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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.

-Joseph Campbell

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The Seizure Of Passionate

Joseph Campbell

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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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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?

When We Follow Our Bliss, We Are Met By A Thousand Unseen Helping Hands.

Follow Your Inner Heart And The World Moves In And Helps.

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

...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."

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.

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

All Societies Are Evil, Sorrowful, Inequitable; And So They Will Always Be. So If You Really Want To Help This World, What You Will Have To Teach Is How To Live In It. And That No One Can Do Who Has Not Himself Learned How To Live In It In The Joyful Sorrow And Sorrowful Joy Of The Knowledge Of Life As It 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.

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

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

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

The Object Becomes Aesthetically Significant When It Becomes Metaphysically Significant.

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.

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.

You've Got To Find The Force Inside You.

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

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

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.

I Don't Need Faith. I Have Experience.

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.

Our Demons Are Our Own Limitations, Which Shut Us Off From The Realization Of The Ubiquity Of The Spirit . . . Each Of These Demons Is Conquered In A Vision Quest.

You May Have Success In Life, But Then Just Think Of It - What Kind Of Life Was It? What Good Was It - You've Never Done The Thing You Wanted To Do In All Your Life. 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.

An Old Apache Storyteller Reminds Us

Poets And Artists Who Speak Of The Mystery Are Rare.

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.

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

Knowing Who You Are

Quotation Marks

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

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

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 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.

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.

When You Are Required To Exhibit Strength, It Comes.

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.

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.

The Priests Used To Say That Faith Can Move Mountains, And Nobody Believed Them. Today The Scientists Say That They Can Level Mountains, And Nobody Doubts Them.

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.

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

The Theme Of The Grail Is The Bringing Of Life Into What Is Known As 'the Wasteland.' The Wasteland Is The Preliminary Theme To Which The Grail Is The Answer. . . It's The World Of People Living Inauthentic Lives - Doing What They Are Supposed To Do.

The Creative Act Is Not Hanging On, But Yielding To A New Creative Movement. Awe Is What Moves Us Forward.

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.

If You Follow Your Bliss...the Life That You Ought To Be Living Is The One You Are Living.

The Myth Does Not Point To A Fact; The Myth Points Beyond Facts To Something That Informs The Fact

All Religions Are True But None Are Literal.

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

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

The Place To Find Is Within Yourself.

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

Love Is Exactly As Strong As Life.

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

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.

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.

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

Vegetarians Are People Who Cannot Hear Tomatos Screaming.

Heroism Is A Matter Of Integrity--beco Ming More And More At Each Step Ourselves.

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.

He Must Put Aside His Pride, His Virtue, Beauty And Life And Bow Or Submit To The Absolutely Intolerable.

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

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.

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.

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.

At First You Might Find That Nothing Happens There. But If You Have A Sacred Space And Use It, Eventually Something Will Happen. Your Sacred Space Is Where You Find Yourself Again And Again.

Finding Yourself

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.

We're So Engaged In Doing Things To Achieve Purposes Of Outer Value That We Forget The Inner Value, The Rapture That Is Associated With Being Alive, Is What It Is All About.

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.

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

There Is Perhaps Nothing Worse Than Reaching The Top Of The Ladder And Discovering That You’re On The Wrong Wall.

Reaching The Top

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

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.

In Marriage You Are Not Sacrificing Yourself To The Other Person. You Are Sacrificing Yourself To The Relationship.

Sacrificing Yourself

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.

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.

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.

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

The Dark Night Of The Soul Comes Just Before Revelation.

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.

Mythologies, In Other Words, Mythologies And Religions Are Great Poems And, When Recognized As Such, Point Infallibly Through Things And Events To The Ubiquity Of A

Love Your Enemies, For They Determine Who You Are.

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

Opportunities To Find Deeper Powers Within Ourselves Come When Life Seems Most Challenging. Negativism To The Pain And Ferocity Of Life Is Negativism To Life. We Are Not There Until We Can Say 'yea' To It All.

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.

Passion Will Move Men Beyond Themselves, Beyond Their Shortcomings, Beyond Their Failures.

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.

We're Not On Our Journey To Save The World But To Save Ourselves. But In Doing That You Save The World. The Influence Of A Vital Person Vitalizes.

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

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

Every Story You Tell Is Your Own Story.

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.

The Hero, Therefore, Is The Man Or Woman Who Has Been Able To Battle Past His Personal And Local Historical Limitations.

Following Your Bliss Is Not Self-indulgent, But Vital; Your Whole Physical System Knows That This Is The Way To Be Alive In This World And The Way To Give To The World The Very Best That You Have To Offer. There Is A Track Just Waiting For Each Of Us And Once On It, Doors Will Open That Were Not Open Before And Would Not Open For Anyone Else.

The Concept Of Time Shuts Off Eternity.

Concept Of Time

One Great Thing About Growing Old Is That Nothing Is Going To Lead To Anything. Everything Is Of The Moment.

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.

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

The Schizophrenic Is Drowning In The Same Waters In Which The Mystic Swims With Delight. Edgar Cayce Made The Same Observation In His Readings

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

There Is No Security In Following The Call To Adventure.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

In One Of The Upanishads It Says, When The Glow Of A Sunset Holds You And You Say 'aha,' That Is The Recognition Of The Divinity. And When You Say 'aha' To An Art Object, That Is A Recognition Of Divinity. And What Divinity Is It? It Is Your Divinity, Which Is The Only Divinity There Is. We Are All Phenomenal Manifestations Of A Divine Will To Live, And That Will And The Consciousness Of Life Is One In All Of Us, And That Is What Artwork Expresses.

