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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.

-Joseph Campbell

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Your Life Is The

Joseph Campbell

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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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Knowing Who You Are

More From Joseph Campbell

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.

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.

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

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

Love Is Perfect Kindness.

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.

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 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.

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.

Thinking In Mythological Terms Helps To Put You In Accord With The Inevitables Of This Vale Of Tears. You Learn To Recognize The Positive Values In What Appear To Be The Negative Moments And Aspects Of Your Life. The Big Question Is Whether You Are Going To Be Able To Say A Hearty Yes To Your Adventure.

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

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

Positive Thinking

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

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

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

You May Have Success In Life, But Then Just Think Of It - What Kind Of Life Was It? What Good Was It - You've Never Done The Thing You Wanted To Do In All Your Life. I Always Tell My Students, Go Where Your Body And Soul Want To Go. When You Have The Feeling, Then Stay With It, And Don't Let Anyone Throw You Off.

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.

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.

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

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?'

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.

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.

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.

It's Characteristic Of Democracy That Majority Rule Is Understood As Being Effective Not Only In Politics But Also In Thinking. In Thinking, Of Course, The Majority Is Always Wrong.

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

The Senses Are A Kind Of Reason. Taste, Touch And Smell, Hearing And Seeing, Are Not Merely A Means To Sensation, Enjoyable Or Otherwise, But They Are Also A Means To Knowledge - And Are, Indeed, Your Only Actual Means To Knowledge.

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

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.

The Myth Is The Public Domain And The Dream Is The Private Myth. If Your Private Myth, Your Dream, Happens To Coincide With That Of The Society, You Are In Good Accord With Your Group. If It Isn't, You've Got A Long Adventure In The Dark Forest Ahead Of You.

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.'

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Life Has No Meaning. Each Of Us Has Meaning And We Bring It To Life. It Is A Waste To Be Asking The Question When You Are The Answer.

Self Improvement

Meaning Of Life

The Key To The Grail Is Compassion, 'suffering With,' Feeling Another's Sorrow As If It Were Your Own. The One Who Finds The Dynamo Of Compassion Is The One Who's Found The Grail.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Knowing Who You Are

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 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?

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

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

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.

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.

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

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 Psychological Dangers Through Which Earlier Generations Were Guided By The Symbols And Spiritual Exercises Of Their Mythological And Religious Inheritance, We Today (in So Far As We Are Unbelievers, Or, If Believers, In So Far As Our Inherited Beliefs Fail To Represent The Real Problems Of Contemporary Life) Must Face Alone, Or, At Best With Only Tentative, Impromptu, And Not Often Very Effective Guidance. This Is Our Problem As Modern, "enlightened" Individuals, For Whom All Gods And Devils Have Been Rationalized Out Of Existence.

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

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.

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

The Ultimate Aim Of The Quest Must Be Neither Release Nor Ecstasy For Oneself, But The Wisdom And The Power To Serve Others.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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)

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

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.

This, I Believe, Is The Great Western Truth: That Each Of Us Is A Completely Unique Creature And That, If We Are Ever To Give Any Gift To The World, It Will Have To Come Out Of Our Own Experience And Fulfillment Of Our Own Potentialities, Not Someone Else's.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Love Your Enemies, For They Determine 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Christianity Isn’t Moving People’s Lives Today. What’s Moving People’s Lives Is The Stock Market And The Baseball Scores. What Are People Excited About? It’s A Totally Materialistic Level That Has Taken Over The World. There Isn’t Even An Ideal That Anybody’s Fighting For.

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.

Poets And Artists Who Speak Of The Mystery Are Rare.

You've Got To Find The Force Inside You.

Myths Are Public Dreams, Dreams Are Private Myths.

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

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

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

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.

All The Gods, All The Heavens, All The Hells, Are Within You.

A Temple Is A Landscape Of The Soul.

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

All Religions Are True But None Are Literal.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

No Tribal Rite Has Yet Been Recorded Which Attempts To Keep Winter From Descending; On The Contrary: The Rites All Prepare The Community To Endure, Together With The Rest Of Nature, The Season Of The Terrible Cold.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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)

Vegetarians Are People Who Cannot Hear Tomatos Screaming.

