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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.

-Joseph Campbell

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I Think A Person

Joseph Campbell

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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.

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There Is What I Would Call The Hero Journey, The Night Sea Journey, The Hero Quest, Where The Individual Is Going To Bring Forth In His Life Something That Was Never Beheld Before.

Life Is Without Meaning. You Bring The Meaning To It. The Meaning Of Life Is Whatever You Ascribe It To Be. Being Alive Is The Meaning.

Dream Is Personalized Myth, Myth Is Depersonalized Dream; Both Myth And Dream Are Symbolic In The Same General Way Of The Dynamics Of The Psyche. But In The Dream The Forms Are Quirked By The Peculiar Troubles Of The Dreamer, Whereas In Myth The Problem And Solutions Shown Are Directly Valid For All Mankind.

Eternity Is Not The Hereafter...this Is It. If You Don't Get It Here You Won't Get It Anywhere.

Follow Your Bliss

I Don't Believe People Are Looking For The Meaning Of Life As Much As They Are Looking For The Experience Of Being Alive.

Mythological Symbols Touch And Exhilarate Centers Of Life Beyond The Reach Of Vocabularies Of Reason And Coercion.

I Have Found That You Have Only To Take That One Step Toward The Gods, And They Will Then Take Ten Steps Toward You. That Step, The Heroic First Step Of The Journey, Is Out Of, Or Over The Edge Of, Your Boundaries, And It Often Must Be Taken Before You Know That You Will.

The Perfect Human Being Is Uninteresting-the Buddha Who Leaves The World, You Know. It Is The Imperfections Of Life That Are Lovable.

The Big Question Is Whether You Are Going To Be Able To Say A Hearty Yes To Your Adventure.

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

Dragons, You Know, We Have A Good Deal Of Biology And Zoology About The Dragon; We Know Their Habits. The Dragon Tends To Guard Things, And He Usually Has These Guarded In A Cave... Now Dragons Don't Know What To Do Either With Beautiful Girls Or Gold, But They Just Hang On. There Are People Like This. We Call Them Creeps.

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.

Essentially, Mythologies Are Enormous Poems That Are Renditions Of Insights, Giving Some Sense Of The Marvel, The Miracle And Wonder Of Life.

The Folktale Is The Primer Of The Picture-language Of The Soul.

The Modern Hero-deed Must Be That Of Questing To Bring To Light Again The Lost Atlantis Of The Co-ordinated Soul.

The Two Greatest Works Of War Mythology In The West ... Are The Iliad And The Old Testament... When We Turn From The Iliad And Athens To Jerusalem And The Old Testament We Find A Single-minded Single Deity With His Sympathies Forever On One Side. And The Enemy, Accordingly, No Matter Who It May Be, Is Handled... Pretty Much As Though He Were Subhuman: Not A "thou" But An "it."

When You Find A Writer Who Really Is Saying Something To You, Read Everything That Writer Has Written And You Will Get More Education And Depth Of Understanding Out Of That Than Reading A Scrap Here And A Scrap There And Elsewhere. Then Go To People Who Influenced That Writer, Or Those Who Were Related To Him, And Your World Builds Together In An Organic Way That Is Really Marvelous.

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 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.

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.

I Don't Need Faith. I Have Experience.

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

Poets And Artists Who Speak Of The Mystery Are Rare.

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.

The Fates Guide Those Who Will And Drag Those Who Won't!

You Know, I Didn't Write My Books For Critics And Scholars. I Wrote Them For Students And Artists. When I Hear How Much My Work Has Meant To Them--well, I Can't Tell You How Happy That Makes Me. That Means That This Great Stuff Of Myth, Which I Have Been So Privileged To Work With, Will Be Kept Alive For A Whole New Generation. That's The Function Of The Artists, You Know, To Reinterpret The Old Stories And Make Them Come Alive Again, In Poetry, Painting, And Now In Movies.

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

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.

A Temple Is A Landscape Of The Soul.

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.

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.

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

Marriage Is Not A Love Affair. A Love Affair Has To Do With Immediate Personal Satisfaction. Marriage Is An Ordeal; It Means Yielding, Time And Again. That's Why It's A Sacrament; You Give Up Your Personal Simplicity To Participate In A Relationship. And When You're Giving, You're Not Giving To The Other Person; You're Giving To The Relationship.

