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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.

-Joseph Campbell

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The First Step To

Joseph Campbell

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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.

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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.

One Can Experience An Unconditional Affirmation Of Life Only When One Has Accepted Death, Not As Contrary To Life, But As An Aspect Of It.

Everything Starts With A Story.

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

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.

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.

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

The Privilege Of A Lifetime Is Being Who You Are.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Follow Your Bliss

Behind All These Manifestations Is The One Radiance, Which Shines Through All Things. The Function Of Art Is To Reveal This Radiance Through The Created Object.

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

The 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.

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

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?

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'.

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

The Quest For Fire Occurred Not Because Anyone Knew What The Practical Uses For Fire Would Be, But Because It Was Fascinating.

Man Should Not Be In The Service Of Society, Society Should Be In The Service Of Man. When Man Is In The Service Of Society, You Have A Monster State, And That's What Is Threatening The World At This Minute.

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.

You Are The Hero Of Your Own Story.

Suspense Novels

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.

If There Were Already A Path, It Would Have To Be Someone Else's; The Whole Point Is To Find Your Own Way.

Apocalypse Does Not Point To A Fiery Armageddon But To The Fact That Our Ignorance And Our Complacency Are Coming To An End.

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 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.

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.

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

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

Sacred Space And Sacred Time And Something Joyous To Do Is All We Need. Almost Anything Then Becomes A Continuous And Increasing Joy. What You Have To Do, You Do With Play. I Think A Good Way To Conceive Of Sacred Space Is As A Playground. If What You're Doing Seems Like Play, You Are In It. But You Can't Play With My Toys, You Have To Have Your Own. Your Life Should Have Yielded Some. Older People Play With Life Experiences And Realizations Or With Thoughts They Like To Entertain. In My Case, I Have Books I Like To Read That Don't Lead Anywhere.

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

The Best Things Cannot Be Told, The Second Best Are Misunderstood. After That Comes Civilized Conversation; After That, Mass Indoctrination; After That, Intercultural Exchange.

Perfection Isn't Human. Human Beings Are Not Perfect. What Evokes Our Love--and I Mean Love, Not Lust--is The Imperfection Of The Human Being. So, When The Imperfection Of The Real Person Peaks Through, Say, 'this Is A Challenge To My Compassion.' Then Make A Try, And Something Might Begin To Get Going.

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

All Babies Are Buddha Babies.

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

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.

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

The 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."

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.

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.

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

Could God Exist If Nobody Else Did? No. That’s Why Gods Are Very Avid For Worshipers. If There Is Nobody To Worship Them, There Are No Gods. There Are As Many Gods As There Are People Thinking About God. In Choosing Your God, You Choose Your Way Of Looking At The Universe. There Are Plenty Of Gods. Choose Yours. The God You Worship Is The God You Deserve.

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.

The Dance Is The Highest Symbol Of Life Itself.

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

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.

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

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

The World, As We Know It, Is Coming To An End. The World As The Center Of The Universe, The World Divided From The Heavens, The World Bound By Horizons In Which Love Is Reserved For Members Of The In-group: That Is The World That Is Passing Away. Apocalypse Does Not Point To A Fiery Armageddon But To The Fact That Our Ignorance And Complacency Are Coming To An End.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Any Disaster You Can Survive Is An Improvement In Your Character, Your Stature, And Your Life

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

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

Awe Is What Moves Us Forward.

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

If You Want To See What A Society Really Believes In, Look At What The Biggest Buildings On The Horizon Are Dedicated To.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

...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."

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

Knowing Who You Are

Quotation Marks

Both The Artist And The Lover Know That Perfection Is Not Loveable. It Is The Clumsiness Of A Fault That Makes A Person Lovable.

For The Bliss Of The Deep Abode Is Not Lightly Abandoned In Favor Of The Self-scattering Of The Wakened State.

I Don’t Think There Is Any Such Thing As An Ordinary Mortal. Everybody Has His Own Possibility Of Rapture In The Experience Of Life. All He Has To Do Is Recognize It And Then Cultivate It And Get Going With It. I Always Feel Uncomfortable When People Speak About Ordinary Mortals Because I’ve Never Met An Ordinary Man, Woman, Or Child.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Money Is Congealed Energy, And Releasing It Releases Life's Possibilities.

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.

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.

