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A Bit Of Advice Given To A Young Native American At The Time Of His Initiation: As You Go The Way Of Life, You Will See A Great Chasm. Jump. It Is Not As Wide As You Think.

-Joseph Campbell

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A Bit Of Advice

Joseph Campbell

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A Bit Of Advice Given To A Young Native American At The Time Of His Initiation: As You Go The Way Of Life, You Will See A Great Chasm. Jump. It Is Not As Wide As You Think.

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Native American

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Every Act Has Both Good And Evil Results. The Best We Can Do Is Lean To The Light.

The Privilege Of A Lifetime Is Beingwho You Are.the Goal Of The Hero Tripdown To The Jewel Pointis To Find Those Levels In The Psychethat Open, Open, Openand Finally Open To The Mystery Of Your Selfbeing Buddha Consciousnessor The Christ.that's The Journey.

If You See Your Path Laid Out In Front Of You - Step One, Step Two, Step Three - You Only Know One Thing . . . It Is Not Your Path. Your Path Is Created In The Moment Of Action. If You Can See It Laid Out In Front Of You, You Can Be Sure It Is Someone Else's Path. That Is Why You See It So Clearly.

Follow Your Inner Heart And The World Moves In And Helps.

Out Of Perfection Nothing Can Be Made. Every Process Involves Breaking Something Up.

Mythology Is Composed By Poets Out Of Their Insights And Realizations. Mythologies Are Not Invented; They Are Found. You Can No More Tell Us What Your Dream Is Going To Be Tonight Than We Can Invent A Myth. Myths Come From The Mystical Region Of Essential Experience.

Awe Is What Moves Us Forward.

For People Who Are Really Alive To Have Life Awakened Is More Important Than To Get A Sandwich.

The Experience Of Eternity Right Here And Now Is The Function Of Life. Heaven Is Not The Place To Have The Experience; Here Is The Place To Have The Experience.

Economics And Politics Are The Governing Powers Of Life Today, And That's Why Everything Is So Screwy.

The Very Cave You Are Afraid To Enter Turns Out To Be The Source Of What You Are Looking For.

Revolution Doesn't Have To Do With Smashing Something, It Has To Do With Bringing Something Forth. If You Spend All Your Time Thinking About That Which You Are Attacking, Then You Are Negatively Bound To It. You Have To Find The Zeal In Yourself And Bring That Out.

If You're Going To Have A Story, Have A Big Story, Or None At All.

The Wonder Is That The Characteristic Efficacy To Touch And Inspire Deep Creative Centers Dwells In The Smallest Nursery Fairy Tale-as The Flavor Of The Ocean Is Contained In A Droplet Or The Whole Mystery Of Life Within The Egg Of A Flea. For The Symbols Of Mythology Are Not Manufactured; They Cannot Be Ordered, Invented, Or Permanently Suppressed. They Are Spontaneous Productions Of The Psyche, And Each Bears Within It, Undamaged, The Germ Power Of Its Source.

Life Is Like Arriving Late For A Movie, Having To Figure Out What Was Going On Without Bothering Everybody With A Lot Of Questions, And Then Being Unexpectedly Called Away Before You Find Out How It Ends.

Religon Is Misunderstood Mythology

Your Own Path You Make With Every Step You Take. That's Why It's Your Path.

Following Your Own Path

Half The People In The World Think That The Metaphors Of Their Religious Traditions, For Example, Are Facts. And The Other Half Contends That They Are Not Facts At All. As A Result We Have People Who Consider Themselves Believers Because They Accept Metaphors As Facts, And We Have Others Who Classify Themselves As Atheists Because They Think Religious Metaphors Are Lies.

The Rise And Fall Of Civilizations In The Long, Broad Course Of History Can Be Seen To Have Been Largely A Function Of The Integrity And Cogency Of Their Supporting Canons Of Myth; For Not Authority But Aspiration Is The Motivator, Builder, And Transformer Of Civilization.

Love Is Perfect Kindness.

An Old Apache Storyteller Reminds Us

The Myth Does Not Point To A Fact; The Myth Points Beyond Facts To Something That Informs The Fact

The Person Who Thinks He Has Found The Ultimate Truth Is Wrong.

It [music] Has An Awakening Function. Life Is A Rhythm. Art Is An Organization Of Rhythms. Music Is A Fundamental Art That Touches Our Will System. In Schopenhauer's The World As Will And Idea He Speaks Of Music As The Sound That Awakens The Will. The Rhythm Of The Music Awakens Certain Life Rhythms, Ways Of Living And Experiencing Life. So It's An Awakener Of Life.

