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A Mythic Life: Learning to Live Our Greater Story Paperback – 20 May 1996

by Jean Houston Ph.D. (Author)

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In this book, Jean Houston reveals the mythological themes woven into her own life experiences to show each of us live stories that are universal and larger than our particulars.

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Product details

Language: : English
Paperback : 352 pages
ISBN-10 : 0062514032
ISBN-13 : 978-0062514035

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Jean Houston is a hugely significant force for good without preaching

31 August 2016 - Published on Amazon.com

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Life-changing: if you're able to slip time and the conventions of the seeing we're trapped in, the seeing that's destroying us, this book is for you. Jean Houston is a hugely significant force for good without preaching. She is able to teach us vividly and simply how to remake this world in remaking ourselves. She acquaints us with sensory and metaphysical tools of transformation she has discovered through serendipitous meetings and scientific research, both the methods we tend to believe and rely on as real and those we dismiss as imaginary. She's down-to-earth. She's funny. She's kind. She's unfettered in her brilliance. And if her methods were taught in public schools and universities across the land, we would not be afraid of the future. We'd be able to handle what's coming. Jean Houston is the most important teacher of our time.

11 people found this helpful

Lena Cox

A memoir on how to improve human potential.

21 June 2013 - Published on Amazon.com

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A Mythic Life is the memoir of Jean Houston. Houston is a world leader in personal and social transformation. She anachronistically weaves the reader through her dreams, her conversations, her childhood, and her adulthood. With each thread of her weaving, she describes events in her life and how each event or fractal led to her path as a spiritual teacher. Her memoir draws parallels to how people have important past events that help them blossom and fulfill their present lives.

Houston's childhood involved moving often, some years several times in one school year. The moving taught her to observe, adapt, and join groups. Perhaps it was this constant out-siderness that allowed her to pause, even as a child, to see how people interact with each other and to learn how to employ optimal ways for people to work together. She shares her revelations that directed her to help people and communities deepen their creativity and their potential.

It's been Houston's pursuit to engage people and communities to exercise their full potential by spiritually reaching inwardly and outwardly. The text is full of wisdom nuggets like:

"Wounding often involves a painful excursion into pathos, we experience massive anguish, and the suffering cracks the boundaries of what we thought we could stand. And yet, time and again, I discover that the wounding pathos of our local stories contains the seeds of healing and even of transformation."

and

"On her deathbed, Margaret [Mead] suggested to me that the answers lie not with economic or political initiatives but with a deepened citizenry. We can transform the world only by transforming ourselves, for what threatens our survival is not weaponry or technology but the people who use them."

Her memoir requires an acceptance that life is experienced through many types of lenses and a bit of faith in the un-seeable. It's helpful to remember that Houston is a mystic. She believes in the energies and the essence that lie within people and that tie people to their ancestors.

I could have done without the second to the last chapter. She uses that chapter to break from the style of writing she used in the majority of the book to meld her love of cooking with her philosophy on improving the human condition. The chapter lacked the pace and fluidity of the previous chapters. It's my only complaint in an otherwise interesting read.

Her writing led me to further books, including her friend Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces. His book was on my shortlist to read because it's a must-read text for writers; yet from Houston's point of view and the conversations she shares that she had with Campbell, his famous text has a spiritual edge. In Houston's opinion, Campbell's book reveals the archetypes of spirits present in a multitude of myths and stories. Joseph Campbell was one of many of Houston's more famous friends. Her social circle also included anthropologist Margaret Mead and politician Hilary Clinton.

A Mythic Life is not a summer vacation read. Choose a time to read it when you have time to contemplate her message and her life. For an immensely creative woman, her memoir's cover is dull (dark tan with white writing); luckily the content is not.

More reviews at http://pagecravings.com

7 people found this helpful

Mark Edward Bachmann

A Mythic Life Is A Wild Ride

13 March 2001 - Published on Amazon.com

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Readers of this book will have sharply diverging reactions to it, and I myself am of two minds. At her worst, Jean Houston can come across like a precocious and hyperactive college kid: flip, full of herself, flaunting exuberance, self-promoting, greedy for catharsis, disorderly ideas sprouting everywhere like psychedelic mushrooms. On the other hand, at her best, she's brilliant, scholarly, profoundly creative, wise, kind, and funny. On the balance, happily, I found the latter set of characteristics predominant here, although the less attractive side of her nature will be readily apparent to anyone unsympathetic to her style and her philosophy. This is an autobiography of sorts, although one in a style that only Jean Houston could conceive: utterly non-linear. What she actually gives us is series of anecdotes from all stages of her life, interspersed chaotically with a fireworks display of philosophical musing, human potential pep talks, New Age proselytizing, scientific speculation, and lectures on her original brand of mystical anthropology. Interestingly, she's the daughter of neither a scholar nor a mystic, but of an itinerant Hollywood gag writer, whom she loved dearly and who ran the family like an overbearing-but-lovable gypsy king. Numerous accounts of his lautish stunts pepper his daughter's book and bring comic relief. He was a direct descendent of Sam Houston, the flamboyant Texan general and politician, laying down a genetic strain that seems not at all improbable once you begin getting a sense of what Jean Houston is about. Of her retiring Sicilian-American mother, we learn very little. Dr. Houston's central animating idea, like that of her teacher and colleague Joseph Campbell, is that certain myths are universal among all peoples and all times, including our own, and they are the main drivers of psychological and spiritual essence of human existence. Exploring ourselves in light of these myths is key to fulfilling life - hence the book's title. Jean Houston takes this idea much further than Campbell did, and makes it the centerpiece of the teaching, lecturing, and mystical psychotherapy which has become both her life's calling and her business. This is compelling material and she presents it with eloquence and passion, despite the interference which her manic style at times brings to the narrative. I recommend "A Mythic Life", although it's not for everyone, and readers should be prepared for what they're getting.

91 people found this helpful

Brenda Hamilton

... read - - a page turner that was never boring. Jean Houston writes with vivid descriptions

20 May 2017 - Published on Amazon.com

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This was one of the most fascinating and astonishing autobiographies I have ever read - - a page turner that was never boring. Jean Houston
writes with vivid descriptions, candor, uproarious humor and humility. I especially loved the wonderful stories about her unusual early development of self-knowledge which led to her many remarkable abilities in later life. I greatly enjoyed learning about her mentoring by some of the greatest people of our time. She is truly a larger-than-life, most remarkable woman and this is a delicious book.

2 people found this helpful

riverlass

I LOVE this book!!!!

25 August 2019 - Published on Amazon.com

Verified Purchase

I LOVE this book!!!!

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