Stephen Gerringer
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Shaahayda,
Thank you for your thoughts on near death experiences (NDEs), which is a subject that fascinates me. Your reflections brought to mind an experience of mine in this area.
I have participated in rebirthing rituals on several occasions (Rebirthing, a technique pioneered by the late Leonard Orr and Sandra Ray, akin to Stan Grof’s Holotropic Breathwork, adopts the pranic breathing central to tantric traditions; many who undergo this will recall their birth experience, and even some past-life memories). No past-life memories surfaced for me, nor did I re-experience my birth trauma, but there were a few mind-boggling moments that seem somehow to have slipped the bonds of time.
The guide for my first rebirthing session was a good friend thoroughly trained in the technique. At his instruction I lay down on a bed and performed rapid, shallow, circular breathing—not easy to maintain for an extended period, so his coaching helped keep me focused and on track the next two hours.
Intriguing process—monotonous at first, interminably so—but then I noticed a tingling in fingers and toes, a metallic taste in the mouth, and a heavy coldness, not shivery, but oddly refreshing, starting in the extremities and slowly moving up my limbs.
No need to bore you with the details, but I’ll mention one tangential tidbit. Halfway through I needed to heed nature’s call, so my coach allowed the necessary break, encouraging me to maintain the circular rhythm of my breath while away. I slowly shuffled down the hall to the bathroom—and shuffle is the right word, for that’s all I could do.
When I looked in the mirror, my face was different, the fingers of my hands were scrunched together in a tight little wedge (like a newborn babe?) with my body drawn up so that I appeared smaller—and I could not, voluntarily, release my fingers or unclench my hands (which made taking care of business a touch more challenging than usual)
and then, back to the bed, breathing, breathing . . .
At one point I recall thinking I had drifted off, for I heard my guide’s voice somewhere in the distance, calling me back, urging me to breathe—and I felt a little disappointed in myself, assuming I had simply fallen asleep.
This happened twice more.
With the process complete I finally surfaced, feeling peaceful and relaxed. That’s when my guide informed me that on the three occasions when I thought I had drifted off, I actually stopped breathing –– very different from holding my breath.
Aaron had timed each occurrence: the last was the longest—after exhaling, I did not breathe in for a full five minutes and thirty-seven seconds! Aaron finally called me back when my lips turned blue.
He asked where I had gone that last time after the breath had left my body.
I recounted moving through a passageway of red rock, similar to the Siq, the entry to the ancient Nabatean city of Petra (the setting of the final scene in Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail), toward a warm, welcoming, bright, loving light—not exactly white, but an ivory hue—where, at some sort of rustic cabin that proved larger on the inside than the outside, I was welcomed by my deceased father, and surrounded by a supportive crowd of friends and relatives long gone. I recall a warm, intimate, lengthy exchange with my father, though I’m not sure if words were involved; everyone else seemed somewhat amorphous and vague.
In fact, I had a sense that the deeper I journeyed into this realm, the more vague it becomes—as if I and the world were slowly dissolving—yet I felt no anxiety about this possibility –– and then I heard Aaron’s voice, faint, but growing stronger: “…breathe… Breathe…”
It’s a sweet memory I treasure today.
True, there could be many explanations. It might be no more than the nitrogen “high” affecting my brain in the absence of oxygen, a hallucination triggered by self-induced hyperventilation—or it might be the dying flickers of the electrons in my brain building a pleasant image, a compensatory metaphor for the most unpleasant process (to waking ego) of the body dying.
Yes, it could all be hallucination—but there’s one other element in the adventure where the dream intersects waking reality.
During one of the other episodes when I stopped breathing, I recalled attending a party, meeting a cute girl, talking to her for hours on a front porch, and then, as rain descended, retreating to a hippie van parked in front of the house and, well, everything kind of faded out from there . . .
I shared this, what?—memory? dream? wishful thinking?—with my guide.
The other image, of the long passage with light at the end and the meeting with my father, seemed archetypal enough—but we could make neither heads nor tales of the Girl-on-the-Porch, no matter what symbols we tried to see
. . . until that evening, when I pedaled a borrowed bicycle seven miles across Portland to a party I had been invited to that afternoon—after the rebirthing—where I talked for hours with a now familiar girl on the front porch, until it started storming and we had to seek shelter inside a Volkswagen van!
