Top quotes by Joseph Campbell

Find a place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain. Votes: 36

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. Votes: 33

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are. Votes: 31

The latest incarnation of Oedipus, the continued romance of Beauty and the Beast, stand this afternoon on the corner of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, waiting for the traffic light to change. Votes: 26

We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us. Votes: 26

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. Votes: 24

When you make the sacrifice in marriage, you're sacrificing not to each other but to unity in a relationship. Votes: 23

Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls. Votes: 22

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. Votes: 22

The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature. Votes: 20

It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure. Votes: 20

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. Votes: 19

Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging. Votes: 19

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. Votes: 18

Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again. Votes: 18

The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure. Votes: 16

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? Votes: 15

Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy. Votes: 13

Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths. Votes: 10

Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself. Votes: 10

I don't have to have faith, I have experience. Votes: 10

It is a basic idea of practically every war mythology that the enemy is a monster and that in killing him one is protecting the only truly valuable order of human life on earth, which is that, of course, of one's own people. Votes: 7

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. Votes: 5

Myth is much more important and true than history. History is just journalism and you know how reliable that is. Votes: 4

Marriage is not a love affair; it is an ordeal. (92) Votes: 4

Love is a friendship set to music. Votes: 3

For the bliss of the deep abode is not lightly abandoned in favor of the self-scattering of the wakened state, Votes: 3

Every myth is psychologically symbolic. Its narratives and images are to be read, therefore, not literally, but as metaphors." Votes: 1

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." Votes: 1

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 that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive." Votes: 1

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. Votes: 0

The sin of inadvertence, not being alert, not quite awake, is the sin of missing the moment of life-live with unremitting alertness. Votes: 0

I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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... Votes: 0

Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The Deadheads are doing the dance of life and this I would say is the answer to the atom bomb. Votes: 0

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?' Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself. Votes: 0

Life lives on life. This is the sense of the symbol of the Ouroboros, the serpent biting its tail. Everything that lives lives on the death of something else. Your own body will be food for something else. Anyone who denies this, anyone who holds back, is out of order. Death is an act of giving. Votes: 0

If you follow your bliss...the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Great Brahma from his mystic heaven groans, And all his priesthood moans. Votes: 0

If you want to change the world, you have to change the metaphor. Votes: 0

A bit of advice Given to a young Native American At the time of his initiation: As you go the way of life, You will see a great chasm. Jump. It is not as wide as you think. Votes: 0

Both the artist and the lover know that perfection is not loveable. It is the clumsiness of a fault that makes a person lovable. Votes: 0

Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy. Votes: 0

When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

God is within you! You yourself are the creator. If you find that place within you 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. Votes: 0

The dark night of the soul comes just before revelation. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The goal is to live with God like composure on the full rush of energy, like Dionysus riding the leopard, without being torn to pieces. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The job of an educator is to teach students to see vitality in themselves Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The usual hero adventure begins with someone from whom something has been taken, or who feels there is something lacking in the normal experience available or permitted to the members of society. The person then takes off on a series of adventures beyond the ordinary, either to recover what has been lost or to discover some life-giving elixir. It's usually a cycle, a coming and a returning. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Art is the set of wings to carry you out of your own entanglement. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

We have to permit go with the everyday living we had prepared so as to have the lifetime that's watching for us Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Certainly Star Wars has a valid mythological perspective. It shows the state as a machine and asks, "Is the machine going to crush humanity or serve humanity?" Humanity comes not from the machine but from the heart. What I see in Star Wars is the same problem that Faust gives us: Votes: 0

The folktale is the primer of the picture-language of the soul. Votes: 0

When you follow your bliss, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you. Votes: 0

Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and door will open where you didn't know they were going to be. Votes: 0

To find your own way is to follow your bliss. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

It takes courage to do what you want. Other people have a lot of plans for you... Follow your bliss. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Follow your bliss. The heroic life is living the individual adventure. Votes: 0

If you have the guts to follow the risk...if one follows what I call one's "bliss" - the thing that really gets you deep in the gut and that you feel is your life - doors will open up...if you follow your bliss, you'll have your bliss, whether you have money or not. Votes: 0

Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived. Follow the path that is no path, follow your bliss. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The notion of this universe, its heavens, hells, and everything within it, as a great dream dreamed by a single being in which all the dream characters are dreaming too, has in India enchanted and shaped the entire civilization. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Eternity is not the hereafter...this is it. If you don't get it here you won't get it anywhere. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The function of the society is to cultivate the individual. It is not the function of the individual to support society. Votes: 0

The best things cannot be told, the second best are misunderstood. After that comes civilized conversation; after that, mass indoctrination; after that, intercultural exchange. Votes: 0

God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that. Votes: 0

The hero journey is inside of you; tear off the veils and open the mystery of your self. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

