Background Image
...
Mythological Symbols Touch And Exhilarate Centers Of Life Beyond The Reach Of Vocabularies Of Reason And Coercion.
-Joseph Campbell
...
Please Wait....
Translating....

Mythological Symbols Touch And

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

Understanding the Quote: "mythological symbols touch and exhilarate centers of life beyond the reach of..."

This quote by Joseph Campbell reflects deeply on the theme of vocabulary. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Vocabulary, Coercion, Reason, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Joseph Campbell interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Joseph Campbell

Joseph Campbell is celebrated for insightful thoughts on vocabulary and coercion. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

Views: 5
Topic
Vocabulary
Coercion
Reason
More From Joseph Campbell
...suddenly You Hit On Something That The Student Really Responds To, You Can See The Eyes Open And The Complexion Change. The Life Possibility Has Opened There. All You Can Say To Yourself Is, "i Hope This Child Hangs On To That."
Children
Eye
Students
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.
Kings
Hero
Mirrors
I Think What We Lack Isn't Science, But Poetry That Reveals What The Heart Is Ready To Recognize
Heart
Thinking
Ready
The Modern Hero-deed Must Be That Of Questing To Bring To Light Again The Lost Atlantis Of The Co-ordinated Soul.
Hero
Light
Soul
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.
Morning
Time
Stress
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.
Spiritual
Heart
Doe
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."
Happiness
Self
People
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.
Inspirational
Children
Motivation
Vegetarians Are People Who Cannot Hear Tomatos Screaming.
Food
People
Vegetarian
Myth Is What We Call Other People's Religion.
Inspirational
People
Myth
The Myth Is The Public Dream And The Dream Is The Private Myth.
Love
Dream
Dreamer
Great Brahma From His Mystic Heaven Groans, And All His Priesthood Moans.
Heaven
Priesthood
Brahma
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.
Inspirational
Life
Nature
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.
Fall
Unique
People
The Problem Of Making The Inner Meet The Outer Of Today Is, Of Course, The Function Of The Artist.
Artist
Function
God Is Within You. You Yourself Are Your Creator. If You Find That Place In Yourself From Which You Brought This Thing About, You Will Be Able To Live With It And Affirm It, Perhaps Even Enjoy It, As Your Life.
God
Able
Enjoy
One Cannot Predict The Next Mythology Any More Than One Can Predict Tonight's Dream; For A Mythology Is Not An Ideology. It Is Not Something Projected From The Brain, But Something Experienced From The Heart, From Recognition Of Identities Behind Or Within The Appearances Of Nature, Perceiving With Love A 'thou' Where There Would Otherwise Have Been Only An 'it.'
Dream
Heart
Brain
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.
Inspirational
God
Function
You Know The Rule: If You Are Falling, Dive. Do The Thing That Has To Be Done.
Fall
Done
Knows
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.
Life
Respect
Loss
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.
Wall
Fall
Adventure
Our True Reality Is In Our Identity And Unity With All Life.
Reality
True Identity
Unity
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.
Inspirational
Religious
Atheist
The Adventure Of The Hero Is The Adventure Of Being Alive
Inspirational
Life
Positive
Nothing Is Exciting If You Know What The Outcome Is Going To Be.
Outcomes
Exciting
Knows
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.
Talking
Misunderstood
Littles
If You Really Want To Help This World, What You Will Have To Teach Is How To Live In It.
World
Want
Helping
When You Look At That Nature World It Becomes An Icon, It Becomes A Holy Picture That Speaks Of The Origins Of The World. Almost Every Mythology Sees The Origins Of Life Coming Out Of Water. And, Curiously, That's True. It's Amusing That The Origin Of Life Out Of Water Is In Myths And Then Again, Finally, In Science, We Find The Same Thing. It's Exactly So.
Rain
Origin Of Life
Icons
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.
Inspirational
Air
Together
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.
Inspirational
Change
Positive
The Purpose Of The Journey Is Compassion. When You Have Come Past The Pairs Of Opposites, You Have Reached Compassion.
Past
Journey
Compassion
The Adventure Evoked A Quality Of His Character That He Didn't Know He Possessed.
