Myth & Fairy Tale Podcast: How Stories Shape and Change Our Lives

In this episode I'm exploring the idea or the ethos of "punk," delving into the spirit of the word itself, what it means for us, and where we go to find it. I imagine the idea of punk as being an underground movement, primarily. This corresponds with mythic ideas of depth and the underworld. Punk as an idea and as a movement presents an adverse response to the values and ideas of our upperworld li...

With the advent of Artificial Intelligence, or A.I., humanity has now embarked upon a new Promethean fantasy of the soul. It has also opened up a new "Pandora's Box," with which we now have the tools and the power to make ourselves, the human race, obsolete. Amongst the very real existential crises and challenges this new technology potentially brings to our daily living, the quesiton of where sou...

With the advent of Artifical Intelligence, or A.I., humanity has now embarked upon a new Promethean fantasy of the soul. It has also opened up a new "Pandora's Box," with which we now have the tools and the power to make ourselves, the human race, obsolete. Amongst the very real existential crises and challenges this new technology potentially brings to our daily living, the question of where soul...

Through the lens of James Hillman's theory on archetypal psychology, I explore the phenomenon of "fundamentalism" as a psychological one, primarily. Arguing that this is an aspect of a monotheistic vision of the soul, I explore the implications of its cultural, religious, and political impact on the world, and how this relates to the rise of an authoritarian impulse we are currently witnessing wor...

As a species, we humans traditionally do not handle paradoxical tensions well. Whether in the individual human soul or in relationship to each other, our failure to understand the wisdom of certain tensions and learn how to balance them well inevitably leads to war. History bears all the scars of our repeated cycles of war and peace (or breaks from war). We live in a moment of history where unbrid...

Philosophers, theologians, and storytellers alike have been grappling with the phenomenon of the 'Self' since time immemorial, trying to describe what it is and what it is not. We all experience the paradoxical sensations of both separateness and unity. The Tale of the Half-Man is an exploration into what happens when part of a unified whole chooses to separate itself and make itself a distinction...

In this final chapter of my religious deconstruction journey, I talk about how my relationship with the faith and religion of my past looks and feels today, particularly in the context of tumultuous social and political upheaval in the United States. I acknowledge both the gifts I have received from the faith and religious community of my past, as well as a continued and growing anger and frustrat...

As my religious deconstruction story continues, I come full circle to the memory of my father, David, where nearly 20 years after his death I find an opportunity for inner reconciliation and peace. With the help of a good friend to walk me through a healing ceremony out in the wild deserts of Southern California, I find forgiveness, healing, redemption, and release. This episode concludes with a s...

In this episode I recount the years where I was getting ready to graduate from college but having little to no direction as to where to go in life and what to do next. A serendipitous chain of events in my senior year of college opened the door to an unexpected pathway which led me to go to graduate school where I studied to become a therapist. This proved to be a frutiful time of personal, spirit...

In this episode my story resumes around my early college years and the particular struggles I was having and developing around that time. Having covertly lost my faith in the church of my upbringing and my larger faith in God beginning to erode rapidly, I set out to look for answers and the truth beyond the familiar confines of my religious community; outside the borders of its theological tenets,...

Religious deconstruction is a path of transition, like so many other transitions that all of us go through in life. It has the components of loss, crisis, confusion, grief, and anger. It also includes catharsis, wisdom, joy, anticipation, and the opportunity for new life to arise out of the ashes of an old one. My deconstruction journey begins for me at the age of 10, when our family learned that...

Laura Lewis-Barr is an award-winning screenwriter, stop-motion filmmaker, and educator. Laura writes comedy features. As a filmmaker Laura's focus is on animating fairy tales and mythic stories that explore personal and collective transformation. She is inspired by the work of Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, Jack Zipes, and Marie-Louise von Franz. Laura creates her short films in the basement of her h...

Laura Lewis-Barr is an award-winning screenwriter, stop-motion filmmaker, and educator. Laura writes comedy features. As a filmmaker Laura's focus is on animating fairy tales and mythic stories that explore personal and collective transformation. She is inspired by the work of Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, Jack Zipes, and Marie-Louise von Franz. Laura creates her short films in the basement of her h...

The term Apokalypsis is a Greek word that denotes a "revelation" or an "unveiling." It is the term from which we derive the modern word apocalypse. Unlike modern, fundamentalist religious movements that interpret this idea to mean the literal end of the world, the original term denotes something different, if no less harrowing. The moment of revelation, in both Biblical and mythical literature alw...

In this episode, Bear shares some of his experiences interacting with the Aboriginal communities he met with during his time Australia. Bear also introduces us to the concept of being "hollow-boned," as he recalls his work in facilitating sweat lodges, which is a stance that a person must take in order to "hold space" for others. We also explore the power of intention and balance as mechanisms for...

The human race is in the middle of treacherous, tumultuous, and dangerous times. We are in the middle of what the Greeks called "Apokalypsis," which means a moment of "revelation," or a "lifting of the veil." Such moments in human history are accompanied by fear, confusion, and chaos. In this episode I talk about the psychological realities of hell, and how we can learn, collectively, to walk thro...

In this third and final installment of my conversation with Dr. Amy Ferrell, we explore together how the human Shadow provides us with a potential path into the deeper wisdom of ourselves, as well as exhibiting a warning to us, should choose to ignore it. We explore how our current culture and society have been neglecting to deal with its own collective shadows and our observations of the results...

A continuing conversation about apprehending the nature of the Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine archetypes where we explore how different stories we have each adopted throughout our lives have shaped us both for good or for ill, where those stories came from, as well as exploring an aspect of the nature of the Divine Masculine as our capacity as human beings to "hold space," both for ourselves...

The Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine archetypes in myths and fairy tales are both powerful symbols and powerful binaries, between which the human race investigates more of its own fullness and wholeness in the underlying unity of non-binary spaces. These archetypal symbols and energies are qualities which belong to all human beings, regardless of sex or gender, and as such are capable of being...

The stories which invoke such powerful, archetypal imagery as that of the Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine energies are both timeless and ageless. These images, or symbols, are divine forms of energy that belong to all human beings. In this sense they are not restrained to either gender or sex. What happens, however, when we as a species begin to impose our own ideas of sex, gender identity, a...

The work of inner reconciliation is not the work of getting rid of different parts of ourselves, including our own darknesses. The work, instead, is about accepting and taking responsibility for every part of ourselves, continually learning to bring them into balance with each other.

Daniel Gray Bear, or "Bear" Calderon is a healer, elder, and wisdom figure who comes to us from the Mescalero Apache community. He is a master storyteller and a holder of space for those on a journey of healing and wholeness, having facilitated many sweat lodges and working one on one with individuals learning to listen, embrace, and follow their own paths of curiosity, healing, and growth. In thi...

There are many different ways to engage and interact with stories. In this episode I provide but one example of the interpretation of a story where each character and component of the story itself is understood as being an aspect of the protagonist's personality, in this case, Dorothy from Kansas. From this perspective, the land of Oz is a metaphor for Dorothy's unconscious self, and all the chara...

Wholeness is not something we achieve. Wholeness is what we already are. Our individual and collective journeys to realize and retrieve a connection with our own inner wholeness is a journey of re-remembering that which we have forgotten, that which we have lost sight of. Much of the first part of life consists of ego-building; learning to skills, trying new things, and figuring out our own identi...