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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.

-Joseph Campbell

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We Know That Jesus

Joseph Campbell

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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.

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The Adventure Is Always And Everywhere A Passage Beyond The Veil Of The Known Into The Unknown; The Powers That Watch At The Boundary Are Dangerous; To Deal With Them Is Risky; Yet For Anyone With Competence And Courage The Danger Fades.

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

Knowing Who You Are

Every Hero Must Have The Courage To Be Alone, To Take The Journey For Himself.

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.

We Have Today To Learn To Get Back Into Accord With The Wisdom Of Nature And Realize Again Our Brotherhood With The Animals And With The Water And The Sea.

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

Seek To Know The Power That Is Within You.

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.'

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.

The Adventure Of The Hero Is The Adventure Of Being Alive

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

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

You Must Have A Place To Which You Can Go In Your Heart, Your Mind, Or Your House, Almost Every Day, Where You Do Not Owe Anyone And Where No One Owes You - A Place That Simply Allows For The Blossoming Of Something New And Promising.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

For If Anything Is Capable Of Making A Poet Of A Literary Man, It Is My Hometown Love Of The Human, The Living And Ordinary.

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

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

Is The God The Source, Or Is The God A Human Manner Of Conceiving Of The Force And Energy That Supports The World? In Our Tradition God Is A Male. This Male And Female Differentiation Is Made, However, Within The Field Of Time And Space, The Field Of Duality. If God Is Beyond Duality, You Cannot Say That God Is A "he." You Cannot Say God Is A "she." You Cannot Say God Is An "it." (18)

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

If You Follow Someone Else's Way, You Are Not Going To Realize Your Potential.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

The Garden Is A Metaphor For The Following: Our Minds, And Our Thinking In Terms Of Pairs Of Opposites--man And Woman, Good And Evil--are As Holy As That Of A God. (50)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

When I Was In India I Met And Conversed Briefly With Shri Atmananda Guru Of Trivandrum, And The Question He Gave Me To Ponder Was This: 'where Are You Between Two Thoughts?

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.

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

Apocalypse Does Not Point To A Fiery Armageddon But To The Fact That Our Ignorance And Our Complacency Are Coming To An End. The Exclusivism Of There Being Only One Way In Which We Can Be Saved, The Idea That There Is A Single Religious Group That Is In Sole Possession Of The Truth—that Is The World As We Know It That Must Pass Away. What Is The Kingdom? It Lies In Our Realization Of The Ubiquity Of The Divine Presence In Our Neighbors, In Our Enemies, In All Of Us.

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

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.

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

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

Knowing Who You Are

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.

Every Story You Tell Is Your Own Story.

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

But The Makers Of Legend Have Seldom Rested Content To Regard The World's Great Heroes As Mere Human Beings Who Broke Past The Horizons That Limited Their Fellows And Returned Such Boons As Any Man With Equal Faith And Courage Might Have Found.

Every Myth Is Psychologically Symbolic. Its Narratives And Images Are To Be Read, Therefore, Not Literally, But As Metaphors.

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

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

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

Myth Is What We Call Other People's Religion.

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.

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

I Think A Person Who Takes A Job In Order To Live - That Is To Say, For The Money - Has Turned Himself Into A Slave. Work Begins When You Don't Like What You're Doing. There's A Wise Saying: Make Your Hobby Your Source Of Income. Then There's No Such Thing As Work, And There's No Such Thing As Getting Tired. That's Been My Own Experience. I Did Just What I Wanted To Do. It Takes A Little Courage At First, Because Who The Hell Wants You To Do Just What You Want To Do; They've All Got Lots Of Plans For You. But You Can Make It Happen.

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.

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

The Privilege Of A Lifetime Is Being Who You Are.

I Don't Need Faith. I Have Experience.

Life Is Not A Problem To Be Solved But A Mystery To Be Lived. Follow The Path That Is No Path, Follow Your Bliss.

There Is No Greater Privilege In Life Than Being Yourself.

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.

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.

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.

Nothing Is Exciting If You Know What The Outcome Is Going To Be.

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

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

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

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.

Don't Do Anything That Isn't Play

Nonviolent Communication

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

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)

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

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

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.

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

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.

The Conquest Of The Fear Of Death Is The Recovery Of Life's Joy. One Can Experience An Unconditional Affirmation Of Life Only When One Has Accepted Death, Not As Contrary To Life, But As An Aspect Of Life. Life In Its Becoming Is Always Shedding Death, And On The Point Of Death. The Conquest Of Fear Yields The Courage Of Life. That Is The Cardinal Initiation Of Every Heroic Adventure - Fearlessness And Achievement.

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

When You Make The Sacrifice In Marriage, You're Sacrificing Not To Each Other But To Unity In A Relationship.

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?'

Everything Starts With A Story.

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.

People Who Don't Have A Concept Of The Whole Can Do Very Unfortunate Things.

Unfortunate Things

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.