There Is No Way You Can Use The Word “reality” Without Quotation Marks Around It.

Knowing Who You Are

Quotation Marks

Myth Is Much More Important And True Than History. History Is Just Journalism And You Know How Reliable That Is.

You Have To Learn To Recognize Your Own Depth.

We Are Standing On A Whale Fishing For Minnows.

Heinrich Zimmerhe Had A Little Saying : The Best Things Cant Be Told - Because They Are Transcendent, Inexpressible Truths. The Second Best Are Misunderstood : Myths, Which Are Metaphoric Attempts To Point To The Way Toward The First. And The Third Best Have To Do With History, Science, Biography, And So On. The Only Kind Of Talking That Can Be Understood Is This Last Kind.

I Always Tell My Students, Go Where Your Body And Soul Want To Go. When You Have The Feeling, Then Stay With It, And Don't Let Anyone Throw You Off.

Eternity Is Not Future Or Past. Eternity Is A Dimension Of Now. It Is A Dimension Of The Human Spirit -- Which Is Eternal. Find That Eternal Dimension In Yourself, And You Will Ride Through Time, And Throughout The Whole Length Of Your Days.

Participate Joyfully In The Sorrows Of The World. We Cannot Cure The World Of Sorrows, But We Can Choose To Live In Joy.

You Must Have A Place To Which You Can Go In Your Heart, Your Mind, Or Your House, Almost Every Day, Where You Do Not Owe Anyone And Where No One Owes You - A Place That Simply Allows For The Blossoming Of Something New And Promising.

The Last Act In The Biography Of The Hero Is That Of The Death Or Departure.

It's A Shame To Waste [the Uniqueness That Is You], By Doing What Someone Else Has Done.

If You Do Follow Your Bliss You Put Yourself On A Kind Of Track That Has Been There All The While, Waiting For You, And The Life That You Ought To Be Living Is The One You Are Living... Follow Your Bliss And Don't Be Afraid, And Doors Will Open Where You Didn't Know They Were Going To Be.

I Think That Jean Houston Has Broken Through To A New Understanding Of The Sense And Uses Of Inward-turned Contemplation-a N Understanding That Leaves The Freudian Schools Of Technique And Theory Far Behind. The Accent Is Not On The Curing Of Disease But On The Enlargement, Rather, Of Our Health.

Myths Are Public Dreams, Dreams Are Private Myths.

You Know, When Real Trouble Comes Your Humanity Is Awakened. The Fundamental Human Experience Is That Of Compassion.

The Adventure That The Hero Is Ready For Is The One He Gets.

We're So Engaged In Doing Things To Achieve Purposes Of Outer Value That We Forget The Inner Value, The Rapture That Is Associated With Being Alive, Is What It Is All About.

With The Moon Walk, The Religious Myth That Sustained These Notions Could No Longer Be Held. With Our View Of Earthrise, We Could See That The Earth And The Heavens Were No Longer Divided But That The Earth Is In The Heavens. (105)

At First You Might Find That Nothing Happens There. But If You Have A Sacred Space And Use It, Eventually Something Will Happen. Your Sacred Space Is Where You Find Yourself Again And Again.

Finding Yourself

Read Myths. They Teach You That You Can Turn Inward, And You Begin To Get The Message Of The Symbols. Read Other People's Myths, Not Those Of Your Own Religion, Because You Tend To Interpret Your Own Religion In Terms Of Facts -- But If You Read The Other Ones, You Begin To Get The Message.

But The Makers Of Legend Have Seldom Rested Content To Regard The World's Great Heroes As Mere Human Beings Who Broke Past The Horizons That Limited Their Fellows And Returned Such Boons As Any Man With Equal Faith And Courage Might Have Found.

It Is Not Society Which Is To Guide And Save The Creative Hero, But Precisely The Reverse.

The Navajo Have That Wonderful Image Of What They Call The Pollen Path. The Navajo Say, 'oh, Beauty Before Me, Beauty Behind Me, Beauty To The Right Of Me, Beauty To The Left Of Me, Beauty Above Me, Beauty Below Me, I'm On The Pollen Path.'

Eternity Is Not Future Or Past. Eternity Is A Dimension Of Now.

The Key To The Grail Is Compassion, 'suffering With,' Feeling Another's Sorrow As If It Were Your Own. The One Who Finds The Dynamo Of Compassion Is The One Who's Found The Grail.

The Hero Journey Is Inside Of You; Tear Off The Veils And Open The Mystery Of Your Self.

