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Apocalypse Does Not Point To A Fiery Armageddon But To The Fact That Our Ignorance And Our Complacency Are Coming To An End. The Exclusivism Of There Being Only One Way In Which We Can Be Saved, The Idea That There Is A Single Religious Group That Is In Sole Possession Of The Truth—that Is The World As We Know It That Must Pass Away. What Is The Kingdom? It Lies In Our Realization Of The Ubiquity Of The Divine Presence In Our Neighbors, In Our Enemies, In All Of Us.

-Joseph Campbell

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Apocalypse Does Not Point

Joseph Campbell

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Apocalypse Does Not Point To A Fiery Armageddon But To The Fact That Our Ignorance And Our Complacency Are Coming To An End. The Exclusivism Of There Being Only One Way In Which We Can Be Saved, The Idea That There Is A Single Religious Group That Is In Sole Possession Of The Truth—that Is The World As We Know It That Must Pass Away. What Is The Kingdom? It Lies In Our Realization Of The Ubiquity Of The Divine Presence In Our Neighbors, In Our Enemies, In All Of Us.

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Regrets Are Illuminations Come Too Late.

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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 Insecure Way Is The Secure Way.

Myth Is What We Call Other People's Religion.

For If Anything Is Capable Of Making A Poet Of A Literary Man, It Is My Hometown Love Of The Human, The Living And Ordinary.

The Seat Of The Soul Is Where The Inner World And The Outer World Meet.

In The Field Of Consciousness Research-and Also In Physics And Astronomy-we Are Breaking Past The Cause-and-effect, Mechanistic Way Of Interpreting Things. In The Biological Sciences, There Is A Vitalism Coming In That Goes Much Further Toward Positing A Common Universal Consciousness Of Which Our Brain Is Simply An Organ. Consciousness Does Not Come From The Brain. The Brain Is An Organ Of Consciousness. It Focuses Consciousness And Pulls It In And Directs It Through A Time And Space Field. But The Antecedent Of That Is The Universal Consciousness Of Which We Are All Just A Part.

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

Vegetarians Are People Who Cannot Hear Tomatos Screaming.

When You Are Required To Exhibit Strength, It Comes.

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.

If You Follow Your Bliss You Will Find A Path Laid Out Before You That Has Been Waiting For You All Along And You Will Begin To Live The Life You Ought To Be Living.

A One Sentence Definition Of Mythology? Mythology Is What We Call Someone Else's Religion.

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.

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.'

If You Are Falling....dive.

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.

Mephistopheles, The Machine Man, Can Provide Us With All The Means, And Is Thus Likely To Determine The Aims Of Life As Well. But Of Course The Characteristic Of Faust, Which Makes Him Eligible To Be Saved, Is That He Seeks Aims That Are Not Those Of The Machine.

A Sound Precipitates Air, Then Fire, Then Water And Earth- And That's How The World Becomes.

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.

I Think A Person Who Takes A Job In Order To Live - That Is To Say, For The Money - Has Turned Himself Into A Slave. Work Begins When You Don't Like What You're Doing. There's A Wise Saying: Make Your Hobby Your Source Of Income. Then There's No Such Thing As Work, And There's No Such Thing As Getting Tired. That's Been My Own Experience. I Did Just What I Wanted To Do. It Takes A Little Courage At First, Because Who The Hell Wants You To Do Just What You Want To Do; They've All Got Lots Of Plans For You. But You Can Make It Happen.

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.

A Hero Ventures Forth From The World Of Common Day Into A Region Of Supernatural Wonder. Fabulous Forces Are There Encountered And A Decisive Victory Is Won.

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

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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.

The Ultimate Dragon Is Within You, It Is Your Ego Clamping You Down.

Knowing Who You Are

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.

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If You Want To Change The World, You Have To Change The Metaphor.

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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.

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The Function Of The Society Is To Cultivate The Individual. It Is Not The Function Of The Individual To Support Society.

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If You Follow Someone Else's Way, You Are Not Going To Realize Your Potential.

The Myth Is The Public Dream And The Dream Is The Private Myth.

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

Society Has Provided [children] No Rituals By Which They Become Members Of The Tribe, Of The Community. All Children Need To Be Twice Born, To Learn To Function Rationally In The Present World, Leaving Childhood Behind.

When An Idea Is Important To A Person Or Culture It Will Find Its Way Into Imagery.

Man Was Not Breathed Into The Earth. Man Came Out Of The Earth.

This Is All I Ever Wanted - To Help Students And Artists See Myth As A Reflection Of The One Sublime Adventure Of Life, And Then To Breathe New Life Into It.

It Takes Courage To Do What You Want. Other People Have A Lot Of Plans For You... Follow Your Bliss.

