One of my nocturnal meanderings a while back started, as they often do with some ponderance about race. This quickly morphed itself into a question of the function & validity of archetypes, then settled in, at last, to an issue of heroes.
The societal pathology of the frequently undeserved elevation of a person into an icon based on some achievement only remarkable by the standards of a spiritually bankrupt culture’s pop-mentality.
It finally hit though. We need heroes, we need icons. Because we need a guiding light to motivate ourselves toward our ideal “I.”
Toward being in love with our reflection every time we see it.
This is the function of Buddha, or Yeshua, or Abraxas; a Godhead to illuminate. A Godhead to Illuminate us.
…Life is a complicated matter. We can run propaganda wars over the introduction of Ebonics as an accepted dialect. We can shoot one another over shoes. We can bomb one another over the dinosaur remains which run our cars. We can invent theories over the demise of a celebrity who brought some joy or perspective to us through their violent, unstable lives.
Or we can recognize that the light shining from the words and thoughts of our heroes is nothing more than a well articulated expression of our own light.
We can remember that we’ve spent far too long mistaking the reflection for something separate from us.
[via Nomen Est Numen]