One of the biggest problems with Enlightenment mythology is that positive feelings rely on external states and external events.

People have tried to create inherently positive mythologies - a Christian called Matthew Fox tried to promote something he called original blessing, as an antidote to the concept of original sin - but they're rarely sticky.

In fact one of the many ironies of the Enlightenment is that structural mythologies are terror-based, and rooted in the immiment fear of pain, death and annihilation.

Aside from a brief outburst of optimism in the 60s, which created Star Trek and some other positive ideologies, most Western mythology is surprisingly gloomy and desperate. ('In the long run we're all dead.')

There's a permanent opposition between a slightly strained cult of personal sovereignty, and Everything Else, which is either indifferent or hostile.

The Enlightenment never really outgrew Christianity's fear of apocalypse. And aside from fear of snakes, mythologies of doom and apocalypse have always been one of the paradoxically unconscious drivers of Enlightenment values.

Unsurprisingly, it's not easy to feel inherently positive in that kind of background atmosphere.

but somehow I think some are too powerful and too integrated in oneself.

Maybe through strong meditation and learning I could stop feeling obvious that "myself" exist...at most I couls try to understand and take the buddhism philosophy.. but frankly how on earth I am going to think that a tree is thinking in my brain? I think I should have learnt that when I was child... now it is no longer possible.

the same goes for the misterous spatial mythologies.. I am not sure you can change them because, frankly, the only thing I know is that they are very powerful but I do not even understand them even at the basic level.

I am with you there is a lot of fundamental structures that one can change in adulthood.. but I am not sure all of them can be changed.

Still, I am an optimistic kind of guy.. one can change the relevant ones..but this is a stroy a tell to myself :)

A pleasure

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude

For most people it is a dissatisfaction with their current lifes that makes them look for change. But it is not solely a thing of willpower or thinking - that does not work, it has to go deeper into what kcurie calles the symbolic.

The mystics can be a guide here, but only if one is at the proper point in their life.  When I was in grad school I took a Western Intellectual History course taught by, my luck, a self professed Thomist, his belief system was far from the only thing this professor liked to be outrageous about.  One of the assignments was Juan de la Cruz's Dark Night of the Soul!  I was a 21 year old atheist and thought that having to read and attempt to understand this drivel work was my own dark night of the soul. I read the work and tried to understand it but I had no basis for so doing. I got my A by not having to deal with Juan.  A few years later, after some relevant personal experience, no problem!  I clearly understood what Juan had been talking about, even though the way out that I found would have been alien to him. (Unless, perhaps, some of Juan's experiences were triggered by ergot, but even then...)

One thing though is clear: utter and abject misery is a wonderful motivator to cause one to consider that perhaps there are errors or omissions in one's understanding of one's self and the world, although it is far from sufficient. Subsequently I have often seen that a similar situation is the motivating force for others to reevaluate themselves and their lives.  One can arrive at a similar conclusion on a purely abstract and intellectual basis, but the understanding thus achieved usually lacks the emotional force and motivating power to cause them to be willing to undertake the difficult inner work needed for change.

 

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

That's not what I said, I said that everyone who is a born-again Christian has changed their narrative.

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma

And not everyone who changes their narrative become a born again Christian. :-)

not everyone who changes their narrative become a born again Christian