He must put aside his pride, his virtue, beauty and life and bow or submit to the absolutely intolerable. Votes: 0

The goal of life is rapture. Art is the way we experience it. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Men sometimes confess they love war because it puts them in touch with the experience of being alive. In going to the office every day, you don't get that experience, but suddenly in war, you are ripped back into being alive. Life is pain; life is suffering; and life is horror - but, by God, you are alive. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

If you realize what the real problem is-losing yourself-you realize that this itself is the ultimate trial. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Love is the burning point of life, and since all life is sorrowful, so is love. The stronger the love, the more the pain. Love itself is pain, you might say -the pain of being truly alive. Votes: 0

Love your enemies, for they determine who you are. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I always feel uncomfortable when people speak about ordinary mortals because I've never met an ordinary man, woman or child. Votes: 0

How do you find the divine power in yourself? The word enthusiasm means 'filled with a god,' so what makes you enthusiastic? Follow it. So I have a little word: follow your bliss. The bliss is the message of God to yourself. That's where your life is. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

We are standing on a whale fishing for minnows. Votes: 0

The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life. Votes: 0

In the absence of an effective general mythology, each of us has his private, unrecognized, rudimentary, yet secretly potent pantheon of dreams. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

There are mythologies that are scattered, broken up, all around us. We stand on what I call the 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. Votes: 0

When everything is lost, and all seems darkness, then comes the new life and all that is needed. Votes: 0

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. - Votes: 0

Don't do anything that isn't play Votes: 0

Now I found it in writing sentences. You can write that sentence in a way that you would have written it last year. Or you can write it in the way of the exquisite nuance that is sriting in your mind now. But that takes a lot of ... waiting for the right word to come. Votes: 0

You have to have a feeling for where you are. You've got only one life to live and you don't have to live it for six people. Pay attention to it. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Nothing is exciting if you know what the outcome is going to be. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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) Votes: 0

No one in the world was ever you before, with your particular gifts and abilities and possibilities. Votes: 0

If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's. Votes: 0

Marriage is not a love affair. A love affair has to do with immediate personal satisfaction. Marriage is an ordeal; it means yielding, time and again. That's why it's a sacrament; You give up your personal simplicity to participate in a relationship. And when you're giving, you're not giving to the other person; you're giving to the relationship. Votes: 0

Dream is the personalized myth, myth the depersonalized dream; both myth and dream are symbolic in the same general way of the dynamic of the psyche. But in the dream the forms are quirked by the peculiar troubles of the dreamer, whereas in myth the problems and solutions sown are directly valid for all mankind Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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.' Votes: 0

The ultimate aim of the quest must be neither release nor ecstasy for oneself, but the wisdom and the power to serve others. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

What we are really living for is the experience of life, both the pain and the pleasure. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

All men are capable of reason. That is the fundamental principle of democracy Because everybody's mind is capable of true knowledge, you don't have to have a special authority, or a special revelation telling you that this is the way things should be. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The function of ritual... is to give form to the human life, not in the way of a mere surface arrangement, but in depth. Votes: 0

Mythology is composed by poets out of their insights and realizations. Mythologies are not invented; they are found. You can no more tell us what your dream is going to be tonight than we can invent a myth. Myths come from the mystical region of essential experience. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Your sacred space is where you can find yourself over and over again. Votes: 0

You become mature when you become the authority of your own life. Votes: 0

When you translate the Bible with excessive literalism, you demythologize it. The possibility of a convincing reference to the individual's own spiritual experience is lost. (111) Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

It is only when a man tames his own demons that he becomes the king of himself if not of the world. Votes: 0

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) Votes: 0

When you don't have a job (requiring reading) and you are doing your own reading you've got deep psychological questions. As deep as those of a little boy. Votes: 0

Reading what you want, and having one book lead to the next, is the way I found my discipline. Votes: 0

The first function of mythology is showing everything as a metaphor to transcendence. Votes: 0

How to teach again what has been taught correctly it incorrectly 1000 thousand times, throughout the millenniums of mankind's prudent folly? That is the hero's ultimate difficult task. How to render back into light-world language the speech-defying pronouncements of the dark? Many failures attest to the difficulties of this life-affirmative threshold. Votes: 0

Myth must be kept alive. The people who can keep it alive are the artists of one kind or another. Votes: 0

Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls. Votes: 0

If you want to understand what's most important to a society, don't examine its art or literature, simply look at its biggest buildings. Votes: 0

A myth is something that has never happened, but is happening all the time. Votes: 0

The fundamental human experience is that of compassion. Votes: 0

You can get a lot of work done if you stay with it and are excited and its play instead of work. Votes: 0

In our society of fixed texts and printed words, it is the function of the poet to see the life value of the facts round about, and to deify them, as it were, to provide images that relate the everyday to the eternal. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

