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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.

-Joseph Campbell

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Life Lives On Life.

Joseph Campbell

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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.

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I Should Have Said, 'follow Your Blisters.'

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Quotation Marks

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If You Are Falling....dive.

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.

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Awe Is What Moves Us Forward.

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

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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.

For We Have Not Even To Risk The Adventure Alone, For The Heros Of All Time Have Gone Before Us.

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

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.

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'.

Seek To Know The Power That Is Within You.

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.

Follow Your Bliss. The Heroic Life Is Living The Individual Adventure. There Is No Security In Following The Call To Adventure. Nothing Is Exciting If You Know What The Outcome Is Going To Be.

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.

The Night Of December 25, To Which Date The Nativity Of Christ Was Ultimately Assigned, Was Exactly That Of The Birth Of The Persian Savior Mithra, Who, As An Incarnation Of Eternal Light, Was Born The Night Of The Winter Solstice (then Dated December 25) At Midnight, The Instant Of The Turn Of The Year From Increasing Darkness To Light.

......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.

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.

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

A Temple Is A Landscape Of The Soul.

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.

Love Is Exactly As Strong As Life.

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

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.

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

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.

Everything Starts With A Story.

God Is The Experience Of Looking At A Tree And Saying, 'ah!

Positive Thinking

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.

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

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 Object Becomes Aesthetically Significant When It Becomes Metaphysically Significant.

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

Great Brahma From His Mystic Heaven Groans, And All His Priesthood Moans.

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.

There's Nothing You Can Do That's More Important Than Being Fulfilled. You Become A Sign, You Become A Signal, Transparent To Transcendence; In This Way, You Will Find, Live, And Become A Realization Of Your Own Personal Myth.

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.

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

All Religions Are True But None Are Literal.

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

The Conquest Of Fear Yields The Courage Of Life. That Is The Cardinal Initiation Of Every Heroic Adventure-- Fearlessness And Achievement.

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.

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.

The Way To Find Out About Your Happiness Is To Keep Your Mind On Those Moments When You Feel Most Happy, When You Really Are Happy-not Excited, Not Just Thrilled, But Deeply Happy. This Requires A Little Bit Of Self Analysis. What Is It That Makes You Happy? Stay With It, No Matter What People Tell You. This Is What I Call "following Your Bliss."

Marriage . . . Is Not A Love Affair; It Is An Ordeal. (92)

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Love Is Perfect Kindness.

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

Once You Know The Difference Between Right And Wrong, You Have Lots Fewer Decisions To Make.

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.

When You Are Falling --- Dive!

When We Talk About Settling The World's Problems, We're Barking Up The Wrong Tree. The World Is Perfect. It's A Mess. It Has Always Been A Mess. We're Not Going To Change It. Our Job Is To Straighten Out Our Own Lives.

If You Can See Your Path Clearly In Front Of You, It's Probably Someone Else's.

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

In The Absence Of An Effective General Mythology, Each Of Us Has His Private, Unrecognized, Rudimentary, Yet Secretly Potent Pantheon Of Dreams.

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.

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

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

The Function Of Artists Is "the Mythologization Of The World."

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.

Love Your Enemies, For They Determine Who You Are.

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

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 We Fix On The Old, We Get Stuck.

Is The System Going To Flatten You Out And Deny You Your Humanity, Or Are You Going To Be Able To Make Use Of The System To The Attainment Of Human Purposes?

There Is No Greater Privilege In Life Than Being Yourself.

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.

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

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

Follow Your Bliss

When Before The Beauty Of A Sunset Or A Mountain, You Pause And Exclaim, 'ah,' You Are Participating In Divinity.

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

To Find Your Own Way Is To Follow Your Bliss.

Follow Your Bliss

The Adventure Of The Hero Is The Adventure Of Being Alive

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

First You Must Find Your Trajectory, And Then Comes The Social Coordination.

Do What Gives You Bliss.

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.

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

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.

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

The Dance Is The Highest Symbol Of Life Itself.

Just As Anyone Who Listens To The Muse Will Hear, You Can Write Out Of Your Own Intention Or Out Of Inspiration. There Is Such A Thing. It Comes Up And Talks. And Those Who Have Heard Deeply The Rhythms And Hymns Of The Gods, Can Recite Those Hymns In Such A Way That The Gods Will Be Attracted.

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

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

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.

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.

We Must Let Go Of The Life We Have Planned, So As To Accept The One That Is Waiting For Us.

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

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

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 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.

Our True Reality Is In Our Identity And Unity With All Life.

The Conquest Of The Fear Of Death Is The Recovery Of Life's Joy. One Can Experience An Unconditional Affirmation Of Life Only When One Has Accepted Death, Not As Contrary To Life, But As An Aspect Of Life. Life In Its Becoming Is Always Shedding Death, And On The Point Of Death. The Conquest Of Fear Yields The Courage Of Life. That Is The Cardinal Initiation Of Every Heroic Adventure - Fearlessness And Achievement.

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.

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

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

The Hero’s Journey Always Begins With The Call. One Way Or Another, A Guide Must Come To Say, 'look, You’re In Sleepy Land. Wake. Come On A Trip. There Is A Whole Aspect Of Your Consciousness, Your Being, That’s Not Been Touched. So You’re At Home Here? Well, There’s Not Enough Of You There.' And So It Starts.

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.

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

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.

How Does The Ordinary Person Come To The Transcendent? For A Start, I Would Say, Study Poetry. Learn How To Read A Poem. You Need Not Have The Experience To Get The Message, Or At Least Some Indication Of The Message. It May Come Gradually. (92)

The Concept Of Time Shuts Off Eternity.

Concept Of Time

The Garden Is A Metaphor For The Following: Our Minds, And Our Thinking In Terms Of Pairs Of Opposites--man And Woman, Good And Evil--are As Holy As That Of A God. (50)

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

Life Is But A Mask Worn On The Face Of Death. And Is Death, Then, But Another Mask? 'how Many Can Say,' Asks The Aztec Poet, 'that There Is, Or Is Not, A Truth Beyond?'

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

When You Go Through Life ... It All Seems Accidental At The Time It Is Happening. Then When You Get On In Your 60s Or 70s And Look Back, Your Life Looks Like A Well-planned Novel With A Coherent Theme ... Incidents That Seemed Accidental, Pure Chance, Turn Out To Be Major Elements In The Structuring Of This Novel. Schopenhauer Says, 'who Wrote This Novel? You Did.'

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

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

We Are Kept Out Of The Garden By Our Own Fear And Desire In Relation To What We Think To Be The Goods Of Our 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.

Let The World Be As It Is And Learn To Rock With The Waves.

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