Inspirational
Life
Positive
All Babies Are Buddha Babies.
Baby
Human Nature
We're All Seeking...the Rapture Of Being Alive.
Alive
Rapture
Seeking
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.
Inspirational
Spiritual
Wisdom
Any God Who Can Invent Hell Is No Candidate For The Salvation Army
God
Army
Hell
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.
Art
Thinking
Historical
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.
People
Broken
Perfection
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.
Doors
People
Fields
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.
Real
Artist
Radiance
The Greeks, It Will Be Recalled, Regarded Eros, The God Of Love, As The Eldest Of The Gods; But Also As The Youngest, Born Fresh And Dewy-eyed In Every Living Heart.
Heart
Greek
Born
Thinking In Mythological Terms Helps To Put You In Accord With The Inevitables Of This Vale Of Tears. You Learn To Recognize The Positive Values In What Appear To Be The Negative Moments And Aspects Of Your Life. The Big Question Is Whether You Are Going To Be Able To Say A Hearty Yes To Your Adventure.
Adventure
Thinking
Tears
Follow Your Bliss. The Heroic Life Is Living The Individual Adventure.
Adventure
Heroic
Life Is
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.
Bliss
Lost
Beam
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.'
Path
Wonderful
Pollen
There Is No Greater Privilege In Life Than Being Yourself.
Being Yourself
Privilege
Greater
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.
Hero
Journey
Jewels
God Is A Metaphor For That Which Transcends All Levels Of Intellectual Thought. It's As Simple As That.
God
Simple
Intellectual
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.
Children
Views
Names
The Big Question Is Whether You Are Going To Be Able To Say A Hearty Yes To Your Adventure.
Inspirational
Life
Motivational
It May Be A Species Of Impudence To Think That The Way You Understand God Is The Way God Is. (60).
Inspirational
God
Thinking
Is The God The Source, Or Is The God A Human Manner Of Conceiving Of The Force And Energy That Supports The World? In Our Tradition God Is A Male. This Male And Female Differentiation Is Made, However, Within The Field Of Time And Space, The Field Of Duality. If God Is Beyond Duality, You Cannot Say That God Is A "he." You Cannot Say God Is A "she." You Cannot Say God Is An "it." (18)
Inspirational
God
Space
In Choosing Your God, You Choose Your Way Of Looking At The Universe. There Are Plenty Of Gods. Choose Yours.
Way
Plenty
You Choose
You Have Been Thinking One Way. Now You Have To Think A Different Way.
Thinking
Different
Way
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.
Two
May
Definitions
We Have To Permit Go With The Everyday Living We Had Prepared So As To Have The Lifetime That's Watching For Us
Everyday
Lifetime
Permit
An Old Apache Storyteller Reminds Us
Nature
Storyteller
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.
Inspirational
Dark
Rivers
The Place To Find Is Within Yourself.
If You Follow Someone Else's Way, You Are Not Going To Realize Your Potential.
Hero Journey
Way
Realizing
At The Darkest Moment Comes The Light.
Light
Bliss
Moments
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?
Inspirational
Religious
Atheist
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.
Ocean
Games
Play
Any Disaster You Can Survive Is An Improvement In Your Character, Your Stature, And Your Life
Inspiration
Character
Improvement
It Is The Function Of Art To Carry Us Beyond Speech To Experience.
Art
Speech
Function
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.
Communication
Artist
Space
In Marriage You Are Not Sacrificing Yourself To The Other Person. You Are Sacrificing Yourself To The Relationship.
Sacrifice
Sacrificing Yourself
Persons
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.
Passion
Order
Storm
One Of The Great Disadvantages Of A Literary Or Scriptural Tradition Like The Biblical One Is That A Deity Or Context Of Deities Becomes Crystallized, Petrified At A Certain Time And Place. The Deity Doesn’t Continue To Grow, Expand, Or Take Into Account New Cultural Forces And New Realizations In The Sciences, And The Result Is This Make-believe Conflict We Have In Our Culture Between Science And Religion.