How does the ordinary person come to the transcendent? For a start, I would say, study poetry. Learn how to read a poem. You need not have the experience to get the message, or at least some indication of the message. It may come gradually. (92) Votes: 0

Passion makes most psychiatrists nervous Votes: 0

Maslow's five values are the values for which people live when they have nothing to live for. Nothing has seized them, nothing has caught them, nothing has driven them spiritually mad and made them worth talking to. Votes: 0

We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us. Votes: 0

The fates lead him who will; him who won't they drag. Votes: 0

If you have a sacred place and use it, take advantage of it, something will happen. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

In marriage you are not sacrificing yourself to the other person. You are sacrificing yourself to the relationship. Votes: 0

Any god who can invent hell is no candidate for the Salvation Army Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Sin always finds it's root in our own selfish desires and self-gratification. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Passion will move men beyond themselves, beyond their shortcomings, beyond their failures. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I think the person who takes a job in order to live - that is to say, for the money - has turned himself into a slave. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Wars and temper tantrums are the makeshifts of ignorance; regrets are illuminations come too late. Votes: 0

What will they think of me? Must be put aside for bliss Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

What each must seek in his life never was on land or sea. It is something out of his own unique potentiality for experience, something that never has been and never could have been experienced by anyone else. Votes: 0

Freud tells us to blame our parents for all the shortcomings of our life, Marx tells us to blame the upper class of our society. But the only one to blame is oneself. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The conquest of fear yields the courage of life. That is the cardinal initiation of every heroic adventure-- fearlessness and achievement. Votes: 0

Instead of clearing his own heart the zealot tries to clear the world. Votes: 0

Wisdom and foolishness are practically the same. Both are indifferent to the opinions of the world Votes: 0

The warrior's approach is to say "˜yes' to life: "˜yes' to it all. Votes: 0

You've got to say yes to this miracle of life as it is, not on condition that it follow your rules. Votes: 0

Myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human manifestation.... Votes: 0

If you are on the right path you will find that invisible hands are helping. Votes: 0

The first step to the knowledge of the wonder and mystery of life is the recognition of the monstrous nature of the earthly human realm as well as its glory, the realization that this is just how it is and that it cannot and will not be changed. Those who think they know how the universe could have been had they created it, without pain, without sorrow, without time, without death, are unfit for illumination. Votes: 0

I think of compassion as the fundamental religious experience and, unless that is there, you have nothing. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

We are the consciousness of the earth. We are the eyes of the earth. The voice of the earth. Votes: 0

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. ... Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

A sound precipitates air, then fire, then water and earth- and that's how the world becomes. Votes: 0

There is no security in following the call to adventure. Votes: 0

A myth doesn't have to be real to be true. Votes: 0

If marriage isn't a first priority in your life, you're not married. Votes: 0

What's made up in the head is the fiction. What comes out of the heart is a myth. Votes: 0

[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) Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Myths are stories for our search through the ages for truth, for meaning, for significance. We all need to tell our story and to understand our story. We all need to understand death and to cope with death, and we all need help in our passages from birth to live and then to death. We need for life to signify, to touch the eternal, to understand the mysterious, to find out who we are. Votes: 0

There is no greater privilege in life than being yourself. Votes: 0

The world, as we know it, is coming to an end. The world as the center of the universe, the world divided from the heavens, the world bound by horizons in which love is reserved for members of the in-group: that is the world that is passing away. Apocalypse does not point to a fiery Armageddon but to the fact that our ignorance and complacency are coming to an end. Votes: 0

Follow your inner heart and the world moves in and helps. Votes: 0

Not all who hesitate are lost. The psyche has many secrets in reserve. And these are not disclosed unless required. Votes: 0

He who thinks he knows, doesn't know. He who knows that he doesn't know, knows. Votes: 0

Preachers err by trying to talk people into belief; better they reveal the radiance of their own discovery. Votes: 0

The usual marriage in traditional cultures was arranged for by the families. It wasn't a person-to-person decision at all. . . . In the Middle Ages, that was the kind of marriage that was sanctified by the Church. And so the troubadour idea of real person-to-person Amor was very dangerous. . . . It is in direct contradiction to the way of the Church. The word AMOR spelt backwards is ROMA, the Roman Catholic Church, which was justifying marriages that were simply political and social in their character. And so came this movement validating individual choice, what I call following your bliss. Votes: 0

When before the beauty of a sunset or a mountain, you pause and exclaim, 'Ah,' you are participating in divinity. Votes: 0

Vegetarians are people who cannot hear tomatos screaming. Votes: 0

It may be a species of impudence to think that the way you understand God is the way God is. (60). Votes: 0

