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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.

-Joseph Campbell

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We Are All Born

Joseph Campbell

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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.

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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.

I Think That Jean Houston Has Broken Through To A New Understanding Of The Sense And Uses Of Inward-turned Contemplation-a N Understanding That Leaves The Freudian Schools Of Technique And Theory Far Behind. The Accent Is Not On The Curing Of Disease But On The Enlargement, Rather, Of Our Health.

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

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.

To Find Your Own Way Is To Follow Your Bliss.

Follow Your Bliss

Essentially, Mythologies Are Enormous Poems That Are Renditions Of Insights, Giving Some Sense Of The Marvel, The Miracle And Wonder Of Life.

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 Insecure Way Is The Secure Way.

Heinrich Zimmerhe Had A Little Saying : The Best Things Cant Be Told - Because They Are Transcendent, Inexpressible Truths. The Second Best Are Misunderstood : Myths, Which Are Metaphoric Attempts To Point To The Way Toward The First. And The Third Best Have To Do With History, Science, Biography, And So On. The Only Kind Of Talking That Can Be Understood Is This Last Kind.

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

Knowing Who You Are

Quotation Marks

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

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.

The Problem Of Making The Inner Meet The Outer Of Today Is, Of Course, The Function Of The Artist.

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.

So I Think The Guru Can Be A Delusion. But Everything Can Be Deluding. The Thing Central About The Guru In The West Is That He Represents An Alien Principle Of The Spirit, Namely, That You Don't Follow Your Own Path; You Follow A Given Path. And That's Totaly Contrary To The Western Spirit! Our Spirituality Is Of The Individual Quest, Individual Realization- Authenticity In Your Life Out Of Your Own Center. So You Must Take The Message Of The East, Assimilate It To Your Own Dimension And To Your Own Thrust Of Life, And Not Get Pulled Off Track.

Myths Are So Intimately Bound To Culture, Time, And Place That Unless The Symbols, The Metaphors, Are Kept Alive By Constant Recreation Through The Arts, The Life Just Slips Away From Them.

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

[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.

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)

And That Aha! That You Get When You See An Artwork That Really Hits You Is, 'i Am That.' I Am The Very Radiance Of Energy That Is Talking To Me Through This Painting.

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.

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.

You Are More Than You Think You Are. There Are Dimensions Of Your Being And A Potential For Realization And Consciousness That Are Not Included In Your Concept Of Yourself. Your Life Is Much Deeper And Broader Than You Conceive It To Be Here. What You Are Living Is But A Fractional Inkling Of What Is Really Within You, What Gives You Life, Breadth, And Depth.

You Have To Learn To Recognize Your Own Depth.

As Freud Has Shown, Blunders Are Not The Merest Chance. They Are The Result Of Suppressed Desires And Conflicts. They Are Ripples On The Surface Of Life, Produced By Unsuspected Springs. And These May Be Very Deep - As Deep As The Soul Itself. The Blunder May Amount To The Opening Of A Destiny.

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.

Eternity Is Not Future Or Past. Eternity Is A Dimension Of Now. It Is A Dimension Of The Human Spirit -- Which Is Eternal. Find That Eternal Dimension In Yourself, And You Will Ride Through Time, And Throughout The Whole Length Of Your Days.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Love Your Enemies, For They Determine Who You Are.

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.

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.

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.

The Ultimate Dragon Is Within You, It Is Your Ego Clamping You Down.

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

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

There Are Mythologies That Are Scattered, Broken Up, All Around Us. We Stand On What I Call A Terminal Moraine Of Shattered Mythic Systems That Once Structured Society. They Can Be Detected All Around Us. You Can Select Any Of These Fragments That Activate Your Imagination For Your Own Use. Let It Help Shape Your Own Relationship To The Unconscious System Out Of Which These Symbols Have Come.

There's Always The Possibility Of A Fiasco. But There's Also The Possibility Of Bliss.

Mythology Is Often Defined As 'other Peoples' Religions', Religion Can Be Thought Of As Misinterpreted Mythology.

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

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

Every Story You Tell Is Your Own Story.

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 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.

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

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

The Adventure Of The Hero Is The Adventure Of Being Alive

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

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

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

I Am Shiva-this Is The Great Meditation Of The Yogis In The Himalayas...hea Ven And Hell Are Within Us, And All The Gods Are Within Us. This Is The Great Realization Of The Upanishads Of India In The Ninth Century B.c. All The Gods, All The Heavens, All The Worlds, Are Within Us. They Are Magnified Dreams, And Dreams Are Manifestations In Image Form Of The Energies Of The Body In Conflict With Each Other.

Dream 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.

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

If We Fix On The Old, We Get Stuck.

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.

The Cave You Fear To Enter Holds The Treasure You Seek. Fear Of The Unknown Is Our Greatest Fear. Many Of Us Would Enter A Tiger's Lair Before We Would Enter A Dark Cave. While Caution Is A Useful Instinct, We Lose Many Opportunities And Much Of The Adventure Of Life If We Fail To Support The Curious Explorer Within Us.

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.

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.