Believe
Biblical
Culture
My Writing Is Of A Very Different Kind From Anything I've Heard About. All This Mythological Material Is Out There, A Big Gathering Of Stuff, And I Have Been Reading It For Some Forty- Or Fifty-odd Years. There Are Various Ways Of Handling That. The Most Common Is To Put The Material Together And Publish A Scholarly Book About It. But When I'm Writing, I Try To Get A Sense Of An Experiential Relationship To The Material. In Fact, I Can't Write Unless That Happens ... I Don't Write Unless The Stuff Is Really Working On Me, And My Selection Of Material Depends On What Works.
Book
Reading
Writing
Love Is Exactly As Strong As Life.
Strong
Love Is
Wisdom And Foolishness Are Practically The Same. Both Are Indifferent To The Opinions Of The World
Life
World
Opinion
Sometimes The Serpent Is Represented As A Circle Eating Its Own Tail. That’s An Image Of Life. Life Sheds One Generation After Another, To Be Born Again. The Serpent Represents Immortal Energy And Consciousness Engaged In The Field Of Time, Constantly Throwing Off Death And Being Born Again. There Is Something Tremendously Terrifying About Life When You Look At It That Way. And So The Serpent Carries In Itself The Sense Of Both The Fascination And The Terror Of Life.
Circles
Generations
Tails
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.
Here And There
Inward
Looks
What You Have To Do, You Do With Play. The Universe Is God’s Play.
Play
Universe
A Ritual Is The Enactment Of A Myth. And, By Participating In The Ritual, You Are Participating In The Myth. And Since Myth Is A Projection Of The Depth Wisdom Of The Psyche, By Participating In A Ritual, Participating In The Myth, You Are Being, As It Were, Put In Accord With That Wisdom, Which Is The Wisdom That Is Inherent Within You Anyhow. Your Consciousness Is Being Re-minded Of The Wisdom Of Your Own Life.
Depth
Consciousness
Myth
Marriage Is Not A Simple Love Affair, It's An Ordeal, And The Ordeal Is The Sacrifice Of Ego To A Relationship In Which Two Have Become One.
Marriage
Wedding
Sacrifice
The Adventure Is Always And Everywhere A Passage Beyond The Veil Of The Known Into The Unknown; The Powers That Watch At The Boundary Are Dangerous; To Deal With Them Is Risky; Yet For Anyone With Competence And Courage The Danger Fades.
Adventure
Watches
Veils
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.
Inspirational
People
Ego
What Will They Think Of Me? Must Be Put Aside For Bliss
Communication
Thinking
Bliss
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.
Spiritual
Live Life
Heart
Mythological Symbols Touch And Exhilarate Centers Of Life Beyond The Reach Of Vocabularies Of Reason And Coercion.
Vocabulary
Coercion
Reason
Questing... Is Not An Ego Trip; It Is An Adventure To Bring Into Fulfillment Your Gift To The World, Which Is Yourself.
Adventure
Ego
World
There's Always The Possibility Of A Fiasco. But There's Also The Possibility Of Bliss.
Bliss
Possibility
Fiasco
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.
People
Feelings
Attention
I Don't Have Faith, I Have Experience.
Have Faith
The Perfect Human Being Is Uninteresting.
Perfect
Humans
Human Beings
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.
Inspirational
Life
Unique
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.
Law
Survival
Firsts
If You Want Resurrection, You Must Have Crucifixion... The Hoarder, The One In Us That Wants To Keep, To Hold On, Must Be Killed.
Want
Resurrection
Crucifixion
The Black Moment Is The Moment When The Real Message Of Transformation Is Going To Come. At The Darkest Moment Comes The Light.
Inspirational
Real
Light
It Is Not Society Which Is To Guide And Save The Creative Hero, But Precisely The Reverse.
Hero
Creative
Guides
What We Are Really Living For Is The Experience Of Life, Both The Pain And The Pleasure.
Inspirational
Courage
Pain
Mythology Tells Us That Where You Stumble, There Your Treasure Is ... The World Is A Match For Us, And We’re A Match For The World. And Where It Seems Most Challenging Lies The Greatest Invitation To Find Deeper And Greater Power In Ourselves.