Hell is life drying up. Votes: 0

The inner world is the world of your requirements and your energies and your structure and your possibilities that meets the outer world. And the outer world is the field of your incarnation. That's where you are. You've got to keep both going. As Novalis said, "˜The seat of the soul is there where the inner and outer worlds meet. Votes: 0

Art is the clothing of a revelation Votes: 0

Our life evokes our character and you find out more about yourself as you go on. Votes: 0

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? Votes: 0

So that's what destiny is: simply the fulfillment of the potentialites of the energies in your own system. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

In choosing your god, you choose your way of looking at the universe. There are plenty of Gods. Choose yours. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

All life stinks and you must embrace that with compassion. Votes: 0

Participate joyfully in the sorrows of life Votes: 0

You can't have creativity unless you leave behind the bounded, the fixed, all the rules Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The best advise is to take it all as if it had been your intention. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The process of nature cannot be evil. Votes: 0

Awe is what moves us forward. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

You know, when real trouble comes your humanity is awakened. The fundamental human experience is that of compassion. Votes: 0

"Ž"Make your god transparent to the transcendent, and it doesn't matter what his name is." Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

It is within you that the divine lives. Votes: 0

Eternity is not future or past. Eternity is a dimension of now. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The eternal principle, which never was born, never will die: it is in all things: it is in you now. You are the wave on the face of the ocean. When the wave is gone, is the water gone? Has anything happened? Nothing has happened. It is a play, a game, a dance. Votes: 0

God is the experience of looking at a tree and saying, 'Ah! Votes: 0

Midlife is when you reach the top of the ladder and find that it was against the wrong wall. Votes: 0

The demon that you can swallow gives you it's power, and the greater life's pain, the greater life's reply. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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? Votes: 0

It is the function of art to carry us beyond speech to experience. Votes: 0

You've got to find the force inside you. Votes: 0

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 Votes: 0

The place to find is within yourself. Votes: 0

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) Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

All we really want to do is dance. Votes: 0

The world without spirit is a wasteland. People have the notion of saving the world by shifting things around, changing the rules, and who's on top, and so forth. No, no! Any world is a valid world if it's alive. The thing to do is to bring life to it, and the only way to do that is to find in your own case where the life is and become alive yourself. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

All the gods, all the heavens, all the hells, are within you. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

There is a God inside my PC. An Old-Testament God with lots of arbitrary rules and utterly no mercy. Votes: 0

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 that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. Votes: 0

The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come. Votes: 0

Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us, the labyrinth is fully known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world. Votes: 0

Sacred space and sacred time and something joyous to do is all we need. Almost anything then becomes a continuous and increasing joy. What you have to do, you do with play. I think a good way to conceive of sacred space is as a playground. If what you're doing seems like play, you are in it. But you can't play with my toys, you have to have your own. Your life should have yielded some. Older people play with life experiences and realizations or with thoughts they like to entertain. In my case, I have books I like to read that don't lead anywhere. Votes: 0

Whatever the hell happens, say, 'This is what I need.' Votes: 0

Poets are simply those who have made a profession ans a lifestyle of being in touch with their bliss. Votes: 0

Where you stumble and fall, there you will find gold. Votes: 0

Regrets are illuminations come too late. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The god you worship is the one you're capable of becoming. Votes: 0

If you want the whole thing, the gods will give it to you. But you must be ready for it. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Questing... is not an ego trip; it is an adventure to bring into fulfillment your gift to the world, which is yourself. Votes: 0

Gods suppressed become devils, and often it is these devils whom we first encounter when we turn inward. Votes: 0

Our life has become so economic and practical in its orientation that, as you get older, the claims of the moment upon you are so great, you hardly know where the hell you are, or what it is you intended. You are always doing something that is required of you. Where is your bliss station? You have to try to find it. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The creative act is not hanging on, but yielding to a new creative movement. Awe is what moves us forward. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The idea of Buddha consciousness is that all beings are Buddha beings, and your whole function in meditation and everything else is to find that Buddha consciousness within and live out of that, instead of the interests of the eyes and ears. Votes: 0

Now all the myths that you have heard and that resonate with you, those are the elements from round about that you are building into a form in your life. The thing worth considering is how they relate to each other in your context, not how they relate to something out there-how they were relevant on the North American prairies or in the Asian jungles hundreds of years agon, but how they are relevant now-unless by contemplating their former meaning you can begin to amplify your own understanding of the role they play in your life. Votes: 0

When you are required to exhibit strength, it comes. Votes: 0

What am I? Am I the bulb that carries the light, or am I the light of which the bulb is a vehicle? Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Mythologies, in other words, mythologies and religions are great poems and, when recognized as such, point infallibly through things and events to the ubiquity of a Votes: 0

Out of perfection nothing can be made. Every process involves breaking something up. Votes: 0

One great thing about growing old is that nothing is going to lead to anything. Everything is of the moment. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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) Votes: 0