What Is Unknown Is The Fulfillment Of Your Own Unique Life, The Likes Of Which Has Never Existed On Earth. And You Are The Only One Who Can Do It. People Can Give You Clues How To Fall And When To Stand, And When You Are Falling And When You Are Standing, This Only You Can Know. And In The Way Of Your Own Talents Is The Only Way To Do It.

I Don't Have To Have Faith, I Have Experience.

Life Is Without Meaning. You Bring The Meaning To It.

What Is The Meaning Of Life

Everything Starts With A Story.

The Job Of An Educator Is To Teach Students To See Vitality In Themselves

One Looks, Looks Long, And The World Comes In.

As A White Candle / In A Holy Place, / So Is The Beauty / Of An Aged Face

All The Old Bindings Are Broken. Cosmological Centers Now Are Anywhere And Everywhere. The Earth Is A Heavenly Body, Most Beautiful Of All, And All Poetry Is Now Archaic That Fails To Match The Wonder Of This View.

The First Step To The Knowledge Of The Wonder And Mystery Of Life Is The Recognition Of The Monstrous Nature Of The Earthly Human Realm As Well As Its Glory, The Realization That This Is Just How It Is And That It Cannot And Will Not Be Changed. Those Who Think They Know How The Universe Could Have Been Had They Created It, Without Pain, Without Sorrow, Without Time, Without Death, Are Unfit For Illumination.

Opportunities To Find Deeper Powers Within Ourselves Come When Life Seems Most Challenging.

The Idea Of Buddha Consciousness Is That All Beings Are Buddha Beings, And Your Whole Function In Meditation And Everything Else Is To Find That Buddha Consciousness Within And Live Out Of That, Instead Of The Interests Of The Eyes And Ears.

What I Think Is That A Good Life Is One Hero Journey After Another. Over And Over Again, You Are Called To The Realm Of Adventure, You Are Called To New Horizons. Each Time, There Is The Same Problem: Do I Dare? And Then If You Do Dare, The Dangers Are There, And The Help Also, And The Fulfillment Or The Fiasco. There's Always The Possibility Of Fiasco. But There's Also The Possibility Of Bliss.

Man Actually Needs The Striving And Struggling For Some Goal Worthy Of Him.

When I Was In India I Met And Conversed Briefly With Shri Atmananda Guru Of Trivandrum, And The Question He Gave Me To Ponder Was This: 'where Are You Between Two Thoughts?

When You Follow Your Bliss A Kind Of Track Opens Up, That's Always Been There, Waiting For You. And The Life That You Should Be Living, Is The One That You Will Be Living.

When You Realize That Eternity Is Right Here Now, That It Is Within Your Possibility To Experience The Eternity Of Your Own Truth And Being, Then You Grasp The Following: That Which You Are Was Never Born And Will Never Die. . . . (90)

Survival Is The Second Law Of Life. The First Is That We Are All One.

The Best Advise Is To Take It All As If It Had Been Your Intention.

Knowing Who You Are

Life Is Not A Problem To Be Solved But A Mystery To Be Lived. Follow The Path That Is No Path, Follow Your Bliss.

If You Are To Advance, All Fixed Ideas Must Go.

He Who Thinks He Knows, Doesn't Know. He Who Knows That He Doesn't Know, Knows.

Where You Stumble, There Lies Your Treasure. The Very Cave You Are Afraid To Enter Turns Out To Be The Source Of What You Are Looking For. The Damned Thing In The Cave That Was So Dreaded Has Become The Center.

There's Something Inside You That Knows When You're In The Center, That Knows When You're On The Beam Or Off The Beam. And If You Get Off The Beam To Earn Money, You've Lost Your Life. And If You Stay In The Center And Don't Get Any Money, You Still Have Your Bliss.

We Are The Consciousness Of The Earth. We Are The Eyes Of The Earth. The Voice Of The Earth.

At The Darkest Moment Comes The Light.

Follow Your Bliss. The Heroic Life Is Living The Individual Adventure.

Seek To Know The Power That Is Within You.

You Don't Ask What A Dance Means. You Enjoy It. You Don't Ask What The World Means. You Enjoy It. You Don't Ask What You Mean. You Enjoy It.

If You Realize What The Real Problem Is-losing Yourself-you Realize That This Itself Is The Ultimate Trial.

Within The Field Of A Secular Society, Which Is A Sort Of Neutral Frame That Allows Individuals To Develop Their Own Lives, So Long As They Don't Annoy Their Neighbors Too Much, Each Of Us Has An Individual Myth That's Driving Us, Which We May Or May Not Know.

Secular Society

All We Really Want To Do Is Dance.