Poets Are Simply Those Who Have Made A Profession And A Lifestyle Of Being In Touch With Their Bliss.

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

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

The Role Of The Artist I Now Understood As That Of Revealing Through The World-surfaces The Implicit Forms Of The Soul, And The Great Agent To Assist The Artist Was The Myth.

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.

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.

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

You Yourself Are Participating In The Evil, Or You Are Not Alive. Whatever You Do Is Evil For Somebody. This Is One Of The Ironies Of The Whole Creation.

Awe Is What Moves Us Forward.

You Have To Have A Feeling For Where You Are. You've Got Only One Life To Live And You Don't Have To Live It For Six People. Pay Attention To It.

One Of Our Problems Today Is That We Are Not Well Acquainted With The Literature Of The Spirit. We Re Interested In The News Of The Day And The Problems Of The Hour.

The Dreamer And His Dream Are The Same...the Powers Personified In A Dream Are These That Move The World.

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.

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

Seek To Know The Power That Is Within You.

Every Religion, Every Mythology Is True In This Sense: It Is True As Metaphorical Of The Human And Cosmic Mystery.

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

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

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.

What Is Required Is The Finding Of That Immovable Point Within One's Self, Which Is Not Shaken By Any Of Those Tempests Which The Buddhists Call 'the Eight Karmic Winds': 1-fear Of Pain, 2-desire For Pleasure; 3-fear Of Loss; 4-desire For Gain; 5-fear Of Blame, 6-desire For Praise; 7-fear Of Disgrace; [and] 8-desire For Fame.

A Real Artist Is The One Who Has Learned To Recognize And To Render... The 'radiance' Of All Things As An Epiphany Or Showing Forth Of The Truth.

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.

Follow Your Bliss And Don't Be Afraid, And Door Will Open Where You Didn't Know They Were Going To Be.

You've Got To Find The Force Inside You.

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.

All Life Stinks And You Must Embrace That With Compassion.

Myths Are Clues To The Spiritual Potentialities Of The Human Life.

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

You Enter The Forest At The Darkest Point, Where There Is No Path. Where There Is A Way Or Path, It Is Someone Else's Path. You Are Not On Your Own Path. If You Follow Someone Else's Way, You Are Not Going To Realize Your Potential.

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.

Myth Is The Secret Opening Through Which The Inexhaustible Energies Of The Cosmos Pour Into Human Manifestation.

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.

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.

Every Moment Is Utterly Unique And Will Not Be Continued In Eternity. This Fact Gives Life Its Poignancy And Should Concentrate Your Attention On What You Are Experiencing Now...that Source Of Eternal Energy Is Here, In You, Now.

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

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

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.

Regrets Are Illuminations Come Too Late.

I Don’t Think People Are Really Seeking The Meaning Of Life. I Think We’re Seeking An Experience Of Being Alive…we Want To Feel The Rapture Of Being Alive

Where You Stumble And Fall, There You Will Find Gold.

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

Nothing Can Happen To You That Is Not Positive. Even Though It Looks And Feels At The Moment Like A Negative Crisis, It Is Not. The Crisis Throws You Back, And When You Are Required To Exhibit Strength, It Comes.

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

The God You Worship Is The One You're Capable Of Becoming.

When You No Longer Are Compelled By Desire And Fear . . . When You Have Seen The Radiance In Eternity From All Forms Of Time . . . When You Follow Your Bliss . . . Doors Will Open Where You Would Not Have Thought There Were Doors . . . And The World Will Step In And Help.

If You Have The Guts To Follow The Risk...if One Follows What I Call One's "bliss" - The Thing That Really Gets You Deep In The Gut And That You Feel Is Your Life - Doors Will Open Up...if You Follow Your Bliss, You'll Have Your Bliss, Whether You Have Money Or Not.

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

In The Orient The Ultimate Divine Mystery Is Sought Beyond All Human Categories Of Thought And Feeling, Beyond Names And Forms, And Absolutely Beyond Any Such Concept As Of A Merciful Or Wrathful Personality, Chooser Of One People Over Another, Comforter Of Folk Who Pray, And Destroyer Of Those Who Do Not. Such Anthropomorphic Attributions Of Human Sentiments And Thoughts To A Mystery Beyond Thought Is-from The Point Of View Of Indian Thought-a Style Of Religion For Children.

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

The World Is Full Of People Who Have Stopped Listening To Themselves.