Lying
Challenges
World
Shakespeare Said That Art Is A Mirror Held Up To Nature. And That’s What It Is. The Nature Is Your Nature, And All Of These Wonderful Poetic Images Of Mythology Are Referring To Something In You. When Your Mind Is Trapped By The Image Out There So That You Never Make The Reference To Yourself, You Have Misread The Image.
Nature
Art
Mirrors
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.
Adventure
Mean
Doors
I Am Shiva-this Is The Great Meditation Of The Yogis In The Himalayas...hea Ven And Hell Are Within Us, And All The Gods Are Within Us. This Is The Great Realization Of The Upanishads Of India In The Ninth Century B.c. All The Gods, All The Heavens, All The Worlds, Are Within Us. They Are Magnified Dreams, And Dreams Are Manifestations In Image Form Of The Energies Of The Body In Conflict With Each Other.
Dream
Meditation
Heaven
A Temple Is A Landscape Of The Soul.
Soul
Church
Landscape
The Privilege Of A Lifetime Is Being Who You Are.
Inspirational
Being Yourself
Appreciation
The Idea Of The Bodhisattva Is The One Who Out Of His Realization Of Transcendence Participates In The World. The Imitation Of Christ Is Joyful Participation In The Sorrows Of The World.
Inspirational
Ideas
Sorrow
Survival Is The Second Law Of Life. The First Is That We Are All One.
Law
Survival
Firsts
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)
Inspirational
Spiritual
Possibility
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.
Hero
Dark
Journey
I Don't Have To Have Faith, I Have Experience.
Inspirational
Faith
Have Faith
Regrets Are Illuminations Come Too Late.
Inspirational
Regret
Illumination
I Always Feel Uncomfortable When People Speak About Ordinary Mortals Because I've Never Met An Ordinary Man, Woman Or Child.
Inspirational
Children
Men
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.
Spiritual
Yesterday
Historical
Passion Will Move Men Beyond Themselves, Beyond Their Shortcomings, Beyond Their Failures.
Work
Moving
Passion
Money Is Congealed Energy, And Releasing It Releases Life's Possibilities.
Energy
Possibility
Release
What's Made Up In The Head Is The Fiction. What Comes Out Of The Heart Is A Myth.
Heart
Fiction
Made
The Function Of (heroic) Symbols Is To Give You A Sense Of Aha! Yes, I Know What It Is, It's Myself.
Giving
Heroic
Function
We Save The World By Being Alive Ourselves.
Inspirational
World
Alive
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.
Adventure
Outcomes
Heroic
Every Act Has Both Good And Evil Results. The Best We Can Do Is Lean To The Light.
Light
Evil
Results
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.'
Looks
Elements
Chance
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?'
Aztec
Faces
Life Is
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.
Art
Thinking
Doe
Everything Starts With A Story.
Stories
Midlife Is When You Reach The Top Of The Ladder And Find That It Was Against The Wrong Wall.
Life
Wall
Ladders
If You Want To Find Out What It Means To Have A Society Without Any Rituals, Read The New York Times.
New York
Mean
Want
Modern Romance, Like Greek Tragedy, Celebrates The Mystery Of Dismemberment, Which Is Life In Time. The Happy Ending Is Justly Scorned As A Misrepresentation; For The World, As We Know It, As We Have Seen It, Yields But One Ending: Death, Disintegration, Dismemberment, And The Crucifixion Of Our Heart With The Passing Of The Forms That We Have Loved.
Inspirational
Heart
Yield
People Who Don't Have A Concept Of The Whole Can Do Very Unfortunate Things.
Unfortunate Things
People
Whole
The Last Act In The Biography Of The Hero Is That Of The Death Or Departure.
Hero
Departure
Biographies
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.
Hero
Victory
World
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.
Inspirational
Life
Dream
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.
Real
Deep Life
Analysis
The Old Skin Has To Be Shed Before The New One Can Come.
Inspirational
Change
Starting Over
What The Artist Must Render Is A Living Moment Somehow, A Living Moment Actually In Action Or An Inward Experience.
Inspirational
Artist
Inward
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.
Doors
Risk
Bliss
The Adventure That The Hero Is Ready For Is The One He Gets.
Hero
Adventure
Ready
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.
Inspirational
Sunset
People
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.