The Ultimate Dreamer Is Vishnu Floating On The Cosmic Milky Ocean, Couched Upon The Coils Of The Abyssal Serpent Ananta, The Meaning Of Whose Name Is Unending. In The Foreground Stand The Five Pandava Brothers, Heroes Of The Epic Mahabharata, With Draupadi, Their Wife: Allegorically, She Is The Mind And They Are The Five Senses.

The Fall [of Your Soul] From Perfection Into Duality...was Naturally Followed By The Discovery Of The Duality Of Good And Evil...this Is The Biblical Version Of A Myth Known To Many Lands.

When Everything Is Lost, And All Seems Darkness, Then Comes The New Life And All That Is Needed.

It's Only When A Man Tames His Own Demons That He Becomes The King Of Himself If Not Of The World.

When You Are Falling --- Dive!

The Ego Is As You Think Of Yourself. You In Relation To All The Commitments Of Your Life, As You Understand Them. The Self Is The Whole Range Of Possibilities That You've Never Even Thought Of. And You're Stuck With You're Past When You're Stuck With The Ego. Because If All You Know About Yourself Is What You Found Out About Yourself, Well, That Already Happened. The Self Is A Whole Field Of Potentialities To Come Through.

Mythology Is Not A Lie, Mythology Is Poetry, It Is Metaphorical. It Has Been Well Said That Mythology Is The Penultimate Truth--penultimate Because The Ultimate Cannot Be Put Into Words. It Is Beyond Words. Beyond Images, Beyond That Bounding Rim Of The Buddhist Wheel Of Becoming. Mythology Pitches The Mind Beyond That Rim, To What Can Be Known But Not Told.

Myths Are So Intimately Bound To Culture, Time, And Place That Unless The Symbols, The Metaphors, Are Kept Alive By Constant Recreation Through The Arts, The Life Just Slips Away From Them.

We Save The World By Being Alive Ourselves.

As Freud Has Shown, Blunders Are Not The Merest Chance. They Are The Result Of Suppressed Desires And Conflicts. They Are Ripples On The Surface Of Life, Produced By Unsuspected Springs. And These May Be Very Deep - As Deep As The Soul Itself. The Blunder May Amount To The Opening Of A Destiny.

Following Your Bliss Is Not Self-indulgent, But Vital; Your Whole Physical System Knows That This Is The Way To Be Alive In This World And The Way To Give To The World The Very Best That You Have To Offer. There Is A Track Just Waiting For Each Of Us And Once On It, Doors Will Open That Were Not Open Before And Would Not Open For Anyone Else.

The Achievement Of The Hero Is One That He Is Ready For And It's Really A Manifestation Of His Character. It's Amusing The Way In Which The Landscape And Conditions Of The Environment Match The Readiness Of The Hero. The Adventure That He Is Ready For Is The One That He Gets.

We Are Having Experiences All The Time Which May On Occasion Render Some Sense Of This, A Little Intuition Of Where Your Bliss Is. Grab It. No One Can Tell You What It Is Going To Be. You Have To Learn To Recognize Your Own Depth.

Your Life Is The Fruit Of Your Own Doing. You Have No One To Blame But Yourself.

One Great Thing About Growing Old Is That Nothing Is Going To Lead To Anything. Everything Is Of The Moment.

The Departure From The World Is Regarded Not As A Fault, But As The First Step Into That Noble Path At The Remotest Turn Of Which Illumination Is To Be Won.

The Mighty Hero Of Extraordinary Powers, Able To Lift Mount Govardhan On A Finger, And To Fill Himself With The Terrible Glory Of The Universe, Is Each Of Us: Not The Physical Self Visible In The Mirror, But The King Within.

I Prefer The Gradual Path My Feeling Is That Mythic Forms Reveal Themselves Gradually In The Course Of Your Life If You Know What They Are And How To Pay Attention To Their Emergence. My Own Initiation Into The Mythic Depths Of The Unconscious Has Been Through The Mind, Through The Books That Surround Me In This Library. I Have Recognized In My Quest All The Stages Of The Hero's Journey. I Had My Calls To Adventure, My Guides, Demons, And Illuminations.

Every People Is A Chosen People In Its Own Mind. And It Is Rather Amusing That Their Name For Themselves Usually Means Mankind.

Oh My God, Does Art Engender Humanity? It Awakens Your Humanity. But Humanity Has Nothing To Do With Political Theory. Political Theory Is In The Interests Of One Group Of Humanity, Or One Ideal For Humanity. But Humanity-my Heavens, That's What Proper Art Renders. We Have A Paradox. Going Into The Deepest Aspects Of Inner Space Connects You With Something That Is The Most Vital For The Outer Realm.