(Is that a Rod Serling voice-over in the background?)
Though a part of me remains inclined to write off the encounter with my father as self-induced hallucination, the precognitive nature of the vision of the Girl-on-the-Porch makes it difficult for me to simply dismiss either episode.
I don’t know quite what to make of it all, so I treat this as an experience of metaphor: true on the inside, not quite sure what on the outside.
The way I process this memory is through the mythological complex of wind and spirit and breath and soul. Consciousness seems to have left my body with my breath—and consciousness returned when breath returned. However, definitely leaves me inclined to believe that something, though I know not what, does survive beyond the body, even if that is just individual consciousness being re-absorbed by a more universal Consciousness.
Norland,
So much to absorb here, so much that calls for deep thought and reflection, so much I want to respond to (only a fraction of which I will get to, or I would be typing for days).
I’ll admit a literal interpretation of the Christian myth (in terms of what most people think of as literal) is not something I’d ascribe to you. The only explanation I can think of for that assumption is that’s what’s associated with the practice of Christianity historically, and reflects the experience of most people who were raised Christian: Jesus really was born of a Virgin, really did walk on water, turn water into wine, raise Lazarus bodily from the dead, etc. (you might say that’s part of our mytho-history). My guess would be unconscious projections are in play, based on the sense of personal experience and/or the preponderance of historical evidence, that all Christians believe scriptural accounts as referring to concrete facts that literally happened.
As Joseph Campbell observed:
“I think one of the great calamities of contemporary life is that the religions that we have inherited have insisted on the concrete historicity of their symbols. The Virgin Birth, for example, or the ascension into heaven—these are symbols that are found in the mythologies of the world. Their primary reference must be to the psyche from which they have come. They speak to us of something in ourselves. They cannot primarily refer to historical events. And one of the great problems that is confronting us now is that the authority of the institutions that have been presenting us with these symbols—the religions in which we have been raised—has come into doubt simply because they have insisted on talking about their underlying myths as historical events somewhere. The image of the Virgin Birth: what does it refer to? A historical, biological problem? Or is it a psychological, spiritual metaphor?” (Pathways to Bliss 88)
I agree with Campbell ‘s observation, but if the default assumption whenever one hears the term Christian is that individual must be a literalist, that overlooks the rich strain of symbolic readings of the Christian myth stretching back to many Gnostic Christians in the early centuries, and all the way up to mystics and clerics of the modern age like a Thomas Merton or a Matthew Fox.
Fortunately, Campbell’s perspective is more nuanced than that.
(See what I did there, by the way, tossing in “literal” and “concrete,” though in the sense of common usage rather than that within more esoteric circles. 😄 This is why it is so important to define one’s terms, which does so much to clear up misunderstanding.
I really appreciate the explanation of your distinctly different usage of these terms. When I hear someone say “literal,” or “concrete,” I tend to embrace the common parlance – which means I would completely misunderstand what you intend [heck – it would never occur to be to think of “literal” as “abstract,” which is very much at odds with my Webster’s Unabridged – “true to fact; not exaggerated; actual or factual”].
However, given your elegant and nuanced amplification, everything you say that depends on that definition now falls together in my mind. That might not necessarily change my embrace of the common usage in general – it’s not that one usage is right and all others are wrong – but it does enhance understanding and improve communication when discussing a different perspective. There have been moments in my life where I am certain I am at odds with what another person is saying – and then one or the other of us tumbles to the realization that we are using the same word differently, and voilà! – turns out we are in agreement in our heart and mind, just separated by a common tongue. Defining terms in relation to how one is using them is always a plus.)
Apart from that parenthetical musing, no need to go into the weeds discussing literal vs concrete, other than to thank you for taking the time to address that tangent.
Far more fascinating to me is your subsequent post (#5884 July 20). Your observations rock, Norland! Especially that final paragraph, which just ties so much wonderful together from so many traditions (especially enjoyed drawing in the Native traditions on our continent).
Two things I’d like to focus on from your post: mytho-history, and the sacrificial image of Christ.
We’ll start with sacrifice. I recently came across this in a journal from a couple decades back:
Sacrifice is a metaphor for the nature of the cosmos in which we live: transcendent eternity, pouring into the field of time & space (often represented as a cross). This Eternity is thus immanent in all of creation – fragmented into a multitude of forms that comprise the material universe, with each of us one of those fragments, containing our own little drop of Eternity.”