Love is perfect kindness. Votes: 0

We keep thinking of deity as a kind of fact, somewhere; God as a fact. God is simply our own notion of something that is symbolic of transcendence and mystery. The mystery is what's important. Votes: 0

The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for. Votes: 0

There is perhaps nothing worse than reaching the top of the ladder and discovering that you're on the wrong wall. Votes: 0

The schizophrenic is drowning in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight. Edgar Cayce made the same observation in his readings Votes: 0

Mythological symbols touch and exhilarate centers of life beyond the reach of vocabularies of reason and coercion. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Typically, the hero of the fairy tale achieves a domestic, microcosmic triumph, and the hero of myth a world-historica l, macrocosmic triumph. Whereas the former-the youngest or despised child who becomes the master of extraordinary powers-prevails over his personal oppressors, the latter brings back from his adventure the means for the regeneration of his society as a whole. Votes: 0

We save the world by being alive ourselves. Votes: 0

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. To say that divinity informs the world and all things is condemned as pantheism. But pantheism is a misleading word. It suggests that a personal god is supposed to inhabit the world, but that is not the idea at all. The idea is trans-theological. It is of an indefinable, inconceivable mystery, thought of as a power, that is the source and end and supporting ground of all life and being. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

What is required is the finding of that Immovable Point within one's self, which is not shaken by any of those tempests which the Buddhists call 'the eight karmic winds': 1-fear of pain, 2-desire for pleasure; 3-fear of loss; 4-desire for gain; 5-fear of blame, 6-desire for praise; 7-fear of disgrace; [and] 8-desire for fame. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

If you are falling....dive. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed. Votes: 0

The less there is of you, the more you experience the sublime. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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.' Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

There's always the possibility of a fiasco. But there's also the possibility of bliss. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Money is congealed energy, and releasing it releases life's possibilities. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Our life evokes our character. You find out more about yourself as you go on. That's why it's good to put yourself in situations that will evoke your higher nature rather than your lower. Votes: 0

It's only when a man tames his own demons that he becomes the king of himself if not of the world. Votes: 0

Eternity isn't some later time. Eternity isn't a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now which thinking and time cuts out. This is it. And if you don't get it here, you won't get it anywhere. And the experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Seek to know the power that is within you. Votes: 0

If you're going to have a story, have a big story, or none at all. Votes: 0

Mythology helps you to identify the mysteries of the energies pouring through you. Therein lies your eternity. Votes: 0

We need myths that will identify the individual not with his local group but with the planet. Votes: 0

Where is your bliss station? You have to try to find it. Votes: 0

The hero, whether god or goddess, man or woman, the figure in a myth or the dreamer of a dream discovers and assimilates his opposite (his own unsuspected self) either by swallowing it or by being swallowed. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Life is a guy trying to play a violin solo in public, while learning the music and his instrument at the same time. Votes: 0

Survival is the second law of life. The first is that we are all one. Votes: 0

Where there is a way or path, it is someone else's. Each of us has to find his own way. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Sometimes the serpent is represented as a circle eating its own tail. That's an image of life. Life sheds one generation after another, to be born again. The serpent represents immortal energy and consciousness engaged in the field of time, constantly throwing off death and being born again. There is something tremendously terrifying about life when you look at it that way. And so the serpent carries in itself the sense of both the fascination and the terror of life. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Economics and politics are the governing powers of life today, and that's why everything is so screwy. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The entire heavenly realm is within us, but to find it we have to relate to what's outside. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The actual point in question, throughout the centuries of Christian persecution, has never been faith in God, but faith in the Bible as the word of God, and in the Church (this Church or that) as the interpreter of that word. Votes: 0

Our true reality is in our identity and unity with all life. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

You have been thinking one way. Now you have to think a different way. Votes: 0

People who don't have a concept of the whole can do very unfortunate things. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The last act in the biography of the hero is that of the death or departure. Votes: 0

A woman is a vehicle of life. Life has overtaken her. Woman is what it is all about-the giving of birth and the giving of nourishment. Votes: 0

If you want to find out what it means to have a society without any rituals, read the New York Times. Votes: 0

What the artist must render is a living moment somehow, a living moment actually in action or an inward experience. Votes: 0

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) Votes: 0

The purpose of the journey is compassion. When you have come past the pairs of opposites, you have reached compassion. Votes: 0

The modern hero-deed must be that of questing to bring to light again the lost Atlantis of the co-ordinated Soul. Votes: 0

...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 ... Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Once you know the difference between right and wrong, you have lots fewer decisions to make. Votes: 0

Man actually needs the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. Votes: 0

The one radiance shines through all things. Votes: 0

Through dreams a door is opened to mythology, since myths are of the nature of dreams, and that, as dreams arise from an inward world unknown to waking consciousness, so do myths: so, indeed, does life. Votes: 0

