The Myth of Echo and Narcissus
How to Understand Our Own Power Better: A Mashup of Ancient and New Culture
July 16: Reflecting and Engaging with Power and Humility
This post explores how we interact and includes how we have been treated as we engage with the US right-wing, especially with former president trump.
I have long felt our inability to reflect on Self and Others in a way that is useful is a great cultural problem. We are not taught to be REFLECTIVE and EFFECTIVELY ENGAGE. Reflexivity was developed to explore these skills.
This is the ability to be intrapersonal, to look within, and to be interpersonal to be aware of others as we engage.
This entry was greatly inspired by a tarot read by Gregory Scott and, second, a hearing of Dine/Navajo Elder Pat McCabe recently in our School of Mythopoetics. You are invited to join us. I have heard Pat often, and this time felt new as life often does.
As many know and some judge me for it, I study narcissism deeply, and I feel I have greatly benefited. I benefited not only in my own obsessive love that perhaps stunted finding my own voice but also from understanding the right-wing politics and trump plaguing the US and the World now. Narcissus can love no one but himself though he was taught as a youth to be humble.
He instead chooses to obsess about himself and punish anyone who tries to love him.
Today I newly focus on the powers of Echo, who, like many, fell in love with Narcissus.
In counseling & coaching, MUSIC, and ART, a big goal is to encourage healthy self-reflection and to recognize our ability to love and serve others, to IN-SPIRE as a life path. This is easily seen in making music where players echo and play together, riffing off each other. Most narcissists will not even enter any kind of therapy. I find myself often needing to be indirect, a kind of echo of what I sense.
And to remain an Echo is, like in the story, not healthy either. Especially as we age, women seem more and more to be standing up and speaking the truth to power.
This is especially important as we begin to understand and prepare to VOTE in the midterms. I hope you will vote BLUE.
Lawyer Glenn Kirshner has suggested that VP PENCE testify and that he "woman up" and, as so many women now have, challenge Trump.
Pence has been an echo and what we call from the Wizard of Oz, a flying monkey to trump. A man who calls his wife MOTHER.
He was appointed to manage the pandemic where equipment was sold instead of given where needed, silly useless medications recommended, and more. Over 300k died. I think of that time often.
I feel it is past time for us all to stand up and tell the truth humbly yet powerfully in good faith. Pat McCabe, the Dine elder from a Matriarchal lineage, whom I have mentioned and heard, speak often, has the name I believe of Woman Stands Shining. In the link above, she spoke of how hard it has been to speak without malice, humbly yet powerfully, especially to oppressors. There is much I believe we all can learn from her journey and our practices to become better, more dignified humans who serve the greater good.
This post crosses the boundaries of ancient and modern stories. This, to me, supports the universality of Jungian archetypes. I like it.
Let's go VOTE BLUE and allow Echo and ourselves our own voice now.
While there are many sites, this one, The Collector, linked below, offers three versions of Echo and Narcissus. Only one version sees Echo's power. I intend to change that.
May this consideration especially help those who trumpet trump find their own voices in democracy with humility and dignity in service to the greater good, not some self-obsessed man-child who even uses his ex-wife's death to make money for himself. Trump, we see you now. The end is near, just as it was for Narcissus.
Here is a post from The Collector with three versions of the myth of Echo and Narcissus. Who are you, and what do you want for our world?
Please Share, Subscribe, and Comment. I am now at npeden@gmail.com for further engagement.