Best I can tell, I was summarizing my take-away from Joseph Campbell’s theme in The Historical Atlas of World Mythology, Volume II: The Way of the Seeded Earth Part I: “The Sacrifice”
Perhaps Campbell’s interpretation of sacrificial images from a wide range of cultures may have been formed, to borrow your phrase, in the awareness of “the sacrificial image of Christ in the watershed of the Christian eon”; nevertheless, for me that doesn’t alter the perceived resonance with other images of sacrifice from a wide range of cultures (which doesn’t mean there is a point by point correspondence, but rather a kinship). At the same time, that perception doesn’t negate that each is different from the others and unique to its own time and culture,
What is undeniable, whether or not one subscribes to Christian beliefs, is that the Crucifixion is clearly central to Christianity. I am in no overt, conscious sense a Christian – but when my wife and I traveled through Italy last summer, image after image of Christ on the Cross – and also of the Pietà – whether on canvas, mosaic, or marble – triggered unexpected emotions and fluttery sensations in heart and gut.
Such is the power of the archetypal image, especially within the context of my culture’s mytho-history.
I’d also like to ask for a little more on mytho-history. If individuals can have radically different understandings of everyday terms like literal, concrete, or myth, I suspect some may be vague about just what mytho-history refers to – or perhaps, what you mean by the term.
Assyriologist Thorkild Jacobsen (whom Campbell references a few times in both Oriental Mythology and Occidental Mythology,) identified “the Eridu Genesis” from Mesopotamia and the Priestly source of portions of Genesis as evidence of “a new and separate genre” he designates the “mytho-historical” (Thorkild Jacobsen, 1981 “The Eridu Genesis.” Journal of Bible Literature 100: 513-529). The fragment that comprises the Eridu Genesis combines mythological motifs that were current in ancient Mesopotamia along with a historical accent as it details the succession of Sumerian kings and the dates of their reigns (akin to the accounting of the antediluvian patriarchs of Genesis whose lifespans stretched into centuries). That seems the earliest academic appearance of the term I can find. Mytho-history then inspired some theologians, like William Lane Craig, to move away from a rigid, literal interpretation of the many miraculous and mythic motifs in scripture, while acknowledging an historical context.
And, of course, mytho-history relates to more than just the Bible-based religions (as you have noted in relation to the Popol Vuh of the Mayan culture). One can find this in the Illiad (mythological elements clustered around what archaeology reveals is a history of conflict between Greek cities and Troy), the Bhagavad Gita, and so on.
Is this a fair summary, as far as it goes? Did the term originate with Jacobsen? Or does it go back to Renè Girard, who certainly seems to be stepping in that direction decades earlier? What would you add or expand upon to flesh out the understanding of this concept?
Thanks for bearing with me . . .
I’m pretty sure your contribution to the field won’t be on the tech end, Sidian. Keep doing what you’re doing and doors will open (to paraphrase Campbell) . . . which sounds like exactly what happened when you met Stanley Krippner.
Pretty much you are “preaching to the converted” here, which is fine. I so appreciate being able to have a discussion without having to preface it with an introductory MYTH 101 tutorial.
There are of course varying degrees of understanding and experience among forum participants, but you are right – it is indeed refreshing to be able to discuss these topics with people of like mind, which helps fortify and inspire us when it comes to slaying dragons “out there,” in the mundane world, where so many are hungry for they know not what – which is where the time and hard work you are putting in is so important.
Thanks, Lynn!
How do you like the new COHO layout (pruning and deleting fallow forums and adding new ones – some of which should look familiar to you from the old discussion board).
I tend to follow Joseph Campbell’s explanation here (which, of course, is compatible with Krippner’s):
Mythological images are the images by which the consciousness is put in touch with the unconscious. That’s what they are. When you don’t have your mythological images, or when your consciousness rejects them for some reason or other, you are out of touch with your own deepest part. I think that’s the purpose of a mythology that we can live by. We have to find the one that we are in fact living by and know what it is so that we can direct our craft with competence.
Now, many of us live by myths that guide us, myths that may prove adequate for our entire lives. For those who live by such myths, there’s no problem here. They know what their myth is: one of the great inherited religious traditions or another. In all likelihood, this myth will suffice to guide them along the path of their lives.