Any God Who Can Invent Hell Is No Candidate For The Salvation Army

I Think Of Compassion As The Fundamental Religious Experience And, Unless That Is There, You Have Nothing.

If The Path Before You Is Clear, You're Probably On Someone Else's.

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.

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 Black Moment Is The Moment When The Real Message Of Transformation Is Going To Come. At The Darkest Moment Comes The Light.

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 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.

The Actual Point In Question, Throughout The Centuries Of Christian Persecution, Has Never Been Faith In God, But Faith In The Bible As The Word Of God, And In The Church (this Church Or That) As The Interpreter Of That Word.

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.

The Best We Can Do Is Lean Towards The Light.

The Purpose Of The Journey Is Compassion. When You Have Come Past The Pairs Of Opposites, You Have Reached Compassion.

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

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

Myths Are Public Dreams; Dreams Are Private Myths. By Finding Your Own Dream And Following It Through, It Will Lead You To The Myth-world In Which You Live. But Just As In Dream, The Subject And Object, Though They Seem To Be Separate, Are Really The Same.

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?

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.

The Demon That You Can Swallow Gives You It’s Power, And The Greater Life’s Pain, The Greater Life’s Reply.

When You See The Earth From The Moon, You Don't See Any Divisions There Of Nations Or States. This Might Be The Symbol, Really, For The New Mythology To Come. That Is The Country That We Are Going To Be Celebrating. And Those Are The People That We Are One With.

The Function Of (heroic) Symbols Is To Give You A Sense Of Aha! Yes, I Know What It Is, It's Myself.

I Think It's Important To Live Life With A Knowledge Of Its Mystery, And Of Your Own Mystery.

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.

It Is Not Only That There Is No Hiding Place For The Gods From The Searching Telescope And Microscope; There Is No Such Society Any More As The Gods Once Supported.

It Has Always Been The Prime Function Of Mythology And Rite To Supply The Symbols That Carry The Human Spirit Forward.

There Are Now No More Horizons. And With The Dissolution Of Horizons We Have Experienced And Are Experiencing Collisions, Terrific Collisions, Not Only Of Peoples But Also Of Their Mythologies. It Is As When Dividing Panels Are Withdrawn From Between Chambers Of Very Hot And Very Cold Airs: There Is A Rush Of These Forces Together.

Love Is Perfect Kindness.

The Object Becomes Aesthetically Significant When It Becomes Metaphysically Significant.

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'.

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.

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.

I Think Of Mythology As A Function Of Biology; The Energies Of The Body Are The Energies That Move The Imagination. These Energies Are The Source, Then, Of Mythological Imagery; In A Mythological Organization Of Symbols, The Conflicts Between The Different Organic Impulses Within The Body Are Resolved And Harmonized. You Might Say Mythology Is A Formula For The Harmonization Of The Energies Of Life.

An Old Apache Storyteller Reminds 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.

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.

What If We Choose Not To Do The Things We Are Supposed To Do? The Principal Gain Is A Sense Of An Authentic Act - And An Authentic Life. It May Be A Short One, But It Is An Authentic One, And That's A Lot Better Than Those Short Lives Full Of Boredom. The Principal Loss Is Security. Another Is Respect From The Community. But You Gain The Respect Of Another Community, The One That Is Worth Having The Respect Of.

We Are Standing On A Whale Fishing For Minnows.

The Dance Is The Highest Symbol Of Life Itself.

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.

We Must Be Willing To Get Rid Of The Life We've Planned, So As To Have The Life That Is Waiting For Us. The Old Skin Has To Be Shed Before The New One Can Come. -

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.

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, You Don’t Know Who Your Friends Are, You Don’t Know What You Owe Anybody, You Don’t Know What Anybody Owes To You. This Is A Place Where You Can Simply Experience And Bring Forth What You Are And What You Might Be. This Is The Place Of Creative Incubation. At First You May Find That Nothing Happens There. But If You Have A Sacred Place And Use It, Something Eventually Will Happen.

Respect Your Curses, For They Are The Instruments Of Your Destiny.

The Psychotic Drowns In The Same Waters In Which The Mystic Swims With Delight.

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

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

The Cave You Fear To Enter Holds The Treasure You Seek. Fear Of The Unknown Is Our Greatest Fear. Many Of Us Would Enter A Tiger's Lair Before We Would Enter A Dark Cave. While Caution Is A Useful Instinct, We Lose Many Opportunities And Much Of The Adventure Of Life If We Fail To Support The Curious Explorer Within Us.

