jamesn.
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Yes Stephen; your post here helps to point out the problem that keeps coming up again and again throughout social history of: “How does one make a living and still follow their heart’s desire?” What I was attempting earlier was to show examples of other creative periods where people answered their call and how what they were able to bring forth of their own gift for the world. This was not about just getting a job and paying bills as a means for making a life just to survive; but of following their push out of their own spiritual and creative insights and bringing what they found forth as an expression of their life’s calling; (or as Joseph once said: “I was following a star”).
Indeed in Joseph’s own life this challenge was a constant uphill battle; and you had a really nice recount of his life struggles you portrayed in a separate thread here.
Thank you Robert; your reply was so much more helpful than the previous one.
(You said):
“Thank you for your thought provoking posts. I have read Freud , Jung , Hillman , Joyce , Campbell , et al , for personal edification. My first love is science and Sci-fi. My “Yes !!!” Post was pregnant with associations. My post after it expanded on my internal streams of consciousness associated with “Yes”.“As far as the meaning of money is concerned from a mythic metaphoric perspective I think a study of the use of the word treasure would be fruitful. ““The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek”” . “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal.”
“ In Jung’s view, the alchemical attempt to transmute base metals into gold (the philosopher’s stone) was actually a psychological process”.
“So they brought it, and He asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?” “Caesar’s,” they answered. Then Jesus told them, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” And they marveled at Him.”
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Jung would call how we give or assign meaning to something: (projection); we project our interpretation of something onto it. So you bring up an interesting aspect of how we as human beings often see money as a manifestation of treasure that can have several meanings as you just pointed out. To me Joseph’s example of: “money used as a facilitator like gasoline that fuels a car when you need to go”; would be one instead of a symbol of personal importance and power. He suggests this can be seen as a resource or mechanism that helps one to survive.
We are talking about metaphors of money’s use; but often human beings concretize what money symbolizes by assigning it’s value as a thing unto itself to achieve. In other words as an example of what one has instead of who they are; or put another way as a symbol of self-importance instead of what it can accomplish. But my point has to do with assigning value and purpose to money as a vehicle; not an end in itself; as been seen throughout history as a “corrupting” influence. As history informs us we have to have something that helps to negotiate commerce; in other words money seen as a “tool”. But it is the way society does this as a means to an end that your last part clarifies.
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(You asked): “where will cryptocurrency and Bitcoin fit into our dialog ? Human resource development? Humans quantified labeled and valued as assets ?”
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It would be hard to say I think because given the rate of change human society is experiencing. As both you and Stephen point out money had various ways it presents itself as a mythological facilitator and as Joseph mentions myths are the glue that hold a society together. He states in the :Power of Myth”: “We are not going to have a myth for a long time; things are changing too fast for a myth to constellate itself: “We are in a free fall into the future.”
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(Robert as you notice I have modified this post considerably so this should help to clarify my point because I was wandering way too far off topic. But more importantly I was being totally unfair with my assessment of what you were saying and I was projecting my frustration with your style of posting and that was wrong.) This was preventing me from seeing clearly what you were trying to communicate and I am very sorry for doing so. You always bring a thoughtful and kind spirit to these discussions; so after stepping back with several attempts to understand your post it became clearer to me what my problem was and since then tried to fix it. Again my apologies!
Also; I found a reference to Joyce that Joseph uses concerning thoughts about (money) and following your bliss which is found on page 73; in Diane Osbon’s: “Reflections on the Art of Living”.
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Joseph:
“I find working for money to be the wasteland—doing something that somebody else wants instead of the thing that is my next step. I have been guided all along by a strong revulsion from any sort of action that does not correspond to the impulse of my own wish.”“The person of noble heart acts spontaneously and will avoid the wasteland, the world of thou shalt.”
(Joyce):
“I will not serve that in which I no longer believe whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church…. And I am not afraid to make a mistake, even a great mistake, and perhaps as long as eternity too.” —-Stephen DedalusJoseph:
“The crucial thing to live for is the sense of life in what you are doing, and if that is not there, then you are living according to other peoples’ notions of how life should be lived.The opposite to doing what you think you ought to do is compassion. The one who finds the Grail is symbolic of the one who has come to that place and whose life is of compassion. The one who finds as his motivation the dynamism of his compassion has found the Grail. That means spontaneous recognition of the identity of I and Thou. This is the Grail center.
To become—in Jung’s terms—individuated, to live as a released individual, one has to know how and when to put on and to put off the masks of one’s various life roles….The aim of individuation requires that one should find and then live out of one’s own center, in control of one’s for and against. And this cannot be achieved by enacting and responding to any general masquerade of fixed roles.”