There are others in this world, however, for whom these guideposts lead nowhere. . . . There are others who may feel that they are living in accord with a certain system but actually are not. They go to church every Sunday and read the Bible, and yet those symbols aren’t speaking to them. The driving power is coming from something else.
You might ask yourself this question: if I were confronted with a situation of total disaster, if everything I loved and thought I lived for were devastated, what would I live for? If I were to come home, find my family murdered, my house burned up, or all my career wiped out by some disaster or another, what would sustain me? We read about these things every day, and we think, Well, that only happens to other people. But what if it happened to me? What would lead me to know that I could go on living and not just crack up and quit?
Now, what do you have in your life that would play this role for you? What is the great thing for which you would sacrifice your life? What makes you do what you do; what is the call of your life to you—do you know it? The old traditions provided this mythic support for people; it held whole culture worlds together. Every great civilization has grown out of a mythic base.
In our day, however, there is great confusion. We’re thrown back on ourselves, and we have to find that thing which, in truth, works for us as individuals.”
Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss
I like your reference to working with your life stories. The way I tend to put it is that personal mythology is not a story that I tell, but the Story that is telling me . . .
Thank you for your willingness to help, Sidian, but JCF is in good shape. We have an excellent team in place, and have a technological company working on a site upgrade at the moment (there was a temporary hiccup yesterday as they made changes to the sign-in process for mobile devices, but that situation was easily resolved). James isn’t involved with the website; he means well, but is making a bit of leap connecting that to an issue eight months ago related to spambots attempting to post porn links in the forums – which is what inspired the use of CAPTCHA.
Similarly, the post that was removed today had nothing to do with technological issues.
I do appreciate your sensitivity to our concerns re self-promotion, so thank you for not going there – not that we have anything against your website (didn’t have to google you – anyone visiting your profile should be able to see your website link).
The topic of personal mythology is endlessly fascinating, and I can’t imagine it being exhausted anytime soon – and, of course, it’s more than just an intellectual exercise, which is why I appreciate Stanley Krippner’s approach (no surprise his and David Feinstein’s The Mythic Path graces my bookshelves, along with a variety of other works on related subjects by a diverse range of practitioners from Jean Houston to, of course, good old Carl Gustav Jung).
Also dear to my heart is Krippner’s “Pilot Study in Dream Telepathy with the Grateful Dead” – now that was an epic experiment!
So how did you happen to meet Stanley? What’s your backstory?
I’d actually suggest either posting a link (or the entire blog post) in the Share Your Work Gallery (link is in my previous comment), or, if it’s not too much work and is relevant to the discussion, copy-and-paste portions of your blog entry here, customizing it a touch.
The main idea behind that guideline is to encourage discussion, not “canned” material prepared for another venue (you would be surprised how many people would pop on and drop a quick hit-and-run post pointing people to their page, without actually every participating in the conversations here). However, you are already participating, rather than trying to build followers.
I will note that it’s not self-promotion if I share your website, which is http://MyMythos.org
🙂If you click on Guidelines & FAQ at the top of the page, you’ll find forum posting guidelines the first entry – always a good idea to check those out. Number 8 is the one that addresses your question (in general the answer is no, but there is an exception):
8. Refrain from Self-Promotion
Announcements linking to your new blog post, book, workshop, video clip, etc., will be deleted, unless they are demonstrably part of the greater conversation. The only exception is the Share-Your-Work Gallery, a subforum within The Conversation with a Thousand Faces. If you have art, poetry, writing, or links to music and other work you would like to share, do so here.That’s good to hear, Marianne!
The first time I heard it described that way was in a MythBlast this spring, and again referenced in passing in the follow-up COHO conversation after I pointed out Campbell’s usage of personal myth wasn’t “honey-sweet” pablum, but was grounded in Jung describing and doing the same. “Individuation” and “the symbolic life” were both referenced in the response to my post.
But since then I’ve had a conversation with a different individual, a practicing psychologist who expressed similar discomfort with the term “personal myth.” He didn’t so much substitute terms, but just dismissed the idea of personal myth as a distraction from the hard work of individuation.