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)

If You Will Think Of Ourselves As Coming Out Of The Earth, Rather Than Having Been Thrown In Here From Somewhere Else, You See That We Are The Earth, We Are The Consciousness Of The Earth. These Are The Eyes Of The Earth. And This Is The Voice Of The Earth.

There Is A Condescension On The Part Of The Infinite To The Mind Of Man. That Is What Looks Like God.

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

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.

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

There Is A God Inside My Pc. An Old-testament God With Lots Of Arbitrary Rules And Utterly No Mercy.

Myths Are Public Dreams, Dreams Are Private Myths. We Must Be Willing To Get Rid Of The Life We Planned, So As To Have The Life That Is Waiting For Us. I Have Bought This Wonderful Machine — A Computer ... It Seems To Me To Be An Old Testament God, With A Lot Of Rules And No Mercy.

When Your Mind Is Simply Trapped By The Image Out There So That You Never Make The Reference To Yourself, You Have Misread The Image.

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.

All The Gods, All The Heavens, All The Hells, Are Within You.

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

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

And If There Was No Fall, What Then Of The Need For Redemption? What God Was Offended And By Whom? Some Especially Touchy Cave Bear Whose Skull Had Been Improperly Enshrined?

We Have Today To Learn To Get Back Into Accord With The Wisdom Of Nature And Realize Again Our Brotherhood With The Animals And With The Water And The Sea.

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

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

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.

What Will They Think Of Me? Must Be Put Aside For Bliss

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

The Function Of Ritual, As I Understand It, Is To Give Form To Human Life, Not In The Way Of A Mere Surface Arrangement, But In Depth.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Clearly, Mythology Is No Toy For Children. Nor Is It A Matter Of Archaic, Merely Scholarly Concern, Of No Moment To Modern Men Of Action. For Its Symbols (whether In The Tangible Form Of Images Or In The Abstract Form Of Ideas) Touch And Release The Deepest Centers Of Motivation, Moving Literate And Illiterate Alike, Moving Mobs, Moving Civilizations.

You've Got To Say Yes To This Miracle Of Life As It Is, Not On Condition That It Follow Your Rules.

Knowing Who You Are

There Seem To Be Only Two Kinds Of People: Those Who Think That Metaphors Are Facts, And Those Who Know That They Are Not Facts. Those Who Know They Are Not Facts Are What We Call "atheists," And Those Who Think They Are Facts Are "religious." Which Group Really Gets The Message?

Wars And Temper Tantrums Are The Makeshifts Of Ignorance; Regrets Are Illuminations Come Too Late.

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.

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 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.

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.

If We Fix On The Old, We Get Stuck.

Whether You Call Someone A Hero Or A Monster Is All Relative To Where The Focus Of Your Consciousness May Be.

I Think Of Mythology As The Homeland Of The Muses, The Inspirers Of Art, The Inspirers Of Poetry. To See Life As A Poem And Yourself Participating In A Poem Is What The Myth Does For You.

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

A Hero Is Someone Who Has Given His Or Her Life To Something Bigger Than Oneself.

No Tribal Rite Has Yet Been Recorded Which Attempts To Keep Winter From Descending; On The Contrary: The Rites All Prepare The Community To Endure, Together With The Rest Of Nature, The Season Of The Terrible Cold.

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.

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

Now I Found It In Writing Sentences. You Can Write That Sentence In A Way That You Would Have Written It Last Year. Or You Can Write It In The Way Of The Exquisite Nuance That Is Sriting In Your Mind Now. But That Takes A Lot Of ... Waiting For The Right Word To Come.

Just Think, Vishnu Sleeps In The Cosmic Ocean, And The Lotus Of The Universe Grows From His Navel. On The Lotus Sits Brahma, The Creator. Brahma Opens His Eyes, And A World Comes Into Being, Governed By An Indra. Brahma Closes His Eyes, And A World Goes Out Of Being. The Life Of A Brahma Is 432,000 Years. When He Dies, The Lotus Goes Back, And Another Lotus Is Formed, And Another Brahma. Then Think Of The Galaxies Beyond Galaxies In Infinite Space, Each A Lotus, With A Brahma Sitting On It, Opening His Eyes, Closing His Eyes.