(Yes; after rereading your post I’ve modified my answer to what I thought you were saying.) I think the opposites you mention: (conflict; us vs them); and so on can be seen in many examples that art expresses. Financial inequality is a major problem often depicted in the literature of human life; as the works of these writers often portray; at least if that is what you are referring to with the metaphoric differences between rich and poor as a backdrop to their novels. If you are talking about providing meaning to something; then yes I totally agree on that. If not perhaps you can explain it another way or someone else can see what I missed.
Picking up on your James Joyce quote Joseph Campbell loved Joyce; but his writing was impossible to decipher at first so he went to Sylvia Beach for help because he could not understand it. She provided him with clues necessary as to how to deal with this. As an example noted in both the bio done on him called: “The Hero’s Journey” and also Bill Moyers: “Power of Myth”his: “Skeleton Key to Finnegan’s Wake” was something he worked on for quite awhile because many people considered it the most difficult book to read in the English language. (Having said this I tried my hand at Ulysses back 30 years ago and never finished it out of frustration.) Perhaps you’ve read either or both and if so that’s great. But I doubt most people on the street have read Ulysses since it was banned in the US because some found it offensive when it first came out; I was never really completely clear about that; (As you’ll see in a clip I provided below Joyce had to go to Beach to ask her to publish it which she did because nobody else would touch it); and Joseph mentioned he still had a few of those first original copies. Stephen or David or Michael could probably provide better background on this than I can.
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Speaking of which as an aside another interesting thing worth mentioning about these writers is an upcoming work by noted documentary film maker Ken Burns is a new project he is finishing up on “Ernest Hemingway” due to be released in the coming weeks; most likely to be shown on Public Television as they are his main sponsor.___________________________________________________________________________________
Addendum: I found a short clip from Perry’s documentary where Sylvia Beach talks about her shop called: “Shakespeare and Co.”; and the people who came in it along with her relationship with James Joyce and the publishing of: “Ulysses” here.
Robert; although there have been a lot of separate documentaries and books covering these authors this particular documentary done by News Journalist: Harry Smith; is exceptionally well done as it goes deeply into the personal backgrounds, inter-relationships and times in Paris that launched their careers. Few things I have seen have covered these people as comprehensively as Smith. The other documentary done by Perry covers Paris and the total overview of most of the various arts as seen from this perspective. Smith deals mainly with the writers exclusively and covers some things more in depth than Perry such as: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s drinking and the effect it had on his career and some of the other writers she was not able to cover. Perry ‘s work is more of an overview because the subject would have been too overwhelming to do more than she did. Smith’s approach was more specific and focused on the writers alone; and even that was a huge subject to tackle by itself.
Not to diverge from the subject of “money” as the main focus of this topic; my aim with highlighting these writers and others from different periods was to show how what they saw and attempted to reveal was a window into human nature and how to better understand the human experience which Joseph’s work in mythology accomplishes far beyond the normal range most often employed by the academic community; (especially concerning the work of Carl Jung); along with the insights of many others from separate fields.
The “Lost Generation” writers is a fascinating topic to explore within this topic as an example. The term was coined by Gertrude Stein who called all these writers a: “Lost Generation”; but the situation that many of them came from after the 1st World War was what helped to create such a creative community of like minded individuals. This creative force or pull that drew them together held a common bond and thread of something they all shared.
Many of them came from repressed social and religious environments where the conservative value systems were not welcoming to their new artistic visions; and so they left and came to Paris which was the world’s artistic center. Food and rent were cheap after the devastation of the war and they could exchange ideas with people of like mind who understood what they were doing creatively. A poet could express what a painter was trying to say as one example. And as the different styles evolved there were different social platforms that were being expressed; often in opposition to what the society usually accepted; so there was conflict as well as incredible new art.
Dada as a movement was one example that came out of a rejection of those value systems that helped to create the conflict of the war; (a form of protest you might say); but what developed out of much of this conflict was new art forms; such as the idea of how art was defined was up to the artist; not the public; in other words; how much of what we now define as: “Modern Art” that changed the boundaries of how any art was previously defined.
This little window that lasted between 1905 to 1930 changed the world in ways that are still being felt; and Campbell saw this and understood what was happening. This was the period he became exposed to the writings of Carl Jung and he began understanding how mythological themes were being expressed in this work that he had seen in the Native American Indian cultures; so this was a huge wakeup call to him that changed his life. His professors at Columbia would not let him switch topics to this new focus he wanted to follow so he quit and moved to Woodstock and rented a little cabin and read for 5 years until a new opportunity might present itself; which later it did with his teaching offer at Sarah Lawrence.