I don’t believe either individual has trouble with the process Campbell advocates, which again mirrors Jung’s experience; their argument is with the term itself. Seems “personal myth” suffers from the same popular misconceptions as “follow your bliss” – many touchy-feelie New Age adherents seem to have embraced that as a magic mantra, a sort of “choose your own myth and make it so” approach. Campbell himself had a problem with that. Here is a response to a question he was asked by John Lobell in an unpublished interview:
We have a lot of those, and the women who suddenly discover the goddess, they know all about the mythology of Greece and Rome and everything within all of 20 minutes, because they are themselves “the goddess” and they know by intuition all these things. I had two lectures last night from two women who grabbed me at a party and talked me to death . . . on this subject.”
I suspect those who dismiss “personal myth” are really expressing their discomfort with popular misunderstandings of what Campbell means (much the same as Jordan Peterson’s antipathy toward the idea of “following your bliss” – what he describes isn’t how Joe uses the term, but how some lazy thinkers believe about it; turns out he reinforces those misconceptions, and is a bit of a lazy thinker himself, as he too misunderstood Campbell on this point).
I too have trouble with that – but I don’t see the solution as dropping the concepts of “personal myth” (or “follow your bliss”), but to go to greater lengths to clarify what Joseph Campbell meant.
Just an FYI, James – from the context I don’t believe SidianMSJones necessarily has questions about personal myth – it’s just a fascinating subject worth discussing, and he has much to share on the subject. The questions he does ask are the kind that elicit self-reflection – definitely a good place to start (after all, every question does begin with a quest).
So how would you answer those questions? What have you discovered about the mythological imagery underpinning your life?
Hercules was the hero and demi-god I most wanted to emulate as a child (and later, as I was introduced to Norse myths, Thor). There weren’t as many widely recognized superheroes in those days (at least, not for any kid who didn’t have access to the pages of Marvel and DC Comics), and Hercules, as portrayed on big screen and small, was always in the thick of the action, rescuing others. This superficial portrayal ignored the huge shadow he cast – all those weaknesses and flaws. Apollo, too, was a being I admired.
It is intriguing, though, that I kept coming back to Athena, whose practical wisdom makes her the patron goddess of civilization. Learning was my first love as a lad, and remains so today, so no surprise Athena continued to speak to me long after my hero worship of Herakles and Apollo had worn off; though I pretty much ignored Hermes as a child, over time his mythology made an ever deeper impression.
Of course, that’s just the Greek pantheon, as filtered through Golden Book encyclopedias and, later, Bullfinch’s mythology – which is just one expression of the mythological forces in play. But that theme – learning, meaning, esoteric knowledge, and wisdom – continues to command my attention.
Yet that’s just my conscious perception. Over time, I found myself embracing the shadow side of those archetypal figures – emotional energies, chaos, disruption, a love of intoxication (not so much adult beverages, but psychedelics, and the intoxication that comes with poetry and art), so Dionysus entered the mix (as, eventually, did Shiva).
That’s just a little snapshot of what ultimately proved a deep dive so many decades ago (though a continuing process yet today). These deities from different cultures allowed me to put a name to it – many names – though they are but masks for the mythological forces at play in my life.
In my writing, I am at my best when Hermes and Dionysus collaborate, or are at least in balance – but that’s another story.
SidianMSJones
Uncovering the personal myth playing out in our lives, which may differ dramatically from what we think or want our myth to be, is indeed the genius of Joseph Campbell’s mythological perspective. Though the giants in the field who preceded Joseph Campbell studied myth to understand other cultures and add to human knowledge, he was one of the first to grasp that mythology has relevance in our lives today (building on that foundation Jung laid).
I have met a few in the field of mythology who look askance at the idea of personal mythology. One scholar with a depth psychology orientation recently suggested that the concept of personal myth deceptively provides “honey-sweet ‘positive’ content for our lives”; his criticism is that one adopts a personal myth (as if it’s a conscious choice), which he sees as no more than a pleasant lie we tell ourselves.
Many of the same critics have no trouble with Jung’s recognition, after writing Symbols of Transformation, that he did not know by what myth he was living, and they applaud his subsequent determination “to get to know ‘my’ myth,” which he regarded “as my tasks of tasks . . . I simply had to know what unconscious or preconscious myth was forming me, from what rhizome I sprang.”
Nevertheless, even though Jung uses the term “personal myth” several times in Memories, Dreams, Reflections, and elsewhere, in the exact same way as does Campbell, some (though far from all) I know with a Jungian bent dismiss the term, preferring to refer to this exclusively as the “process of individuation,” or “the symbolic life” – terms which also apply – but the implication is that Jung’s approach is distinct from Campbell’s perspective.