The Usual Hero Adventure Begins With Someone From Whom Something Has Been Taken, Or Who Feels There Is Something Lacking In The Normal Experience Available Or Permitted To The Members Of Society. The Person Then Takes Off On A Series Of Adventures Beyond The Ordinary, Either To Recover What Has Been Lost Or To Discover Some Life-giving Elixir. It's Usually A Cycle, A Coming And A Returning.

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.

Myths Are Stories For Our Search Through The Ages For Truth, For Meaning, For Significance. We All Need To Tell Our Story And To Understand Our Story. We All Need To Understand Death And To Cope With Death, And We All Need Help In Our Passages From Birth To Live And Then To Death. We Need For Life To Signify, To Touch The Eternal, To Understand The Mysterious, To Find Out Who We Are.

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Suddenly You’re Ripped Into Being Alive. And Life Is Pain, And Life Is Suffering, And Life Is Horror, But My God You’re Alive And Its Spectacular.

Their Task [creative Artists], Therefore, Is To Communicate Directly From One Inward World To Another, In Such A Way That An Actual Shock Of Experience Will Have Been Rendered: Not A Mere Statement For The Information Or Persuasion Of A Brain, But An Effective Communication Across The Void Of Space And Time From One Center Of Consciousness To Another.

Whenever Men Have Looked For Something Solid On Which To Found Their Lives, They Have Chosen Not The Facts In Which The World Abounds, But The Myths Of An Immemorial Imagination.

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

Find A Place Inside Where There's Joy, And The Joy Will Burn Out The Pain.

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Everything Starts With A Story.

There Are Mythologies That Are Scattered, Broken Up, All Around Us. We Stand On What I Call A Terminal Moraine Of Shattered Mythic Systems That Once Structured Society. They Can Be Detected All Around Us. You Can Select Any Of These Fragments That Activate Your Imagination For Your Own Use. Let It Help Shape Your Own Relationship To The Unconscious System Out Of Which These Symbols Have Come.

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.

The Function Of The Artist Is The Mythologization Of The Culture And The World. In The Visual Arts There Were Two Men Whose Work Handled Mythological Themes In A Marvelous Way: Paul Klee And Pablo Picasso.

All We Really Want To Do Is Dance.

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

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.

We Are All Born As Animals And Live The Life That Animals Live: We Sleep, Eat, Reproduce, And Fight. There Is, However, Another Order Of Living, Which The Animals Do Not Know, That Of Awe Before The Mystery Of Being ... That Can Be The Root And Branch Of The Spiritual Sense Of One’s Days. That Is The Birth - The Virgin Birth - In The Heart Of A Properly Human, Spiritual Life.

Your Adventure Has To Be Coming Out Of Your Own Interior. If You Are Ready For It Then Doors Will Open Where There Were No Doors Before, And Where There Would Not Be Doors For Anyone Else. And You Must Have Courage. It's The Call To Adventure, Which Means There Is No Security, No Rules.

A Schism In The Body Social, Will Not Be Resolved By Any Scheme Of A Return To The Good Old Days (archaism), Or By Programs Guaranteed To Render An Ideal Projected Future (futurism), Or Even By The Most Realistic, Hardheaded Work To Weld Together Again The Deteriorating Elements. Only Birth Can Conquer Death -- The Birth, Not Of The Old Thing Again, But Of Something New.

At Such Moments, You Realize That You And The Other Are, In Fact, One. It's A Big Realization. Survival Is The Second Law Of Life. The First Is That We Are All One.

No One In The World Was Ever You Before, With Your Particular Gifts And Abilities And Possibilities.

If We Fix On The Old, We Get Stuck.

One Way Or Another, We All Have To Find What Best Fosters The Flowering Of Our Humanity In This Contemporary Life, And Dedicate Ourselves To That.

And Then He Says, "the Writer Must Be True To Truth." And That's A Killer, Because The Only Way You Can Describe A Human Being Truly Is By Describing His Imperfections. The Perfect Human Being Is Uninteresting - The Buddha Who Leaves The World, You Know. It Is The Imperfections Of Life That Are Lovable. And When The Writer Sends A Dart Of The True Word, It Hurts. But It Goes With Love. This Is What Mann Called "erotic Irony," The Love For That Which You Are Killing With Your Cruel, Analytical Word.

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

Art Is The Set Of Wings To Carry You Out Of Your Own Entanglement.

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Enlarge The Pupil Of The Eye, So That The Body With Its Attendant Personality Will No Longer Obstruct The View. Immortality Is Then Experienced As A Present Fact.

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

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.

At The Darkest Moment Comes The Light.

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.

Your Ego Is Your Embodiment And Your Self Is Your Potentiality And That's What You Listen To When You Listen For The Voice Of Inspiration And The Voice Of 'what Am I Here For? What Can I Possibly Make Of Myself?'

