelled the last conference, because our turn-out was less than expected. We persevered, and the result was so magical, so beautiful, and so real that we knew we had made the right decision. This time, we will not be able to do it without your help. We need you to attend. We need you to spread the word. We need the community to come together. Just as the Jews left Egypt as individuals and became a community that collectively was able to experience the ultimate spiritual experience, this mythic community can come together to create the joy, the magic, and the importance of Mythic Journeys; a light in the darkness.

Michael Karlin is founder and President of the Mythic Imagination Institute and the Atlanta Mythological RoundTable. He is on the Board of the National Black Arts Festival, the Board of the Alliance for a New Humanity, the Board of Visitors of Emory University, the Board of Trustees of the Greenfield Hebrew Academy, and on the Advisory Board of Comedy for Peace. Michael is currently participating in the Wexner Heritage Foundation's National Leadership Institute. He is a full time philanthropist and part-time investor working with early stage technology and financial services companies.

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