I suspect that is based on the perception (or perhaps projection might be the more appropriate term) that “personal mythology” has become a New Age mantra – sparkly, glittering, “honey-sweet,” and lacking in intellectual rigor.
That is far from my understanding and experience of the process of uncovering and plumbing the mythological dynamics driving and shaping my life, which turn out to be at odds with my ego perspective. “Investigating the subjective contents which are the products of unconscious processes . . . to explore the manifestations of the unconscious” (again borrowing from Jung’s description of his personal myth) can be uncomfortable and emotionally wrenching – not at all the “happy happy joy joy” misunderstanding some critics have of what they think Campbell means by personal mythology.
Your original post landed just days before we planned to unveil this new forum category, “Exploring Your Personal Mythology.” We’ve moved yours and a few relevant threads from other categories into this forum, but your comment is the one that most specifically addresses the topic. I would love to hear your thoughts on this.
I am very pleased that JCF has gathered all our conversations on dreams into this new forum category! It’s been difficult trying to find and track them scattered among the potpourri of threads in the catch-all Conversations with a Thousand Faces forum.
Considering the Dog Days of Summer have come round once more, I thought I might bump this music on the mythology of the heavens back up to the top of the queue . . .
Welcome, Benjamin!
Determining what any specific mythological motif is exactly can be akin to nailing one’s shadow to the wall – there are numerous parallel and contradictory personal and collective associations embedded in each image. What the “Father” means in a myth is bound up with one’s experience of one’s own father, societal expectations of a father’s role, and then, as well, the idea of a masculine supreme deity.
Broadly speaking, the image of Mother relates to nature, soul, and the physical world (indeed, when we are in the womb, and for an extended period after birth, especially when nursing, our mother is our entire world). Father, on the other hand, often represents authority, and our responsibilities to the external society.
Even on the home front, we are comforted and nurtured by Mom, while Dad is the lawgiver and dispenser of discipline (“Just you wait till your father gets home!”).
Joseph Campbell points out that we are in a position of dependence on our parents roughly the first twelve years of lives – we rely on them for everything. But as we come of age and embrace the life of an adult, we separate from our parents and make our own way in the world. In our culture we don’t have a clear coming of age initiation after which we know we are an adult (we seem to have replaced that with the vague limbo of adolescence, where one is neither child nor adult), so it sort of sneaks up on us. In one sense you know you are an adult when you realize that, instead of running everything past your parents and seeking their permission, you are the authority over your own life.
Often in mythology a young man goes off to find his father (the twin sons of the Sun in the Navajo myth of “Where the Two Came to Their Father,” or Telemachus in the Odyssey, who leaves Ithaca to look for his father, Ulysses), this is about finding one’s place in the world. We see this theme (“Atonement” – or “At-One-Ment” – with the Father) most often in Judeo-Christian mythology (as opposed to “the Meeting with the Goddess”), but it’s a theme that surfaces in most mythologies at some point.
Of course, I’m just scratching the surface here. Is this making sense, or have I misunderstood your question?
I am glad to hear there are “Reylos.” I have never quite grokked the animus some very vociferous fans have expressed toward Rey, starting with The Force Awakens.
Even the early criticism that Rey was just a “Mary Sue” (someone who almost immediately becomes an adept at something one has just learned – like dueling with light sabers, or wielding the Force) could just as easily be applied to Luke Skywalker (who has about two minutes training from Obi Wan Kenobi in the Force and fighting with a light saber on the way to Alderon, and has never piloted any craft off-planet before – yet after two flight-simulator sessions and 30 seconds of instruction is an expert pilot who uses the Force to blow up the Death Star).
I suspect the unspoken source of much of the criticism can be credited to either discomfort with a female hero on the part of some, and/or resentment that Luke is not the hero of the final trilogy. Of course, a movie series that clings to an aging hero becomes both sad, and unbelievable (e.g. Indiana Jones in the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull – which may not bode well for the next film in that franchise).
Speaking just from my own perspective, that resonance between Rey and Ben Solo is the most interesting and novel element of the concluding trilogy; I am so pleased to know Reylos are pondering their relationship and what it reveals about the Force.
May the Force Be With You, too!