We Have To Permit Go With The Everyday Living We Had Prepared So As To Have The Lifetime That's Watching For Us

Out Of Perfection Nothing Can Be Made. Every Process Involves Breaking Something Up. The Earth Must Be Broken To Bring Forth Life. If The Seed Does Not Die There Is No Plant. Bread Results From The Death Of Wheat. Life Lives On Lives. Our Own Life Lives On The Acts Of Other People. If You Are Lifeworthy, You Can Take It.

Love Is Exactly As Strong As Life.

The Eternal Principle, Which Never Was Born, Never Will Die: It Is In All Things: It Is In You Now. You Are The Wave On The Face Of The Ocean. When The Wave Is Gone, Is The Water Gone? Has Anything Happened? Nothing Has Happened. It Is A Play, A Game, A Dance.

Our Demons Are Our Own Limitations, Which Shut Us Off From The Realization Of The Ubiquity Of The Spirit . . . Each Of These Demons Is Conquered In A Vision Quest.

If You Follow Your Bliss...the Life That You Ought To Be Living Is The One You Are Living.

When People Find Out What It Is That's Ticking In Them, They Get Straightened Out.

The Sin Of Inadvertence, Not Being Alert, Not Quite Awake, Is The Sin Of Missing The Moment Of Life-live With Unremitting Alertness.

The Ground Of Being Is The Ground Of Our Being, And When We Simply Turn Outward, We See All Of These Little Problems Here And There. But, If We Look Inward, We See That We Are The Source Of Them All.

The Old Skin Has To Be Shed Before The New One Can Come.

When You Translate The Bible With Excessive Literalism, You Demythologize It. The Possibility Of A Convincing Reference To The Individual's Own Spiritual Experience Is Lost. (111)

You Can't Have Creativity Unless You Leave Behind The Bounded, The Fixed, All The Rules

There Is An Indian Fable Of Three Beings Who Drank From A River: One Was A God, And He Drank Ambrosia; One Was A Man, And He Drank Water; And One Was A Demon, And He Drank Filth. What You Get Is A Function Of Your Own Consciousness.

When You Follow Your Bliss, You Begin To Meet People Who Are In The Field Of Your Bliss, And They Open The Doors To You.

Men Sometimes Confess They Love War Because It Puts Them In Touch With The Experience Of Being Alive. In Going To The Office Every Day, You Don't Get That Experience, But Suddenly In War, You Are Ripped Back Into Being Alive. Life Is Pain; Life Is Suffering; And Life Is Horror - But, By God, You Are Alive.

Anyone Who Has Had An Experience Of Mystery Knows That There Is A Dimension Of The Universe That Is Not That Which Is Available To His Senses. There Is A Pertinent Saying In One Of The Upanishads: When Before The Beauty Of A Sunset Or Of A Mountain You Pause And Exclaim, ‘ah,’ You Are Participating In Divinity. Such A Moment Of Participation Involves A Realization Of The Wonder And Sheer Beauty Of Existence. People Living In The World Of Nature Experience Such Moments Every Day. They Live In The Recognition Of Something There That Is Much Greater Than The Human Dimension.

If You Want To Know What A Given Society Believes In, Look At What Its Largest Buildings Are Devoted To.

When You Are In Accord With Nature, Nature Will Yield Its Bounty. This Is Something That Is Coming Up In Our Own Consciousness Now...recognizi Ng That By Violating The Environment In Which We Are Living, We Are Really Cutting Off The Energy And Source Of Our Own Living. And It’s This Sense Of Accord, So That Living Properly In Relation To What Has To Be Done In This World One Fosters The Vitality Of The Environment.

There Is No Greater Privilege In Life Than Being Yourself.

The Deadheads Are Doing The Dance Of Life And This I Would Say Is The Answer To The Atom Bomb.

I Always Feel Uncomfortable When People Speak About Ordinary Mortals Because I've Never Met An Ordinary Man, Woman Or Child.

This, I Believe, Is The Great Western Truth: That Each Of Us Is A Completely Unique Creature And That, If We Are Ever To Give Any Gift To The World, It Will Have To Come Out Of Our Own Experience And Fulfillment Of Our Own Potentialities, Not Someone Else's.

Christianity Isn’t Moving People’s Lives Today. What’s Moving People’s Lives Is The Stock Market And The Baseball Scores. What Are People Excited About? It’s A Totally Materialistic Level That Has Taken Over The World. There Isn’t Even An Ideal That Anybody’s Fighting For.

The Call To Adventure Signifies That Destiny Has Summoned The Hero.