Inspirational
Commitment
Thinking
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.
Misunderstood
Second Best
Thirds
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.
Inspirational
Writing
Years
What Is The Cause, Though, Of The Growth Of An Acorn? The Oak That Is To Come! What Is To Happen In The Future Is Then The Cause Of What Is Occurring Now; And, At The Same Time, What Occurred In The Past Is Also The Cause Of What Is Happening Now. In Addition, A Great Number Of Things Round About, On Every Side, Are Causing What Is Happening Now. Everything, All The Time, Is Causing Everything Else
Past
Numbers
Growth
Privation And Suffering Alone Open The Mind To All That Is Hidden To Others. (igjugarjuk)
Mind
Suffering
Respect Your Curses, For They Are The Instruments Of Your Destiny.
Destiny
Instruments
Curse
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.
Adventure
Dark
Opportunity
God Is The Experience Of Looking At A Tree And Saying, 'ah!
Inspirational
Positive Thinking
Garden
Preachers Err By Trying To Talk People Into Belief; Better They Reveal The Radiance Of Their Own Discovery.
Inspirational
Discovery
People
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.
Art
Men
Two
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)
Inspirational
Poetry
Ordinary
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?
Inspirational
Fall
Skulls
It's A Shame To Waste [the Uniqueness That Is You], By Doing What Someone Else Has Done.
Done
Waste
Shame
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.
Inspirational
Work
Doors
What Gods Are There, What Gods Have There Ever Been, That Were Not From Man's Imagination?
Men
Imagination
Religion
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.
Wise
Courage
Jobs
The Dance Is The Highest Symbol Of Life Itself.
Symbols
Highest
The Fates Lead Him Who Will; Him Who Won't They Drag.
Inspirational
Change
Fate
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.
Moving
Thinking
Organization
Successful Marriage Is Leading Innovative Lives Together, Being Open, Non-programmed. It’s A Free Fall: How You Handle Each New Thing As It Comes Along. As A Drop Of Oil On The Sea, You Must Float, Using Intellect And Compassion To Ride The Waves.
Fall
Successful
Compassion
There Is No Way You Can Use The Word “reality” Without Quotation Marks Around It.
Reality
Knowing Who You Are
Quotation Marks
Religon Is Misunderstood Mythology
Misunderstood
Mythology
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.
Inspirational
Baseball
Moving
If We Fix On The Old, We Get Stuck.
Stuck
Ifs
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.
Karma
Buddhist
Pain
Now, When Luke Skywalker Unmasks His Father, He Is Taking Off The Machine Role That The Father Has Played. The Father Was The Uniform. That Is Power, The State Role.
Inspirational
Father
Uniforms
The Entire Heavenly Realm Is Within Us, But To Find It We Have To Relate To What's Outside.
Realms
Heavenly
Relate
The World Is Full Of People Who Have Stopped Listening To Themselves.
People
Listening
World
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.
Inspirational
Life
Arriving
We Are The Consciousness Of The Earth. We Are The Eyes Of The Earth. The Voice Of The Earth.
Eye
Voice
Earth
Myth Is Much More Important And True Than History. History Is Just Journalism And You Know How Reliable That Is.
Inspirational
Truth
Important
Now All The Myths That You Have Heard And That Resonate With You, Those Are The Elements From Round About That You Are Building Into A Form In Your Life. The Thing Worth Considering Is How They Relate To Each Other In Your Context, Not How They Relate To Something Out There-how They Were Relevant On The North American Prairies Or In The Asian Jungles Hundreds Of Years Agon, But How They Are Relevant Now-unless By Contemplating Their Former Meaning You Can Begin To Amplify Your Own Understanding Of The Role They Play In Your Life.
Years
Play
Understanding
It Is Within You That The Divine Lives.
Love
Life
Divine
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.
Dream
Peculiar
Way
He Who Thinks He Knows, Doesn't Know. He Who Knows That He Doesn't Know, Knows.
Ignorance
Knowledge
Thinking
One Looks, Looks Long, And The World Comes In.
Long
Vision
Looks
Follow Your Bliss And Don't Be Afraid, And Door Will Open Where You Didn't Know They Were Going To Be.