But it was in Paris where he was exposed to these lost generation writers like James Joyce; and it was Sylvia Beech who owned the most important bookstore where all these new writers went; like Ernest Hemingway. Gertrude Stein helped Hemingway with his writing so he could get published; and her Saturday evening Salons were where many of these writers and painters would gather to talk and exchange ideas. So all of this creative activity changed the course of much of the creative thought and expression in the modern world that we have now. That’s why part of the title of the film is called: “toward the making of the modern”; and the influence of these writers went on to influence other literary movements as well.
There was cross pollination between succeeding generations such as Beat poets and novelists; and then the Hippie and counter-culture political movements as well. People like Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and so many others came out of these artistic movements that produced new ways of looking at the world instead of the more traditional and confined ways that art had previously been expressed. And although by this time these counter-cultural movements had spread out in many different directions Joseph Campbell witnessed the beginning of all this creative activity and in his own work exemplified the best of this creative spirit as one of the world’s great scholars whose influence is still being felt today.
Speaking of which I’m leaving a clip to a very indepth documentary on them that will help clarify this connection here.
Also much has been written about the period in Paris when Joseph Campbell was there and completely changed his ideas about art and myth and the trajectory of his life course. So I’m going to recommend something that covers many of these various individuals who made up this incredible artistic community in a particular item which in my humble opinion is a “must view”: “Paris The Luminous Years – The Making of the Modern“; which is a DVD put together by: Perry Miller Adato; which covers (all) the various disciplines during that 30 year period which changed the art world forever. It is a “follow your bliss” cornucopia for those who are looking to understand what Joseph experienced during those years there that influenced him so profoundly.
One example covered in the film that is that of Sylvia Beach and her bookstore Shakespeare and Co. where she takes on publishing James Joyce’s: Ulysses and who also later helped Joseph understand how interpret Joyce’s writing which became such a large focus of some in some his own work. There is much covered like the writer’s relationship between Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein who helped mentor him in his early efforts to get published. The story of Pablo Picasso whose work Joseph loved and the relationships with other painters and the poet: Guillaume Apollinaire whose late night gatherings with other artists called: “the friends” helped to inspire each other’s work; Serge Diaghilev and the Ballet Russe and the music of Igor Stravinsky and other new composers which had such a huge influence on much of classical dance and music.
This constant beehive of activity went on and on until the Wall Street crash of 1929 when Joseph had already returned home and wanted to change the focus of his dissertation which was rejected; so he left school and as he put it: retired to the woods and read for 5 years. He then went on to teach at Sarah Lawrence where he met Jean and pursued his writing career from then on. So this film will help to give some background on how the art scene that influenced Joseph so much was created by individuals who left everything behind to pursue their bliss. (This is why I’m recommending this film so strongly.)
But my point with all this background is to emphasize this understanding of how money is not the central focus that Joseph was communicating. And that by following one’s inner instincts of what is calling to them a path or track is created that points in the direction the heart wants to go. And by listening to this inner calling it will take you in the direction of where these various examples are directing. This was Joseph’s central theme he constantly stressed that by following your bliss if you are listening and not thinking about money; this was the call of your heart’s yearning to be fulfilled. You are the one who gets to decide what your destination journey is going to be; not the call of finance of paying the bills or the accumulation of personal wealth; but what the human heart is asking for. Are these decisions difficult? For many people I would think so since any decisions that are made with this in mind may actually be part of the journey or quest process. But the end goal is finding and doing what the heart is asking for; and you may not be sure what it’s asking; so there may be tests along the way to help you figure this out. I think Joseph would call this aspect: “the path that is no path”. So this implies you are making your path up as you go along.
I’m also adding a second link to another piece on Stephen Gaskin that shows the evolution over time how his thought and the spiritual commune he and the people that followed him evolved. This link concerning the 1960’s ideaology will add some extra context to the idea of a spiritual quest that should compliment the topic of money and it’s relationship to following one’s bliss.
I’m sorry it’s taken me awhile to get back to this but I have a couple of things to share that I think might have relevance to what we are discussing concerning money and what might be called a life path freely chosen from one’s own inside.
Making money as Joseph mentioned on several occasions often got in the way of what was driving a person; you may not know what that something is but you were in quest of your own inner call and this might often pull you off course. Society often puts great emphasis on personal wealth or at the very least the things it can help you to buy or accomplish from your efforts. There is also the matter of your life responsibilities whatever they may be; and what will be required of you to support this function. But the question often behind the need is: What is at work? Is it survival or life responsibilities; or is it connected to something else? Where are you trying to go and what is the reason? So we are left with this inner conflict that we must resolve.