If you really want to help this world, what you will have to teach is how to live in it. Votes: 0

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? Votes: 0

The person who thinks he has found the ultimate truth is wrong. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The insecure way is the secure way. Votes: 0

Love is exactly as strong as life. Votes: 0

Every act has both good and evil results. The best we can do is lean to the light. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

One of our problems today is that we are not well acquainted with the literature of the spirit. We re interested in the news of the day and the problems of the hour. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The perfect human being is uninteresting-the Buddha who leaves the world, you know. It is the imperfections of life that are lovable. Votes: 0

......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. Votes: 0

Apocalypse does not point to a fiery Armageddon, but to our ignorance and complacency coming to an end. Votes: 0

The best things cannot be told because they transcend thought. The second best are misunderstood because they are the thoughts that are supposed to refer to that which cannot be thought about. The third best are what we talk about. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

A real artist is the one who has learned to recognize and to render... the 'radiance' of all things as an epiphany or showing forth of the truth. Votes: 0

Mythology is often defined as 'other peoples' religions', religion can be thought of as misinterpreted mythology. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

We are kept out of the Garden by our own fear and desire in relation to what we think to be the goods of our life. Votes: 0

The concept of time shuts off eternity. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

If a person does not listen to the demands of their own spiritual and heart life and insists on a certain program, you're going to have a schizophrenic crackup. The person has put themselves off center. They have aligned themselves with a programmatic life and it's not the one the body is interested in at all. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Each of us has capacities. The real trick is knowing the machinery of the boat in which you are crossing the channel. Votes: 0

Respect your curses, for they are the instruments of your destiny. Votes: 0

Poets and artists who speak of the mystery are rare. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Man was not breathed into the earth. Man came out of the earth. Votes: 0

The unfolding through time of all things from one is the simple message, finally, of every one of the creation myths reproduced in the pages of these volumes-including that of our contemporary biological view, which becomes an effective mythic image the moment we recognize its own inner mystery. By the same magic, every god that is dead can be conjured again to life, as any fragment of rock from a hillside, set respectfully in a garden, will arrest the eye. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The object becomes aesthetically significant when it becomes metaphysically significant. Votes: 0

If you want to know what a given society believes in, look at what its largest buildings are devoted to. Votes: 0

When people find out what it is that's ticking in them, they get straightened out. Votes: 0

It's a shame to waste [the uniqueness that is you], by doing what someone else has done. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

You can't say life is useless because it ends in the grave. Votes: 0

It [music] has an awakening function. Life is a rhythm. Art is an organization of rhythms. Music is a fundamental art that touches our will system. In Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Idea he speaks of music as the sound that awakens the will. The rhythm of the music awakens certain life rhythms, ways of living and experiencing life. So it's an awakener of life. Votes: 0

Religon is misunderstood mythology Votes: 0

Every hero must have the courage to be alone, to take the journey for himself. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The familiar life horizon has been outgrown: the old concepts, ideals, and emotional patterns no longer fit; the time for the passing of a threshold is at hand. Votes: 0

It is not society which is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I think what we lack isn't science, but poetry that reveals what the heart is ready to recognize Votes: 0

It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward. Votes: 0

The adventure that the hero is ready for is the one he gets. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The perfect human being is uninteresting. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The influence of a vital being vitalizes. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

We're all seeking...the rapture of being alive. Votes: 0

The Fates guide those who will and drag those who won't! Votes: 0

The call to adventure signifies that destiny has summoned the hero. Votes: 0

The quest for fire occurred not because anyone knew what the practical uses for fire would be, but because it was fascinating. Votes: 0

When your mind is simply trapped by the image out there so that you never make the reference to yourself, you have misread the image. Votes: 0

What you have to do, you do with play. The universe is God's play. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The mind of man, cleansed of secondary and merely temporal concerns, beholds with the radiance of a cleansed mirror a reflection of the rational mind of God. Votes: 0

Making the inner meet the outer is the function of the artist. Votes: 0

[M]yths are not invented as stories are. Myths are inspired-they really are. They come from the same realm that dream comes from. Votes: 0

Let the world be as it is and learn to rock with the waves. Votes: 0

Dream is the personalized myth, myth the depersonalized dream. Votes: 0

God is an intelligible sphere-a sphere known to mind, not to the senses-whose center is everywhere and whose circumference nowhere. Votes: 0

The ultimate dragon is within you, it is your ego clamping you down. Votes: 0

...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." Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The hero, therefore, is the man or woman who has been able to battle past his personal and local historical limitations. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

One looks, looks long, and the world comes in. Votes: 0

When an idea is important to a person or culture it will find its way into imagery. Votes: 0