Positive
Rest In Peace
Rip
When You Are Required To Exhibit Strength, It Comes.
Inspirational
Strength
Being Strong
They Thought That It Would Be A Disgrace To Go Forth As A Group. Each Entered The Forest At A Point That He Himself Had Chosen, Where It Was Darkest And There Was No Path. If There Is A Path It Is Someone Else's Path And You Are Not On The Adventure.
Adventure
Groups
Would 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.
School
Thinking
Broken
The Dreamer And His Dream Are The Same...the Powers Personified In A Dream Are These That Move The World.
Dream
Moving
Dreamer
The Goal Of Life Is To Make Your Heartbeat Match The Beat Of The Universe, To Match Your Nature With Nature.
Inspirational
Life
Spiritual
......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.
Buddhist
Communication
Interesting
Life Is Not A Problem To Be Solved But A Mystery To Be Lived. Follow The Path That Is No Path, Follow Your Bliss.
Path
Mystery
Problem
The Myths And Folk Tales Of The Whole World Make Clear That The Refusal Is Essentially A Refusal To Give Up What One Takes To Be One's Own Interest. The Future Is Regarded Not In Terms Of An Unremitting Series Of Deaths And Births, But As Though One's Present System Of Ideals, Virtues, Goals, And Advantages Were To Be Fixed And Made Secure.
Giving Up
Goal
World
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.
Inspirational
Spiritual
Religious
Eternity Is Not The Hereafter...this Is It. If You Don't Get It Here You Won't Get It Anywhere.
Spiritual
Eternity
Follow Your Bliss
It Has Always Been The Prime Function Of Mythology And Rite To Supply The Symbols That Carry The Human Spirit Forward.
Spirit
Prime
Function
When An Idea Is Important To A Person Or Culture It Will Find Its Way Into Imagery.
Ideas
Important
Culture
The Warrior’s Approach Is To Say ‘yes’ To Life: ‘yes’ To It All.
Warrior
Approach
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.
Children
Flower
Men
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.
Goal
Energy
Riding
Furthermore, We Have Not Even To Risk The Adventure Alone; For The Heroes Of All Time Have Gone Before Us; The Labyrinth Is Thoroughly Known; We Have Only To Follow The Thread Of The Hero-path. And Where We Had Thought To Find An Abomination, We Shall Find A God; Where We Had Thought To Slay Another, We Shall Slay Ourselves; Where We Had Thought To Travel Outward, We Shall Come To The Center Of Our Own Existence; And Where We Had Thought To Be Alone, We Shall Be With All The World.
Inspirational
Hero
Adventure
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.
Life
Finding Yourself
Mind
The Function Of The Society Is To Cultivate The Individual. It Is Not The Function Of The Individual To Support Society.
Support
Individualism
Individual
The Hero Journey Is Inside Of You; Tear Off The Veils And Open The Mystery Of Your Self.
Hero
Journey
Self
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'.
Order
Brain
Quests
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.
Giving Up
Mean
Simplicity
In The Absence Of An Effective General Mythology, Each Of Us Has His Private, Unrecognized, Rudimentary, Yet Secretly Potent Pantheon Of Dreams.
Dream
Absence
Pantheon
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.
Art
Space
Political
Love Is Perfect Kindness.
Love
Kindness
Love Is
When You Make The Sacrifice In Marriage, You're Sacrificing Not To Each Other But To Unity In A Relationship.
Love
Relationship
Anniversary
Every Religion Is True One Way Or Another. It Is True When Understood Metaphorically. But When It Gets Stuck In Its Own Metaphors, Interpreting Them As Facts, Then You Are In Trouble.
Inspirational
True Friend
Mind Your Own Business
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.
Reading
People
Understanding
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.
Dream
World
Myth
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.
Ideas
Inward
Body
Myth Must Be Kept Alive. The People Who Can Keep It Alive Are The Artists Of One Kind Or Another.
Inspirational
Art
People
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.
Yoga
Space
Finding Yourself
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.
Past
Space
Brain
Trending Author
Donald Evans
Shirin Ebadi
Marc Chagall
Aeschylus
Angela Carter
David Millar
Category
Information