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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.

-Joseph Campbell

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To Find Your Own

Joseph Campbell

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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.

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

Art Is The Set Of Wings To Carry You Out Of Your Own Entanglement.

Poets And Artists Who Speak Of The Mystery Are Rare.

The Entire Heavenly Realm Is Within Us, But To Find It We Have To Relate To What's Outside.

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

What Is The Meaning Of Life

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

Gods Suppressed Become Devils, And Often It Is These Devils Whom We First Encounter When We Turn Inward.

Through Dreams A Door Is Opened To Mythology, Since Myths Are Of The Nature Of Dreams, And That, As Dreams Arise From An Inward World Unknown To Waking Consciousness, So Do Myths: So, Indeed, Does Life.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Every Story You Tell Is Your Own Story.

You Don't Have To Believe That There Was A King Arthur To Get The Significance Of Those Stories, But Christians Say We Have To Believe There Was A Christ, Or The Miracles Don't Make Sense.

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

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

People Forget Facts, But They Remember Stories.

Everything Starts With A Story.

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

There Is No Security In Following The Call To Adventure.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

This Is An Essential Experience Of Any Mystical Realization. You Die To Your Flesh And Are Born Into Your Spirit. You Identify Yourself With The Consciousness And Life Of Which Your Body Is But The Vehicle. You Die To The Vehicle And Become Identified In Your Consciousness With That Of Which The Vehicle Is But The Carrier. That Is The God.

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.

Breaking Out Is Following Your Bliss Pattern, Quitting The Old Place, Starting Your Hero Journey, Following Your Bliss. You Throw Off Yesterday As The Snake Sheds Its Skin.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

The Place To Find Is Within Yourself.

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.

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

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

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

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.

The Call To Adventure Signifies That Destiny Has Summoned The Hero.

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

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.

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

The Images Of Myth Are Reflections Of Spiritual And Depth Potentialities Of Every One Of Us. Through Contemplating Those We Evoke Those Powers In Our Own Lives To Operate Through Ourselves.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

I Don't Have To Have Faith, I Have Experience.

Don't Do Anything That Isn't Play

Nonviolent Communication

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.

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

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.

Vegetarians Are People Who Cannot Hear Tomatos Screaming.

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

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.

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

The Idea Of Buddha Consciousness Is That All Beings Are Buddha Beings, And Your Whole Function In Meditation And Everything Else Is To Find That Buddha Consciousness Within And Live Out Of That, Instead Of The Interests Of The Eyes And Ears.

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?'

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.

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

Myths Are The World's Dreams. They Are Archetypal Dreams And Deal With Great Human Problems. Myths And Dreams Come From The Same Place. They Come From Realizations Of Some Kind That Then Have To Find Expression In Symbolic Form.

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

Where You Stumble, There Lies Your Treasure. The Very Cave You Are Afraid To Enter Turns Out To Be The Source Of What You Are Looking For. The Damned Thing In The Cave That Was So Dreaded Has Become The Center.

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.

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

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.

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

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 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.

If You Really Want To Help This World, What You Will Have To Teach Is How To Live In It.

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

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

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

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

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

Love Is Exactly As Strong As Life.

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

All Life Stinks And You Must Embrace That With Compassion.

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

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

An Old Apache Storyteller Reminds Us

If You See Your Path Laid Out In Front Of You - Step One, Step Two, Step Three - You Only Know One Thing . . . It Is Not Your Path. Your Path Is Created In The Moment Of Action. If You Can See It Laid Out In Front Of You, You Can Be Sure It Is Someone Else's Path. That Is Why You See It So Clearly.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

If You Are Falling....dive.

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

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

......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.

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

When You Follow Your Bliss...doors Will Open Where You Would Not Have Thought There Would Be Doors, And Where There Wouldn't Be A Door For Anyone Else.

The 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.

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

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

Your Sacred Space Is Where You Can Find Yourself Again And Again.

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

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

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.

When We Quit Thinking Primarily About Ourselves And Our Own Self-preservation, We Undergo A Truly Heroic Transformation Of Consciousness.

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)

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

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

Knowing Who You Are

If You Are On The Right Path You Will Find That Invisible Hands Are Helping.

The Insecure Way Is The Secure Way.

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

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

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

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.

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 Follow Your Bliss, You Begin To Meet People Who Are In The Field Of Your Bliss, And They Open The Doors To You.

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

We Save The World By Being Alive Ourselves.

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

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

Sit In A Room And Read--and Read And Read. And Read The Right Books By The Right People. Your Mind Is Brought Onto That Level, And You Have A Nice, Mild, Slow-burning Rapture All The Time.

Opportunities To Find Deeper Powers Within Ourselves Come When Life Seems Most Challenging.

We're All Seeking...the Rapture Of Being Alive.

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.

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

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.

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?

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

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

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

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.

God Is A Metaphor For That Which Transcends All Levels Of Intellectual Thought. It's As Simple As That.

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

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.

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.

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.

Half The People In The World Think That The Metaphors Of Their Religious Traditions, For Example, Are Facts. And The Other Half Contends That They Are Not Facts At All. As A Result We Have People Who Consider Themselves Believers Because They Accept Metaphors As Facts, And We Have Others Who Classify Themselves As Atheists Because They Think Religious Metaphors Are Lies.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

[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...

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.

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

When You Are In Accord With Nature, Nature Will Yield Its Bounty. This Is Something That Is Coming Up In Our Own Consciousness Now...recognizi Ng That By Violating The Environment In Which We Are Living, We Are Really Cutting Off The Energy And Source Of Our Own Living. And It’s This Sense Of Accord, So That Living Properly In Relation To What Has To Be Done In This World One Fosters The Vitality Of The Environment.

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.

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

Knowing Who You Are

Quotation Marks

You Have To Learn To Recognize Your Own Depth.

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

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

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

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

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.

You Can't Say Life Is Useless Because It Ends In The Grave.

I Don't Need Faith. I Have Experience.

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

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.

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'.

The Hero, Whether God Or Goddess, Man Or Woman, The Figure In A Myth Or The Dreamer Of A Dream Discovers And Assimilates His Opposite (his Own Unsuspected Self) Either By Swallowing It Or By Being Swallowed.

You Have Been Thinking One Way. Now You Have To Think A Different Way.

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.

Where There Is A Way Or Path, It Is Someone Else's. Each Of Us Has To Find His Own Way.

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

Within The Field Of A Secular Society, Which Is A Sort Of Neutral Frame That Allows Individuals To Develop Their Own Lives, So Long As They Don't Annoy Their Neighbors Too Much, Each Of Us Has An Individual Myth That's Driving Us, Which We May Or May Not Know.

Secular Society

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.

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

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.

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?

At The Darkest Moment Comes The Light.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Have You Ever Looked Inside One Of Those Things [computers]? It's A Whole Hierarchy Of Angels- All On Slats. And Those Little Tubes-those Are Miracles.

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

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.

You've Got To Find The Force Inside You.

A Hero Is Not A Champion Of Things Become, But Of Things Becoming; The Dragon To Be Slain By Him Is Precisely The Monster Of The Status Quo.

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

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.

We Know That Jesus Could Not Have Ascended To Heaven Because There Is No Physical Heaven Anywhere In The Universe. Even Ascending At The Speed Of Light, Jesus Would Still Be In The Galaxy.

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

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

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

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

The Privilege Of A Lifetime Is Being Who You Are.

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