If You Want To Find Out What It Means To Have A Society Without Any Rituals, Read The New York Times.

Instead Of Clearing His Own Heart The Zealot Tries To Clear The World.

When You Are On Your Path, And It Is Truly Your Path, Doors Will Open For You Where There Were No Doors For Someone Else.

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

[comedies], In The Ancient World, Were Regarded As Of A Higher Rank Than Tragedy, Of A Deeper Truth, Of A More Difficult Realization, Of A Sounder Structure, And Of A Revelation More Complete. The Happy Ending Of The Fairy Tale, The Myth, And The Divine Comedy Of The Soul, Is To Be Read, Not As A Contradiction, But As A Transcendence Of The Universal Tragedy Of Man. ...tragedy Is The Shattering Of The Forms And Of Our Attachment To The Forms...

In The Older View The Goddess Universe Was Alive, Herself Organically The Earth, The Horizon, And The Heavens. Now She Is Dead, And The Universe Is Not An Organism, But A Building, With Gods At Rest In It In Luxury: Not As Personifications Of The Energies In Their Manners Of Operation, But As Luxury Tenants, Requiring Service. And Man, Accordingly, Is Not As A Child Born To Flower In The Knowledge Of His Own Eternal Portion But As A Robot Fashioned To Serve.

The Seizure Of Passionate Love Can Be, In Such A Context, Only Illicit, Breaking In Upon The Order Of One's Dutiful Life In Virtue As A Devastating Storm.

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.

It's Characteristic Of Democracy That Majority Rule Is Understood As Being Effective Not Only In Politics But Also In Thinking. In Thinking, Of Course, The Majority Is Always Wrong.

The Adventure Evoked A Quality Of His Character That He Didn't Know He Possessed.

The Happy Ending Of The Fairy Tale, The Myth, And The Divine Comedy Of The Soul, Is To Be Read, Not As A Contradiction, But As A Transcendence Of The Universal Tragedy Of Man. The Objective World Remains What It Was, But, Because Of A Shift Of Emphasis Within The Subject, Is Beheld As Though Transformed. Where Formerly Life And Death Contended, Now Enduring Being Is Made Manifest-as Indifferent To The Accidents Of Time As Water Boiling In A Pot Is To The Destiny Of A Bubble, Or As The Cosmos To The Appearance And Disappearance Of A Galaxy Of Stars.

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

Our Life Has Become So Economic And Practical In Its Orientation That, As You Get Older, The Claims Of The Moment Upon You Are So Great, You Hardly Know Where The Hell You Are, Or What It Is You Intended. You Are Always Doing Something That Is Required Of You. Where Is Your Bliss Station? You Have To Try To Find It.

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.

......the Interesting Thing Was That The Roman Catholic Monks And The Buddhist Monks Had No Trouble Understanding Each Other. Each Of Them Was Seeking The Same Experience And Knew That The Experience Was Incommunicable. The Communication Is Only An Effort To Bring The Hearer To The Edge Of The Abyss; It Is A Signpost, Not The Thing Itself. But The Secular Clergy Reads The Communication And Gets Stuck With The Letter, And That's Where You Have The Conflict.

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

The Importance Of The End Of Time Is As ... A Psychological Event ... When You Have Seen The Radiance Of Eternity Through All The Forms Of Time ... And It Is The Function Of Art To Make That Visible To You ... Then You Have Really Have Ended Life In The World As It Is Lived By Those Who Only Think Only In The Historical, Concretizing Terms. This Is The Function Of Mythology.

Eternity Isn't Some Later Time. Eternity Isn't A Long Time. Eternity Has Nothing To Do With Time. Eternity Is That Dimension Of Here And Now Which Thinking And Time Cuts Out. This Is It. And If You Don't Get It Here, You Won't Get It Anywhere. And The Experience Of Eternity Right Here And Now Is The Function Of Life.

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.

There Is No Make-believe About Heaven, Future Bliss, And Compensation, To Alleviate The Bitter Majesty, But Only Utter Darkness, The Void Of Unfulfillment, To Receive And Eat Back The Lives That Have Been Tossed Forth From The Womb Only To Fail.

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.

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

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

[m]yths Are Not Invented As Stories Are. Myths Are Inspired-they Really Are. They Come From The Same Realm That Dream Comes From.

What You Have To Do, You Do With Play. The Universe Is God’s Play.

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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Muhammad Ali Jinnah

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