Dear All,
As I told you earlier, I am currently reading Paul Ray's and Sherry Anderson's extremely important book Cultural Creatives. (Ray, Paul H. and Anderson, Sherry Ruth (2000). The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press.)
I am at present in Japan, trying to emerge myself into Japanese culture and learn from it as much as possible. The story of Amaterasu Omikami fascinates me. To my great surprise and joy, Ray and Anderson use this story to illustrate the path we may envisage toward a different, better future for our planet.
I let Ray and Anderson speak further down, I thank them most gratefully for their permission.
Most warmly!
Evelin

On page 346, Ray and Anderson conclude:
In every age where people have come through a time of immense change, they have done so with a wisdom tradition with elders, a community, and a guiding story to focus their energies toward life and hope. In the Exodus story, “the Dusty Ones,” as Thomas Cahill calls them, wandered “through Sinai’s lunar landscape, denuded of the ordinary web of life, baked in absolute heat and merciless light,” (Thomas Cahill, The Gifts of the Jews, New York, NY: Nan Talese/Doubleday, 1998, p. 142) sustained by a vision of a land flowing with milk and honey. In the New Testament, it is the city shimmering on the hill that calls to people. In Tibetan Buddhism, it is Shambala, and in Japanese Buddhism, it’s the Pure Land. Athens, Venice, and Byzantium were images of the ideal cities to Mediterranean peoples. And in every instance, the vision of the possible was a beacon and a resting place, a sustenance through times when the flow of life was hard to trust and life’s goodness hard to remember.
When the age of Modernism has ended and we have prepared the way for a new culture to take its place, our vision of the world we can create will help us through the deserts of the Between. We can begin right now to imagine a culture wise enough to make this passage and imagine our part in it. That is the first step in making it so.

Here comes the story of Amaterasu Omikami, told by Ray and Anderson on pages 343-344 of their book:

Epilogue: The ten thousand mirrors
No one today can remember the time when Amaterasu Omikami, the Great Mother Sun, hid herself deep n the Cave of Heaven and refused to come out. But to those who know the story, every mirror is a reminder that there once was a time when all the spirits of living things had to join together to bring life back to the Earth.
In those very early times, the spirit of every living thing was called its kami. The kami of the mountain was lavender and long. The kami of trees was great and green. Animals’ kami was smooth as silk. The kami of rocks and rivers was silent as the moon. All the strength of these kami poured forth from Amaterasu Omikami, and in her honor the great pattern of the seasons of planting and harvest was woven.
One day it happened that Amaterasu Omikami fell into despair because of the actions of her jealous brother Susanowo. Some say he betrayed the great Goddess by tearing through the rice paddies in a drunken fit of rage, until every plant in every field was broken and dying. Others remember Susanowo heaving a calf through the windows of the celestial weaving house, smashing the looms and breaking the sacred threads of connection between every living thing. But though some say this and some say that, everyone agrees on what happened next.
Amaterasu Omikami fled to the Cave of Heaven and locked herself inside. Without her light, all the realms of heaven and earth were plinged into darkness. The kami of the rise withered. The kami of the birds and animals and mountains and trees and fishes turned into frail gray ghosts. The Earth and all that was of it began to die.
Eventually, and none too soon, the kami gathered together to discuss what to do. “We must moan and weep outside her case,” some said. “That will never work,” said others. “Who wants to join a crowd that’s moaning and weeping?” Finally someone said, “Let’s have a celebration with songs that make us laugh and music that sets our feet tapping. And let’s have dances with lots of stomping and whirling. Surely that will bring the great Sun out of her cave.”
Everyone agreed, but they decided that one more thing was needed: a huge mirror. “If we reflect Amaterasu’s radiance back to her,” they said to each other, “maybe she’ll take heart and remember us. Maybe she’ll return to the Round of Life.”
But as soon as they thought of the need for a great mirror, their courage failed. Because not one of them had the strength to lift such a mirror. Then someone whispered, in a voice so feeble everyone had to strain to hear, “Let’s each bring a tiny piece of mirror and hide it in our clothes. As soon as Amaterasu Omikami peeks out of her cave, we’ll all hold up our shards at the same time and our tens of thousands will make a single mirror.”
And that is precisely what they did. The very next day, all the kami in the world collected outside the Cave of Heaven and slowly, almost inaudibly, started to sing. In time their voices rose high and rich into the night. But even while the kamis’ drums beat their irresistible rhythms, and even while the kamis’ feet stomped and tapped in splendid whirling dances, no one forgot to watch the door of the Cave of Heaven. Finally, very late in the evening, the cave door cracked open, and a single beam of light slipped out. Instantly, the kami lifted their slivers of mirror to Amaterasu’s radiance.
The goddess gasped in amazement. Fascinated, she took a step forward. And another. Soon she had stepped all the way out of her cave. Laughing and clapping her hands to see herself reflected in so many thousands upon thousands of forms, the Great Mother Sun danced all the way out of her hiding place and all the way into the wide blue sky.
Once again the kami of the mountains grew lavender and long. The kami of trees was great and green. Animals again had kami as smooth as silk. The kami of rocks and rivers and fish and flowers once more poured forth from the Great Mother Sun. And in her honor the pattern of the seasons of planting and harvest was again woven. And so it is to ths very day. (Ray and Anderson write in a footnote: The Amaterasu story is adapted from Jalaja Bonheim, Goddess: A Celebration in Art and Literature, New York, NY: Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 1997, and Carolyn McVickar Edwards, The Storyteller’s Goddess, San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins, 1991; it is based on eight-century Japanese Shinto and Buddhist texts.)