The Principle Of Compassion Is That Which Converts Disillusionment Into A Participatory Companionship. This Is The Basic Love, The Charity, That Turns A Critic Into A Living Human Being Who Has Something To Give To - As Well As To Demand Of - The World.

The Experience Of Eternity Right Here And Now, Is The Function Of Life.

You Have To Strive Every Minute To Get Rid Of The Life That You Have Planned In Order To Have The Life That's Waiting To Be Yours. Move, Move, Move.

Preachers Err By Trying To Talk People Into Belief; Better They Reveal The Radiance Of Their Own Discovery.

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

The Less There Is Of You, The More You Experience The Sublime.

To Find Your Own Way Is To Follow Your Bliss. This Involves Analysis, Watching Yourself And Seeing Where Real Deep Bliss Is -- Not The Quick Little Excitement , But The Real Deep, Life-filling Bliss.

What Gods Are There, What Gods Have There Ever Been, That Were Not From Man's Imagination?

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.

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.

You Are The Hero Of Your Own Story.

Suspense Novels

We Know That Jesus Could Not Have Ascended To Heaven Because There Is No Physical Heaven Anywhere In The Universe. Even Ascending At The Speed Of Light, Jesus Would Still Be In The Galaxy.

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 World Is Full Of People Who Have Stopped Listening To Themselves Or Have Listened Only To Their Neighbors To Learn What They Ought To Do, How They Ought To Behave, And What The Values Are They Should Be Living For.

Every Myth Is Psychologically Symbolic. Its Narratives And Images Are To Be Read, Therefore, Not Literally, But As Metaphors.

Eternity Is Not A Long Time; Rather, It Is Another Dimension. It Is That Dimension To Which Time-thinking Shuts Us. And So There Never Was A Creation. Rather, There Is A Continuous Creating Going On. This Energy Is Pouring Into Every Cell Of Our Being Right Now, Every Board And Brick Of The Buildings We Sit In, Every Grain Of Sand And Wisp Of Wind.

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

Following Your Own Path

The Latest Incarnation Of Oedipus, The Continued Romance Of Beauty And The Beast, Stand This Afternoon On The Corner Of Forty-second Street And Fifth Avenue, Waiting For The Traffic Light To Change.

Life Lives On Life. This Is The Sense Of The Symbol Of The Ouroboros, The Serpent Biting Its Tail. Everything That Lives Lives On The Death Of Something Else. Your Own Body Will Be Food For Something Else. Anyone Who Denies This, Anyone Who Holds Back, Is Out Of Order. Death Is An Act Of Giving.

A Dream Is Your Creative Vision For Your Life In The Future. A Goal Is What Specifically You Intend To Make Happen. Dreams And Goals Should Be Just Out Of Your Present Reach But Not Out Of Sight. Dreams And Goals Are Coming Attractions In Your Life.

People Who Don't Have A Concept Of The Whole Can Do Very Unfortunate Things.

Unfortunate Things

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

Midlife Is When You Reach The Top Of The Ladder And Find That It Was Against The Wrong Wall.

The Psyche Is The Inward Experience Of The Human Body, Which Is Essentially The Same In All Human Beings, With The Same Organs, The Same Instincts, The Same Impulses, The Same Conflicts, The Same Fears. Out Of This Common Ground Have Come What Jung Has Called The Archetypes, Which Are The Common Ideas Of Myths.

Mythology Is The Womb Of Mankind's Initiation To Life And Death.

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

Life, In Both Its Knowing And Its Doing, Has Become Today A "free Fall," So To Say, Into The Next Minute, Into The Future. So That, Whereas, Formerly, Those Not Wishing To Hazard The Adventure Of An Individual Life Could Rest Within The Pale Of A Comfortably Guaranteed Social Order, Today All The Walls Have Burst. It Is Not Left To Us To Chooseto Hazard The Adventure Of An Unprecedented Life: Adventure Is Upon Us, Like A Tidal Wave.

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.

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.

It May Be A Species Of Impudence To Think That The Way You Understand God Is The Way God Is. (60).

Have You Ever Looked Inside One Of Those Things [computers]? It's A Whole Hierarchy Of Angels- All On Slats. And Those Little Tubes-those Are Miracles.

Well, One Of The Problems About Being Psychoanalyzed Is, As Nietzsche Said, "be Careful Lest In Casting Out Your Devils That You Cast Out The Best Thing That's In You." So Many People Who Are Really In Deep Analysis Look As Though And Act As Though They Have Been Filleted. There's No Bone There, There's No Stuff! How To Get Rid Of Ego As Dictator And Turn It Into Messenger And Servant And Scout, To Be In Your Service, Is The Trick.

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.

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

Life Has No Meaning. Each Of Us Has Meaning And We Bring It To Life. It Is A Waste To Be Asking The Question When You Are The Answer.

Self Improvement

Meaning Of Life

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.

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