What Is A God? A God Is A Personification Of A Motivating Power Of A Value System That Functions In Human Life And In The Universe.

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.

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

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.

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."

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

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. -

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

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

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

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

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

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

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, In Both Its Knowing And Its Doing, Has Become Today A "free Fall," So To Say, Into The Next Minute, Into The Future. So That, Whereas, Formerly, Those Not Wishing To Hazard The Adventure Of An Individual Life Could Rest Within The Pale Of A Comfortably Guaranteed Social Order, Today All The Walls Have Burst. It Is Not Left To Us To Chooseto Hazard The Adventure Of An Unprecedented Life: Adventure Is Upon Us, Like A Tidal Wave.

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.

There's Nothing You Can Do That's More Important Than Being Fulfilled. You Become A Sign, You Become A Signal, Transparent To Transcendence; In This Way, You Will Find, Live, And Become A Realization Of Your Own Personal Myth.

Whenever Men Have Looked For Something Solid On Which To Found Their Lives, They Have Chosen Not The Facts In Which The World Abounds, But The Myths Of An Immemorial Imagination.

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.

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

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

Reaching The Top

All The Old Bindings Are Broken. Cosmological Centers Now Are Anywhere And Everywhere. The Earth Is A Heavenly Body, Most Beautiful Of All, And All Poetry Is Now Archaic That Fails To Match The Wonder Of This View.

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

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.

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

Where You Stumble And Fall, There You Will Find Gold.

You Know The Rule: If You Are Falling, Dive. Do The Thing That Has To Be Done.

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

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

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.

The Big Problem Of Any Young Person's Life Is To Have Models To Suggest Possibilities. Nietzsche Says, 'man Is The Sick Animal.' Man Is The Animal That Doesn't Know What To Do With Itself. The Mind Has Many Possibilities, But We Can Live No More Than One Life. What Are We Going To Do With Ourselves?

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

God Is The Experience Of Looking At A Tree And Saying, 'ah!

Positive Thinking

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.

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 Last Act In The Biography Of The Hero Is That Of The Death Or Departure.

The Achievement Of The Hero Is One That He Is Ready For And It's Really A Manifestation Of His Character. It's Amusing The Way In Which The Landscape And Conditions Of The Environment Match The Readiness Of The Hero. The Adventure That He Is Ready For Is The One That He Gets.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

The Dance Is The Highest Symbol Of Life Itself.

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

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

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.

Participate Joyfully In The Sorrows Of Life

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

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.

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.

Out Of Perfection Nothing Can Be Made. Every Process Involves Breaking Something Up. The Earth Must Be Broken To Bring Forth Life. If The Seed Does Not Die There Is No Plant. Bread Results From The Death Of Wheat. Life Lives On Lives. Our Own Life Lives On The Acts Of Other People. If You Are Lifeworthy, You Can Take It.

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 Must Have A Room, Or A Certain Hour Or So A Day, Where You Don't Know What Was In The Newspapers That Morning A Place Where You Can Simply Experience And Bring Forth What You Are And What You Might Be.

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

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

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.

The Place To Find Is Within Yourself.

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.

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

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.

You Have To Learn To Recognize Your Own Depth.

The Fall [of Your Soul] From Perfection Into Duality...was Naturally Followed By The Discovery Of The Duality Of Good And Evil...this Is The Biblical Version Of A Myth Known To Many Lands.

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 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 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.

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

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

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

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.'

The Greeks, It Will Be Recalled, Regarded Eros, The God Of Love, As The Eldest Of The Gods; But Also As The Youngest, Born Fresh And Dewy-eyed In Every Living Heart.

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

Religon Is Misunderstood Mythology

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.

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.

There Is No Make-believe About Heaven, Future Bliss, And Compensation, To Alleviate The Bitter Majesty, But Only Utter Darkness, The Void Of Unfulfillment, To Receive And Eat Back The Lives That Have Been Tossed Forth From The Womb Only To Fail.

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

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.

All Babies Are Buddha Babies.

Myths Are Public Dreams, Dreams Are Private Myths.

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.

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.

Now, When Luke Skywalker Unmasks His Father, He Is Taking Off The Machine Role That The Father Has Played. The Father Was The Uniform. That Is Power, The State Role.

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.

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

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

The Fates Lead Him Who Will; Him Who Won't They Drag.

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

Each Of Us Has Capacities. The Real Trick Is Knowing The Machinery Of The Boat In Which You Are Crossing The Channel.

The Adventure Evoked A Quality Of His Character That He Didn't Know He Possessed.

Man Was Not Breathed Into The Earth. Man Came Out Of The Earth.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Life Is A Guy Trying To Play A Violin Solo In Public, While Learning The Music And His Instrument At The Same Time.

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.

Mythology Tells Us That Where You Stumble, There Your Treasure Is ... The World Is A Match For Us, And We’re A Match For The World. And Where It Seems Most Challenging Lies The Greatest Invitation To Find Deeper And Greater Power In Ourselves.

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

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

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