So I Think The Guru Can Be A Delusion. But Everything Can Be Deluding. The Thing Central About The Guru In The West Is That He Represents An Alien Principle Of The Spirit, Namely, That You Don't Follow Your Own Path; You Follow A Given Path. And That's Totaly Contrary To The Western Spirit! Our Spirituality Is Of The Individual Quest, Individual Realization- Authenticity In Your Life Out Of Your Own Center. So You Must Take The Message Of The East, Assimilate It To Your Own Dimension And To Your Own Thrust Of Life, And Not Get Pulled Off Track.

Privation And Suffering Alone Open The Mind To All That Is Hidden To Others. (igjugarjuk)

Regrets Are Illuminations Come Too Late.

The Priests Used To Say That Faith Can Move Mountains, And Nobody Believed Them. Today The Scientists Say That They Can Level Mountains, And Nobody Doubts Them.

Do What Gives You Bliss.

This Is An Important Point About Symbols: They Do Not Refer To Historical Events; They Refer Through Historical Events To Spiritual Or Psychological Principles And Powers That Are Of Yesterday, Today, And Tomorrow, And That Are Everywhere.

I Think What We Lack Isn't Science, But Poetry That Reveals What The Heart Is Ready To Recognize

The Adventure Of The Hero Is The Adventure Of Being Alive

Through Dreams A Door Is Opened To Mythology, Since Myths Are Of The Nature Of Dreams, And That, As Dreams Arise From An Inward World Unknown To Waking Consciousness, So Do Myths: So, Indeed, Does Life.

Myths Are The World's Dreams. They Are Archetypal Dreams And Deal With Great Human Problems. Myths And Dreams Come From The Same Place. They Come From Realizations Of Some Kind That Then Have To Find Expression In Symbolic Form.

The Goal Is To Live With God Like Composure On The Full Rush Of Energy, Like Dionysus Riding The Leopard, Without Being Torn To Pieces.

What Is A God? A God Is A Personification Of A Motivating Power Of A Value System That Functions In Human Life And In The Universe.

In Meditating, Meditate On Your Own Divinity. The Goal Of Life Is To Be A Vehicle For Something Higher. Keep Your Eyes Up There Between The World Of Opposites Watching Your 'play' In The World.let The World Be As It Is And Learn To Rock With The Waves.

The Senses Are A Kind Of Reason. Taste, Touch And Smell, Hearing And Seeing, Are Not Merely A Means To Sensation, Enjoyable Or Otherwise, But They Are Also A Means To Knowledge - And Are, Indeed, Your Only Actual Means To Knowledge.

If You Want Resurrection, You Must Have Crucifixion... The Hoarder, The One In Us That Wants To Keep, To Hold On, Must Be Killed.

And That Aha! That You Get When You See An Artwork That Really Hits You Is, 'i Am That.' I Am The Very Radiance Of Energy That Is Talking To Me Through This Painting.

We Can Safely Say, Therefore, That Whereas Some Moralists May Find It Possible To Make A Distinction Between Two Spheres And Reigns-one Of Flesh, The Other Of The Spirit, One Of Time, The Other Of Eternity-where Ever Love Arises Such Definitions Vanish, And A Sense Of Life Awakens In Which All Such Oppositions Are At One.

I Think The Person Who Takes A Job In Order To Live - That Is To Say, For The Money - Has Turned Himself Into A Slave.

The Mind Of Man, Cleansed Of Secondary And Merely Temporal Concerns, Beholds With The Radiance Of A Cleansed Mirror A Reflection Of The Rational Mind Of God.

For Those In Whom A Local Mythology Still Works, There Is An Experience Both Of Accord With The Social Order, And Of Harmony With The Universe. For Those, However, In Whom The Authorized Signs No Longer Work-or, If Working, Produce Deviant Effects-there Follows Inevitably A Sense Both Of Dissociation From The Local Social Nexus And Of Quest, Within And Without, For Life, Which The Brain Will Take To Be For 'meaning'.

Every Story You Tell Is Your Own Story.

The Unfolding Through Time Of All Things From One Is The Simple Message, Finally, Of Every One Of The Creation Myths Reproduced In The Pages Of These Volumes-including That Of Our Contemporary Biological View, Which Becomes An Effective Mythic Image The Moment We Recognize Its Own Inner Mystery. By The Same Magic, Every God That Is Dead Can Be Conjured Again To Life, As Any Fragment Of Rock From A Hillside, Set Respectfully In A Garden, Will Arrest The Eye.

The Real Important Function Of The Church Is To Present The Symbol, To Perform The Rite, To Let You Behold This Divine Message In Such A Way That You Are Capable Of Experiencing It. What The Relationship Of The Father And The Son And The Holy Ghost To Each Other Might Be, In Technical Terms, Is Not Half Important As You, The Celebrant, Feeling The Virgin Birth Within You, The Birth Of The Mystic, Mythic Being That Is Your Own Spiritual Life.