Modern Romance, Like Greek Tragedy, Celebrates The Mystery Of Dismemberment, Which Is Life In Time. The Happy Ending Is Justly Scorned As A Misrepresentation; For The World, As We Know It, As We Have Seen It, Yields But One Ending: Death, Disintegration, Dismemberment, And The Crucifixion Of Our Heart With The Passing Of The Forms That We Have Loved.

Myths Are Public Dreams, Dreams Are Private Myths.

They Thought That It Would Be A Disgrace To Go Forth As A Group. Each Entered The Forest At A Point That He Himself Had Chosen, Where It Was Darkest And There Was No Path. If There Is A Path It Is Someone Else's Path And You Are Not On The Adventure.

There Is An Indian Fable Of Three Beings Who Drank From A River: One Was A God, And He Drank Ambrosia; One Was A Man, And He Drank Water; And One Was A Demon, And He Drank Filth. What You Get Is A Function Of Your Own Consciousness.

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

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

How Teach Again, However, What Has Been Taught Correctly And Incorrectly Learned A Thousand Thousand Times, Throughout The Millenniums Of Mankind's Prudent Folly? That Is The Hero's Ultimate Difficult Task.

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.

Participate Joyfully In The Sorrows Of Life

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

We Are Standing On A Whale Fishing For Minnows.

Your Life Is The Fruit Of Your Own Doing. You Have No One To Blame But Yourself... The Problem Is Not To Blame Or Explain But To Handle The Life That Arises... If You Say No To A Single Factor In Your Life, You Have Unraveled The Whole Thing... The Demon That You Swallow Gives You Its Power, And The Greater Life's Pain, The Greater Life's Reply.

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

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.

If You Are To Advance, All Fixed Ideas Must Go.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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?

You Know, When Real Trouble Comes Your Humanity Is Awakened. The Fundamental Human Experience Is That Of Compassion.

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

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

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.

When You Are On Your Path, And It Is Truly Your Path, Doors Will Open For You Where There Were No Doors For Someone Else.

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

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.

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

A Temple Is A Landscape Of The Soul.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

...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."

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

You've Got To Say Yes To This Miracle Of Life As It Is, Not On Condition That It Follow Your Rules.

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You Don't Ask What A Dance Means. You Enjoy It. You Don't Ask What The World Means. You Enjoy It. You Don't Ask What You Mean. You Enjoy It.

An Old Apache Storyteller Reminds Us

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.

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

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.

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.

Change The Focus Of The Eye. When You Have Done That, Then The End Of The World As You Formerly Knew It Will Have Occurred, And You Will Experience The Radiance Of The Divine Presence Everywhere, Here And Now.

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

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.

If You Will Think Of Ourselves As Coming Out Of The Earth, Rather Than Having Been Thrown In Here From Somewhere Else, You See That We Are The Earth, We Are The Consciousness Of The Earth. These Are The Eyes Of The Earth. And This Is The Voice Of The Earth.

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.

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

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

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

Your Adventure Has To Be Coming Out Of Your Own Interior. If You Are Ready For It Then Doors Will Open Where There Were No Doors Before, And Where There Would Not Be Doors For Anyone Else. And You Must Have Courage. It's The Call To Adventure, Which Means There Is No Security, No Rules.

The Perfect Human Being Is Uninteresting.

Religon Is Misunderstood Mythology

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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)

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

I Should Have Said, 'follow Your Blisters.'

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Everything Starts With A Story.

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.

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.

If The Path Before You Is Clear, You're Probably On Someone Else's.

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.

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.

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

There Have Been Systems Of Religion Where The Mother Is The Prime Parent, The Source, And She's Really A More Immediate Parent Than The Father, Because One Is Born From The Mother...so That The Image Of The Woman Is The Image Of The World.

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.

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

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

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 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.

You Are The Hero Of Your Own Story.

Suspense Novels

The Passage Of The Mythological Hero May Be Over Ground, Incidentally; Fundamentally It Is Inward--into Depths Where Obscure Resistances Are Overcome, And Long Lost, Forgotten Powers Are Revivified, To Be Made Available For The Transfiguration Of The World.

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

Dragons, You Know, We Have A Good Deal Of Biology And Zoology About The Dragon; We Know Their Habits. The Dragon Tends To Guard Things, And He Usually Has These Guarded In A Cave... Now Dragons Don't Know What To Do Either With Beautiful Girls Or Gold, But They Just Hang On. There Are People Like This. We Call Them Creeps.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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?'

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

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.

When People Find Out What It Is That's Ticking In Them, They Get Straightened Out.

When You Are Falling --- Dive!

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

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.

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.

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.

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.'

What If We Choose Not To Do The Things We Are Supposed To Do? The Principal Gain Is A Sense Of An Authentic Act - And An Authentic Life. It May Be A Short One, But It Is An Authentic One, And That's A Lot Better Than Those Short Lives Full Of Boredom. The Principal Loss Is Security. Another Is Respect From The Community. But You Gain The Respect Of Another Community, The One That Is Worth Having The Respect Of.

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

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

There Is No Greater Privilege In Life Than Being Yourself.

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