A dream is your creative vision for your life in the future. A goal is what specifically you intend to make happen. Dreams and goals should be just out of your present reach but not out of sight. Dreams and goals are coming attractions in your life. Votes: 0

Marriage . . . is not a love affair; it is an ordeal. (92) Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The adventure evoked a quality of his character that he didn't know he possessed. Votes: 0

People forget facts, but they remember stories. Votes: 0

If you want to see what a society really believes in, look at what the biggest buildings on the horizon are dedicated to. Votes: 0

Privation and suffering alone open the mind to all that is hidden to others. (Igjugarjuk) Votes: 0

When we follow our bliss, we are met by a thousand unseen helping hands. Votes: 0

What is unknown is the fulfillment of your own unique life, the likes of which has never existed on earth. And you are the only one who can do it. People can give you clues how to fall and when to stand, and when you are falling and when you are standing, this only you can know. And in the way of your own talents is the only way to do it. Votes: 0

The world is full of people who have stopped listening to themselves. Votes: 0

Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life Votes: 0

If you can see your path clearly in front of you, it's probably someone else's. Votes: 0

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?' Votes: 0

Without passion, men are not willing to pay any price or bear any burden to set the captives free. Votes: 0

You have to learn to recognize your own depth. Votes: 0

The essence of oneself and the essence of the world: these two are one. [ The aim is not to see, but to realize that one is, that essence; then one is free to wander as that essence in the world.] Hence separateness, withdrawal, is no longer necessary. Wherever the hero may wander, whatever he may do, he is ever in the presence of his own essence-for he has the perfected eye to see. Votes: 0

For people who are really alive to have life awakened is more important than to get a sandwich. Votes: 0

Chief Seattle, of the Indians that inhabited the Seattle area, wrote a wonderful paper that has to do with putting oneself in tune with the universe. He said Votes: 0

My writing is of a very different kind from anything I've heard about. All this mythological material is out there, a big gathering of stuff, and I have been reading it for some forty- or fifty-odd years. There are various ways of handling that. The most common is to put the material together and publish a scholarly book about it. But when I'm writing, I try to get a sense of an experiential relationship to the material. In fact, I can't write unless that happens ... I don't write unless the stuff is really working on me, and my selection of material depends on what works. Votes: 0

The dreamer and his dream are the same...the powers personified in a dream are these that move the world. Votes: 0

Whether you call someone a hero or a monster is all relative to where the focus of your consciousness may be. Votes: 0

If you are to advance, all fixed ideas must go. Votes: 0

Every people is a chosen people in its own mind. And it is rather amusing that their name for themselves usually means mankind. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Every religion, every mythology is true in this sense: It is true as metaphorical of the human and cosmic mystery. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

First you must find your trajectory, and then comes the social coordination. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The psyche is the inward experience of the human body, which is essentially the same in all human beings, with the same organs, the same instincts, the same impulses, the same conflicts, the same fears. Out of this common ground have come what Jung has called the archetypes, which are the common ideas of myths. Votes: 0

The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man. The objective world remains what it was, but, because of a shift of emphasis within the subject, is beheld as though transformed. Where formerly life and death contended, now enduring being is made manifest-as indifferent to the accidents of time as water boiling in a pot is to the destiny of a bubble, or as the cosmos to the appearance and disappearance of a galaxy of stars. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The adventure of the hero is the adventure of being alive Votes: 0

The best we can do is lean towards the light. Votes: 0

The myth does not point to a fact; the myth points beyond facts to something that informs the fact Votes: 0

All religions are true but none are literal. Votes: 0

The way to find out about happiness is to keep your mind on those moments when you feel most happy, when you are really happy "” not excited, not just thrilled, but deeply happy. This requires a little bit of self-analysis. What is it that makes you happy? Stay with it, no matter what people tell you. This is what is called following your bliss. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

If we fix on the old, we get stuck. Votes: 0

Heroism is a matter of integrity--beco ming more and more at each step ourselves. Votes: 0

For those in whom a local mythology still works, there is an experience both of accord with the social order, and of harmony with the universe. For those, however, in whom the authorized signs no longer work-or, if working, produce deviant effects-there follows inevitably a sense both of dissociation from the local social nexus and of quest, within and without, for life, which the brain will take to be for 'meaning'. Votes: 0

Life will always be sorrowful. We can't change it, but we can change our attitude toward it. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The privilege of a lifetime is beingwho you are.The goal of the hero tripdown to the jewel pointis to find those levels in the psychethat open, open, openand finally open to the mystery of your Selfbeing Buddha consciousnessor the Christ.That's the journey. Votes: 0

It is not only that there is no hiding place for the gods from the searching telescope and microscope; there is no such society any more as the gods once supported. Votes: 0

The function of artists is "the mythologization of the world." Votes: 0

Every myth is psychologically symbolic. Its narratives and images are to be read, therefore, not literally, but as metaphors. Votes: 0