What Each Must Seek In His Life Never Was On Land Or Sea. It Is Something Out Of His Own Unique Potentiality For Experience, Something That Never Has Been And Never Could Have Been Experienced By Anyone Else.

[t]he Experience Of Mystery Comes Not From Expecting It But Through Yielding All Your Programs, Because Your Programs Are Based On Fear And Desire. Drop Them And The Radiance Comes. (16)

Poets And Artists Who Speak Of The Mystery Are Rare.

Perhaps Some Of Us Have To Go Through Dark And Devious Ways Before We Can Find The River Of Peace Or The Highroad To The Soul's Destination.

People Say That What We're All Seeking Is A Meaning For Life. I Don't Think That's What We're Really Seeking. I Think What We're Seeking Is An Experience Of Being Alive, So That Our Life Experiences On The Purely Physical Plane Will Have Resonance Within Our Own Innermost Being And Reality, So That We Actually Feel The Rapture Of Being Alive.

The Fates Lead Him Who Will; Him Who Won't They Drag.

The Goal Of Life Is To Make Your Heartbeat Match The Beat Of The Universe, To Match Your Nature With Nature.

If You Can See Your Path Laid Out In Front Of You Step By Step, You Know It's Not Your Path. Your Own Path You Make With Every Step You Take. That's Why It's Your Path.

Questing... Is Not An Ego Trip; It Is An Adventure To Bring Into Fulfillment Your Gift To The World, Which Is Yourself.

Mythology Is Often Defined As 'other Peoples' Religions', Religion Can Be Thought Of As Misinterpreted Mythology.

If You Go To A Master To Study And Learn The Techniques, You Diligently Follow All The Instructions The Master Puts Upon You. But Then Comes The Time For Using The Rules In Your Own Way And Not Being Bound By Them....you Can Actually Forget The Rules Because They Have Been Assimilated. You Are An Artist. Your Own Innocence Now Is Of One Who Has Become An Artist, Who Has Been, As It Were, Transmuted.... You Can't Have Creativity Unless You Leave Behind The Bounded, The Fixed, All The Rules.

If A Person Does Not Listen To The Demands Of Their Own Spiritual And Heart Life And Insists On A Certain Program, You're Going To Have A Schizophrenic Crackup. The Person Has Put Themselves Off Center. They Have Aligned Themselves With A Programmatic Life And It's Not The One The Body Is Interested In At All.

What The Artist Must Render Is A Living Moment Somehow, A Living Moment Actually In Action Or An Inward Experience.

And So Galahad Decided That It Would Be A Disgrace To Set Off On A Quest With The Other Knights. Alone He Would Enter The Dark Forest Where There Was No Path. This Is The Myth Of The Hero's Journey.

Not All Who Hesitate Are Lost. The Psyche Has Many Secrets In Reserve. And These Are Not Disclosed Unless Required.

Mythology Helps You To Identify The Mysteries Of The Energies Pouring Through You. Therein Lies Your Eternity.

You Become Mature When You Become The Authority Of Your Own Life.

When We Quit Thinking Primarily About Ourselves And Our Own Self-preservation, We Undergo A Truly Heroic Transformation Of Consciousness.

The Realms Of The Gods And Demons - Heaven, Purgatory, Hell - Are Of The Substance Of Dreams. Myth, In This View, Is The Dream Of The World.

When You Follow Your Bliss...doors Will Open Where You Would Not Have Thought There Would Be Doors, And Where There Wouldn't Be A Door For Anyone Else.

The World Without Spirit Is A Wasteland. People Have The Notion Of Saving The World By Shifting Things Around, Changing The Rules, And Who's On Top, And So Forth. No, No! Any World Is A Valid World If It's Alive. The Thing To Do Is To Bring Life To It, And The Only Way To Do That Is To Find In Your Own Case Where The Life Is And Become Alive Yourself.

Sit In A Room And Read--and Read And Read. And Read The Right Books By The Right People. Your Mind Is Brought Onto That Level, And You Have A Nice, Mild, Slow-burning Rapture All The Time.

The Best Things Cannot Be Told Because They Transcend Thought. The Second Best Are Misunderstood Because They Are The Thoughts That Are Supposed To Refer To That Which Cannot Be Thought About. The Third Best Are What We Talk About.

The Entire Heavenly Realm Is Within Us, But To Find It We Have To Relate To What's Outside.

A Temple Is A Landscape Of The Soul.