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

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

Knowing Who You Are

Quotation Marks

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

To Find Your Own Way Is To Follow Your Bliss.

Follow Your Bliss

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.

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.

There Seem To Be Only Two Kinds Of People: Those Who Think That Metaphors Are Facts, And Those Who Know That They Are Not Facts. Those Who Know They Are Not Facts Are What We Call "atheists," And Those Who Think They Are Facts Are "religious." Which Group Really Gets The Message?

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

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

Awe Is What Moves Us Forward.

The Seizure Of Passionate Love Can Be, In Such A Context, Only Illicit, Breaking In Upon The Order Of One's Dutiful Life In Virtue As A Devastating Storm.

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

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

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

I Prefer The Gradual Path My Feeling Is That Mythic Forms Reveal Themselves Gradually In The Course Of Your Life If You Know What They Are And How To Pay Attention To Their Emergence. My Own Initiation Into The Mythic Depths Of The Unconscious Has Been Through The Mind, Through The Books That Surround Me In This Library. I Have Recognized In My Quest All The Stages Of The Hero's Journey. I Had My Calls To Adventure, My Guides, Demons, And Illuminations.

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

Clearly, Mythology Is No Toy For Children. Nor Is It A Matter Of Archaic, Merely Scholarly Concern, Of No Moment To Modern Men Of Action. For Its Symbols (whether In The Tangible Form Of Images Or In The Abstract Form Of Ideas) Touch And Release The Deepest Centers Of Motivation, Moving Literate And Illiterate Alike, Moving Mobs, Moving Civilizations.

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.

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

Religon Is Misunderstood Mythology

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.

The Perfect Human Being Is Uninteresting.

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

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

You Have To Learn To Recognize Your Own Depth.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

When You Realize That Eternity Is Right Here Now, That It Is Within Your Possibility To Experience The Eternity Of Your Own Truth And Being, Then You Grasp The Following: That Which You Are Was Never Born And Will Never Die. . . . (90)

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Sacrificing Yourself

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Is The Cause, Though, Of The Growth Of An Acorn? The Oak That Is To Come! What Is To Happen In The Future Is Then The Cause Of What Is Occurring Now; And, At The Same Time, What Occurred In The Past Is Also The Cause Of What Is Happening Now. In Addition, A Great Number Of Things Round About, On Every Side, Are Causing What Is Happening Now. Everything, All The Time, Is Causing Everything Else

......the 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.

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

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

There Is No Security In Following The Call To Adventure.

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

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.

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.

When You Look At That Nature World It Becomes An Icon, It Becomes A Holy Picture That Speaks Of The Origins Of The World. Almost Every Mythology Sees The Origins Of Life Coming Out Of Water. And, Curiously, That's True. It's Amusing That The Origin Of Life Out Of Water Is In Myths And Then Again, Finally, In Science, We Find The Same Thing. It's Exactly So.

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

I Should Have Said, 'follow Your Blisters.'

Nothing Can Happen To You That Is Not Positive. Even Though It Looks And Feels At The Moment Like A Negative Crisis, It Is Not. The Crisis Throws You Back, And When You Are Required To Exhibit Strength, It Comes.

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

The Big Question Is Whether You Are Going To Be Able To Say A Hearty Yes To Your Adventure.

We're In A Freefall Into Future. We Don't Know Where We're Going. Things Are Changing So Fast, And Always When You're Going Through A Long Tunnel, Anxiety Comes Along. And All You Have To Do To Transform Your Hell Into A Paradise Is To Turn Your Fall Into A Voluntary Act. It's A Very Interesting Shift Of Perspective And That's All It Is... Joyful Participation In The Sorrows And Everything Changes.

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

Whatever The Hell Happens, Say, 'this Is What I Need.'

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

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

Regrets Are Illuminations Come Too Late.

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.

We Are Having Experiences All The Time Which May On Occasion Render Some Sense Of This, A Little Intuition Of Where Your Bliss Is. Grab It. No One Can Tell You What It Is Going To Be. You Have To Learn To Recognize Your Own Depth.

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.

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

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

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

The Experience Of Eternity Right Here And Now Is The Function Of Life. Heaven Is Not The Place To Have The Experience; Here Is The Place To Have The Experience.

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

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