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

Myth Is What We Call Other People's Religion.

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

When Everything Is Lost, And All Seems Darkness, Then Comes The New Life And All That Is Needed.

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

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.

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.

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

The Ultimate Dreamer Is Vishnu Floating On The Cosmic Milky Ocean, Couched Upon The Coils Of The Abyssal Serpent Ananta, The Meaning Of Whose Name Is Unending. In The Foreground Stand The Five Pandava Brothers, Heroes Of The Epic Mahabharata, With Draupadi, Their Wife: Allegorically, She Is The Mind And They Are The Five Senses.

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.'

The Process Of Nature Cannot Be Evil.

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.

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.

There's Nothing Militant About Jesus. I Don't Read Anything Like That In Any Of The Gospels. Peter Drew His Sword And Cut Off The Servant's Ear, And Jesus Said, "put Back Thy Sword, Peter." But Peter Has Had His Sword Out And At Work Ever Since.

Out Of Perfection Nothing Can Be Made. Every Process Involves Breaking Something Up.

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.

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

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.

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.

What We're Learning In Our Schools Is Not The Wisdom Of Life. We're Learning Technologies, We're Getting Information. There's A Curious Reluctance On The Part Of Faculties To Indicate The Life Values Of Their Subjects.

When You Are Falling --- Dive!

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.

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

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

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.

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

In Choosing Your God, You Choose Your Way Of Looking At The Universe. There Are Plenty Of Gods. Choose Yours.

Art Is The Clothing Of A Revelation

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

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

The Problem In Our Society And In Our Schools Is To Inclulcate, Without Overdoing It, The Notion Of Education, As In The Latin Educere--to Lead, To Bring Out What Is In Someone Rather Than Merely To Indoctrinate Him/her From The Outside. (89)

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

All We Really Want To Do Is Dance.

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

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

When 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.

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.'

Awe Is What Moves Us Forward.

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

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

To Find Your Own Way Is To Follow Your Bliss.

Follow Your Bliss

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.

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.

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

If You Realize What The Real Problem Is-losing Yourself-you Realize That This Itself Is The Ultimate Trial.

She Was ... The Arch Personification Of The Power Of Space, Time, And Matter, Within Whose Bound All Beings Arise And Die: The Substance Of Their Bodies, Configurator Of Their Lives And Thoughts, And Receiver Of Their Dead. And Everything Having Form Or Name-including God Personified As Good Or Evil, Merciful Or Wrathful-was Her Child, Within Her Womb.

The Essence Of Oneself And The Essence Of The World: These Two Are One. [ The Aim Is Not To See, But To Realize That One Is, That Essence; Then One Is Free To Wander As That Essence In The World.] Hence Separateness, Withdrawal, Is No Longer Necessary. Wherever The Hero May Wander, Whatever He May Do, He Is Ever In The Presence Of His Own Essence-for He Has The Perfected Eye To See.

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."

It Is By Going Down Into The Abyss That We Recover The Treasures Of Life. Where You Stumble, There Lies Your Treasure.

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.'

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

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.

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.

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

Follow Your Bliss

Wherever The Poetry Of Myth Is Interpreted As Biography, History, Or Science, It Is Killed.

We Are Standing On A Whale Fishing For Minnows.

This Death To The Logic Of Emotional Commitments Of Our Chance Moment In The World Of Space And Time, This Recognition Of, The Shift Of Our Emphasis To, The Universal Life That Throbs And Celebrates Its Victory In The Very Kiss Of Our Own Annihilation, This Amor Fati, 'love Of Fate,' Love Of The Fate That Is Inevitably Death, Constitutes The Experience Of The Tragic Art.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Poetry Comes Out Of An Elite Experience, The Experience Of People Whose Ears Are Opened To The Song Of The Universe.

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.

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.

There Is No Greater Privilege In Life Than Being Yourself.

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

Myths Are Public Dreams, Dreams Are Private Myths.

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

People Forget Facts, But They Remember Stories.

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

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.

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.

Survival Is The Second Law Of Life. The First Is That We Are All One.

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.

Writer’s Block Results From Too Much Head. Cut Off Your Head. Pegasus, Poetry, Was Born Of Medusa When Her Head Was Cut Off. You Have To Be Reckless When Writing. Be As Crazy As Your Conscience Allows.

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

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.

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

I Think The Person Who Takes A Job In Order To Live - That Is To Say, For The Money - Has Turned Himself Into A Slave.

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

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

Nietzsche Was The One Who Did The Job For Me. At A Certain Moment In His Life, The Idea Came To Him Of What He Called "the Love Of Your Fate." Whatever Your Fate Is, Whatever The Hell Happens, You Say, "this Is What I Need." It May Look Like A Wreck, But Go At It As Though It Were An Opportunity, A Challenge. If You Bring Love To That Moment-not Discouragement-you Will Find The Strength Is There. Any Disaster You Can Survive Is An Improvement In Your Character, Your Stature, And Your Life. What A Privilege! This Is When The Spontaneity Of Your Own Nature Will Have A Chance To Flow.

If Marriage Isn't A First Priority In Your Life, You're Not Married.

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

All Babies Are Buddha Babies.

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.

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

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Lester B. Pearson

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