There Are Something Like 18 Billion Cells In The Brain Alone. There Are No Two Brains Alike; There Are No Two Hands Alike; There Are No Two Human Beings Alike. You Can Take Your Instructions And Your Guidance From Others, But You Must Find Your Own Path.

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.

Love Is Exactly As Strong As Life.

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

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

All We Really Want To Do Is Dance.

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

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.

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

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.

I Don't Need Faith. I Have Experience.

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

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

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

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

For When The Heart Insists On Its Destiny, Resisting The General Blandishment, Then The Agony Is Great; So Too The Danger. Forces, However, Will Have Been Set In Motion Beyond The Reckoning Of The Senses. Sequences Of Events From The Corners Of The World Will Draw Gradually Together, And Miracles Of Coincidence Bring The Inevitable To Pass.

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

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

The Familiar Life Horizon Has Been Outgrown: The Old Concepts, Ideals, And Emotional Patterns No Longer Fit; The Time For The Passing Of A Threshold Is At Hand.

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

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

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

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

You've Got To Find The Force Inside You.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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

Myth Must Be Kept Alive. The People Who Can Keep It Alive Are The Artists Of One Kind Or Another.

Mythology May, In A Real Sense, Be Defined As Other People's Religion. And Religion May, In A Sense, Be Understood As Popular Misunderstanding Of Mythology. (8)

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.

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.

Follow Your Bliss And The Universe Will Open Doors Where There Were Only Walls.

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.

Mind Your Own Business

Behind All These Manifestations Is The One Radiance, Which Shines Through All Things.

The Best We Can Do Is Lean Towards The Light.

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.

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

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

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

Knowing Who You Are

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.

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.

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.

Every Story You Tell Is Your Own Story.

I Don't Have Faith, I Have Experience.

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

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

It Is Within You That The Divine Lives.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

The Concept Of Time Shuts Off Eternity.

Concept Of Time

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

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.

Seek To Know The Power That Is Within You.

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

Our Life Evokes Our Character And You Find Out More About Yourself As You Go On.

The Call To Adventure Is The Point In A Person’s Life When They Are First Given Notice That Everything Is Going To Change, Whether They Know It Or Not.

An Old Apache Storyteller Reminds Us

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

It Would Not Be Too Much To Say That Myth Is The Secret Opening Through Which The Inexhaustible Energies Of The Cosmos Pour Into Human Cultural Manifestation. Religions, Philosophies, Arts, The Social Forms Of Primitive And Historic Man, Prime Discoveries In Science And Technology, The Very Dreams That Blister Sleep, Boil Up From The Basic, Magic Ring Of Myth.

Wisdom And Foolishness Are Practically The Same. Both Are Indifferent To The Opinions Of The World

All Men Are Capable Of Reason. That Is The Fundamental Principle Of Democracy Because Everybody's Mind Is Capable Of True Knowledge, You Don't Have To Have A Special Authority, Or A Special Revelation Telling You That This Is The Way Things Should Be.

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

Following Your Own Path

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Love Is The Burning Point Of Life, And Since All Life Is Sorrowful, So Is Love. The Stronger The Love, The More The Pain. Love Itself Is Pain, You Might Say -the Pain Of Being Truly Alive.

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.

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.

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

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

All Religions Are True But None Are Literal.

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

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

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.

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.

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

‎"make Your God Transparent To The Transcendent, And It Doesn't Matter What His Name Is."

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

What Is The Meaning Of Life

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

The Unconscious Sends All Sorts Of Vapors, Odd Beings, Terrors, And Deluding Images Up Into The Mind - Whether In Dream, Broad Daylight, Or Insanity: For The Human Kingdom, Beneath The Floor Of The Comparatively Neat Little Dwelling That We Call Our Consciousness, Goes Down Into Unsuspected Aladdin Caves.

I Should Have Said, 'follow Your Blisters.'

When People Get Married Because They Think It's A Long-time Love Affair, They'll Be Divorced Very Soon, Because All Love Affairs End In Disappointment. But Marriage Is A Recognition Of A Spiritual Identity.

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.

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

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.

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.

It Is The Function Of Art To Carry Us Beyond Speech To Experience.

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

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.

Myth Is What We Call Other People's Religion.

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.

Computers Are Like Old Testament Gods; Lots Of Rules And No Mercy.

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

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.

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.

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)

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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