We Need Myths That Will Identify The Individual Not With His Local Group But With The Planet.

There Have Been Systems Of Religion Where The Mother Is The Prime Parent, The Source, And She's Really A More Immediate Parent Than The Father, Because One Is Born From The Mother...so That The Image Of The Woman Is The Image Of The World.

In One Of The Upanishads It Says, When The Glow Of A Sunset Holds You And You Say 'aha,' That Is The Recognition Of The Divinity. And When You Say 'aha' To An Art Object, That Is A Recognition Of Divinity. And What Divinity Is It? It Is Your Divinity, Which Is The Only Divinity There Is. We Are All Phenomenal Manifestations Of A Divine Will To Live, And That Will And The Consciousness Of Life Is One In All Of Us, And That Is What Artwork Expresses.

The Psychological Dangers Through Which Earlier Generations Were Guided By The Symbols And Spiritual Exercises Of Their Mythological And Religious Inheritance, We Today (in So Far As We Are Unbelievers, Or, If Believers, In So Far As Our Inherited Beliefs Fail To Represent The Real Problems Of Contemporary Life) Must Face Alone, Or, At Best With Only Tentative, Impromptu, And Not Often Very Effective Guidance. This Is Our Problem As Modern, "enlightened" Individuals, For Whom All Gods And Devils Have Been Rationalized Out Of Existence.

If You Want The Whole Thing, The Gods Will Give It To You. But You Must Be Ready For It.

The Warrior’s Approach Is To Say ‘yes’ To Life: ‘yes’ To It All.

You Don't Have To Believe That There Was A King Arthur To Get The Significance Of Those Stories, But Christians Say We Have To Believe There Was A Christ, Or The Miracles Don't Make Sense.

The Courage To Face The Trials And To Bring A Whole New Body Of Possibilities Into The Field Of Interpreted Experience For Other People To Experience - That Is The Hero's Deed.

If You Live With The Myths In Your Mind, You Will Find Yourself Always In Mythological Situations. They Cover Everything That Can Happen To You. And That Enables You To Interpret The Myth In Relation To Life, As Well As Life In Relation To Myth.

Finding Yourself

A Hero Is Not A Champion Of Things Become, But Of Things Becoming; The Dragon To Be Slain By Him Is Precisely The Monster Of The Status Quo.

The Goal Of Life Is Rapture. Art Is The Way We Experience It.

There's Always The Possibility Of A Fiasco. But There's Also The Possibility Of Bliss.

When You Make The Sacrifice In Marriage, You're Sacrificing Not To Each Other But To Unity In A Relationship.

Breaking Out Is Following Your Bliss Pattern, Quitting The Old Place, Starting Your Hero Journey, Following Your Bliss. You Throw Off Yesterday As The Snake Sheds Its Skin.

The Myth Is The Public Domain And The Dream Is The Private Myth. If Your Private Myth, Your Dream, Happens To Coincide With That Of The Society, You Are In Good Accord With Your Group. If It Isn't, You've Got A Long Adventure In The Dark Forest Ahead Of You.

The Problem Of Making The Inner Meet The Outer Of Today Is, Of Course, The Function Of The Artist.

What Am I? Am I The Bulb That Carries The Light, Or Am I The Light Of Which The Bulb Is A Vehicle?

The Theme Of The Grail Is The Bringing Of Life Into What Is Known As 'the Wasteland.' The Wasteland Is The Preliminary Theme To Which The Grail Is The Answer. . . It's The World Of People Living Inauthentic Lives - Doing What They Are Supposed To Do.

What We Are Really Living For Is The Experience Of Life, Both The Pain And The Pleasure.

When You Are Required To Exhibit Strength, It Comes.

You Must Have A Room, Or A Certain Hour Or So A Day, Where You Don't Know What Was In The Newspapers That Morning A Place Where You Can Simply Experience And Bring Forth What You Are And What You Might Be.

Where Is Your Bliss Station? You Have To Try To Find It.

What's Made Up In The Head Is The Fiction. What Comes Out Of The Heart Is A Myth.

Each Of Us Has Capacities. The Real Trick Is Knowing The Machinery Of The Boat In Which You Are Crossing The Channel.

Every Hero Must Have The Courage To Be Alone, To Take The Journey For Himself.

Money Is Congealed Energy And Releasing It Releases Life Possibilities ... Money Experienced As Life Energy Is Indeed A Meditation, And Letting It Flow Out Instead Of Hoarding It Is A Mode Of Participation In The Life Of Others.

In Choosing Your God, You Choose Your Way Of Looking At The Universe. There Are Plenty Of Gods. Choose Yours.

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