On pages 345-346, Ray and Anderson explain how Amaterasu Omikami's story can serve us as a guiding story for the transition into a better future
Sometimes a primal story like this Japanese sun goddess myth can evoke a reality so immediate that it touches a core longing in our soul. The story’s images resonate with the truth of our own time. Amaterasu Omikami’s story is one of those ancient resonators. Maybe the betrayal that leaves every plant broken and dying recalls the way our ecology is being ruined. Maybe the tearing apart of the sacred threads of connection reminds us of how, in the name of progress, we are using up what belongs to our children. Or maybe the kami’s lack of strength and wisdom to stop the Earth from dying touches our own sense of helplessness to invent a future that will sustain the generations who will come after us.
But, as the story says, whether it’s this or whether it’s that doesn’t really matter. What everyone remembers is the solution: the countless beings who come together to create a collective mirror to save the Earth. Imagine them all, arrayed like some giant dish antenna facing the cave of heaven, singing and dancing and waiting for the exact moment to focus the creative fire of the sun goddess back to her. This is no passive mirroring. When the sun finally comes out to play, she’s moving fast. The kami need to be alert and sensitive so they can track her movements precisely. Otherwise, she’ll dance out of their focus. The spirit of everyone is needed here: to be awake, to sing their songs and dance their dances, and to help create this splendid, necessary emergence that will reweave the threads of connection for all of them.
There’s a place in the Arizona desert where this millennium-old story comes to life. It’s and Israeli-built solar collector made of an immense affray of free-standing mirrors. Every mirror reflects the sun’s light onto a single collector tower that heats water to over a thousand degrees to derive turbines for electricity. Each mirror is slightly curved and pivots independently under sensitive computer control to track the sun’s beams and keep them focused on the tower. All of them taken together make the equivalent of a gigantic parabolic mirror.
In the ancient story and in its high-tech analogue in Arizona, the same powerful solution is given: focus tens of thousands of individuals on the creative fire and let them move independently but with a common purpose, and the life-giving energies will be beyond belief. The power that can be focused by compound mirrors is vast, while that reflected by uncoordinated individual actions has little effect. An individual’s work may be personally satisfying and a testimony of great value, but like mirrors pointed in a hundred different directions, isolated actions can’t make the kinds of changes that are needed now. In a culture as individualistic as ours, the implications are clear.
Today, our fast-moving world requires that we make dynamic, sensitive responses and not repeat the old stories of our past. Certainly the Cultural Creatives are focusing on such responses, but their efforts alone will not be enough. All of us with our diverse capacities and deepest insights, our lively curiosity and compassion and all our intelligence, are needed. One grand mirror won’t do it. Our new story in one that requires ten thousand tellers and ten times more to be inspired by it. Our new face needs ten thousand mirrors, each with a unique angle of vision to catch the creative energy available now. And as the new stories and vision are coordinated into action, the new designs and new technologies have an enormous leverage that makes possible a sustainable world.
But technologies and cleverness alone will not save us. In today’s world, each of us needs to take a dual viewpoint. We invite you to consider the story of Amaterasu Omikami from two viewpoints: that of the ten thousand kami of life on the planet, and that of the sun goddess herself. If we only see from the perspective of the kami, we are like the initiate in the midst of the Between teetering between fear and trust, uncertain of who he is or where she is going. But if we also see from the perspective of the sun goddess, our shining, life-giving completeness will be reflected in every living thing. We will reflect the personal and the eternal truth of who we are.