The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The seat of the soul is where the inner world and the outer world meet. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

You know the rule: If you are falling, dive. Do the thing that has to be done. Votes: 0

There is no way you can use the word "reality" without quotation marks around it. Votes: 0

You are the Hero of your own Story. Votes: 0

[Comedies], in the ancient world, were regarded as of a higher rank than tragedy, of a deeper truth, of a more difficult realization, of a sounder structure, and of a revelation more complete. The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man.... Tragedy is the shattering of the forms and of our attachments to the forms; comedy, the wild and careless, inexhaustible joy of life invincible. Votes: 0

At the darkest moment comes the light. Votes: 0

One cannot predict the next mythology any more than one can predict tonight's dream; for a mythology is not an ideology. It is not something projected from the brain, but something experienced from the heart, from recognition of identities behind or within the appearances of nature, perceiving with love a 'thou' where there would otherwise have been only an 'it.' Votes: 0

Your own path you make with every step you take. That's why it's your path. Votes: 0

Every story you tell is your own story. Votes: 0

..enlarge the pupil of the eye, so that the body with its attendant personality will no longer obstruct the view. Immortality is then experienced as a present fact... Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I should have said, 'Follow your blisters.' Votes: 0

Everything starts with a story. Votes: 0

For we have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heros of all time have gone before us... Votes: 0

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." Votes: 0

When you are falling --- Dive! Votes: 0

I don't think people are really seeking the meaning of Life. I think we're seeking an experience of being alive"¦we want to feel the rapture of being alive Votes: 0

There's nothing militant about Jesus. I don't read anything like that in any of the gospels. Peter drew his sword and cut off the servant's ear, and Jesus said, "Put back thy sword, Peter." But Peter has had his sword out and at work ever since. Votes: 0

Myth is what we call other people's religion. Votes: 0

What I think is that a good life is one hero journey after another. Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure, you are called to new horizons. Each time, there is the same problem: do I dare? And then if you do dare, the dangers are there, and the help also, and the fulfillment or the fiasco. There's always the possibility of fiasco. But there's also the possibility of bliss. Votes: 0

There are now no more horizons. And with the dissolution of horizons we have experienced and are experiencing collisions, terrific collisions, not only of peoples but also of their mythologies. It is as when dividing panels are withdrawn from between chambers of very hot and very cold airs: there is a rush of these forces together. Votes: 0

I think it's important to live life with a knowledge of its mystery, and of your own mystery. Votes: 0

A temple is a landscape of the soul. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Essentially, mythologies are enormous poems that are renditions of insights, giving some sense of the marvel, the miracle and wonder of life. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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) Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Anything you do has a still point. When you are in that still point, you can perform maximally. Votes: 0

The dance is the highest symbol of life itself. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Mythology is the womb of man's initiation to life and death. Votes: 0

An old Apache storyteller reminds us Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Poetry comes out of an elite experience, the experience of people whose ears are opened to the song of the universe. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

And if there was no Fall, what then of the need for Redemption? What god was offended and by whom? Some especially touchy cave bear whose skull had been improperly enshrined? Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Myth is the public dream, and dream is the private myth. Votes: 0

I always tell my students follow your bliss. When you have that feeling then stay with it and don't let anyone throw you off. Votes: 0

I don't have faith, I have experience. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

All babies are Buddha babies. Votes: 0

Truth is one, the sages speak of it by many names. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The function of (heroic) symbols is to give you a sense of Aha! Yes, I know what it is, it's myself. Votes: 0

What gods are there, what gods have there ever been, that were not from man's imagination? Votes: 0

If you follow someone else's way, you are not going to realize your potential. Votes: 0

When you follow your bliss a kind of track opens up, that's always been there, waiting for you. And the life that you should be living, is the one that you will be living. Votes: 0

A one sentence definition of mythology? Mythology is what we call someone else's religion. Votes: 0

Society has provided [children] no rituals by which they become members of the tribe, of the community. All children need to be twice born, to learn to function rationally in the present world, leaving childhood behind. Votes: 0

If there were already a path, it would have to be someone else's; the whole point is to find your own way. Votes: 0

Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths. We must be willing to get rid of the life we planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. I have bought this wonderful machine "” a computer ... it seems to me to be an Old Testament god, with a lot of rules and no mercy. Votes: 0

If you want resurrection, you must have crucifixion... The hoarder, the one in us that wants to keep, to hold on, must be killed. Votes: 0

As a white candle / In a holy place, / So is the beauty / Of an aged face Votes: 0

I don't need faith. I have experience. Votes: 0

There is a condescension on the part of the infinite to the mind of man. That is what looks like God. Votes: 0

The experience of Eternity right here and now, is the function of life. Votes: 0

Do what gives you bliss. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0