One of things that struck me looking back through my own life was how we are influenced by others as reflected within ourselves. In the 1960’s there was a huge movement of social change that evolved around the fact that the children of that generation did not want to grow up and become their parents; or put another way to accept the same patterned imprint of social values and roles that did not express who they were or what they wanted in the living of their lives; and so this social rebellion came about that had been witnessed several times throughout the 20th century. Some might have called it a bohemian revolt; others a Beatnik rejection; and still others a Hippie rebellion movement that led to the later social reform movements of each era. But it’s interesting to note how many that were affected by this call to break free went on a kind of spiritual pilgrimage of sorts to find themselves. There were many interesting people associated within these movements and the below piece recalls some of the background that revolved around some of this social pilgrimage movement the author refers to as the Hippie Trail that lasted a number of years.
My own life also has a personal connection to this call in which in my early youth I took a leap of faith and went out to San Francisco in this search to find myself and came across one such spiritual guru who I was influenced by for several years before I chose to follow my own individual path named Stephen Gaskin. He later lead a group of people to settle on a farm in Tennessee and his life story is one of great compassion and moral integrity who helped a lot of people before he passed several years back in 2014.
The story below came from a different piece that chronicles some of the other notable individuals that reflect this spiritual quest or call to adventure; some of whom you may recognized. But my point has to do with how it is not “money” but what Joseph called the push out of your own existence that is driving you. One of the quotes he used to refer to this insight was: “It is in you; go and find it.”
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The Hippie Trail of the 1960’s – The Call to Adventure and Enlightenment and it’s Roots
(From Yahoo’s News Feed): “The Telegraph”
“How the hippies’ Seventies search for enlightenment turned sour”
Mick Brown
Sat, January 2, 2021, 8:18 AM CSTIn 1961, the American beat poet Allen Ginsberg, along with his partner Peter Orlovsky, set off for India in search of enlightenment. Travelling to Paris, then Tangier, Israel, and Kenya, they finally set foot in Bombay – Ginsberg having prepared for his arrival by smoking grass scored from a shoeshine boy in Mombasa, and reading A Passage to India, the Ramayana, and Rudyard Kipling’s Kim.
From Bombay, the pair set off on a tour of India’s sacred sites: Risikesh, the burning ghats of Varanasi, and Haridwar for the Kumbh Mela festival, the largest human gathering on Earth, where millions of pilgrims go to immerse themselves in the Ganges.
Ginsberg wrote wonderingly to his friend Jack Kerouac, describing how things that would be considered outrageous or strange in uptight, authoritarian America were quite normal in India.Nobody batted an eyelid at someone walking around the streets in their underwear, or even appeared to notice when a naked sadhu, dusted in ashes from the cremation grounds, and carrying a trident, passed by. Sadhus were to be found smoking hashish in every temple. “It really is another dimension of time history here.”
Ginsberg may not have been the first person to set foot on the hippie trail, but he was certainly one of the first. And his “Oh wow!” vision of India and the exotic East would be a template for what was to come.Where the antic cheerleader and Pied Piper of hippiedom trod, thousands would shortly follow – by bus, train, coach, and dilapidated VW van. A disillusionment with Western materialism, the new freedoms of drugs and sexuality, and a growing rejection of conventional mores and values would all lead to a “turning to the East”, a symptom of the evolution of “the new consciousness”.
The pilgrimage in 1968 by the Beatles to sit at the feet of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at his ashram in Rishikesh proved a yet more potent and intoxicating advertisement for the mythical “East”. By the early Seventies, the numbers of travellers on the hippie trail had swollen from a stream to a deluge. It was these travellers who would be the prey of the serial killer Charles Sobhraj, who over a period of three years in the mid-Seventies is believed to have murdered more than a dozen young Westerners in Thailand, India and Nepal, and whose story is told in the new BBC One series, The Serpent.
The hippies were not the first Westerners to travel East in search of enlightenment. The English writer Paul Brunton, arguably the first spiritual tourist, travelled through India encountering swamis and holy men, publishing an account of his experiences, A Search In Secret India, in 1934.Somerset Maugham made his own genteel pilgrimage around the holy sites of India in 1938, finally arriving at the ashram of the great sage Ramana Maharshi. (Arriving there, Maugham fainted, prompting a wave of excited speculation throughout India that the Maharishi had caused the great Englishman to be “rapt for a while in the infinite”. Maugham was obliged to explain he had been subject to fainting fits all his life and that if he had been in “the infinite” it was a complete blank.)
His experiences in India inspired Maugham to write The Razor’s Edge, about a young man, Larry Darrell, disenchanted with materialism and ambition who sets off in search of a guru. Darrell might be seen as a prototypical hippie – although the term had yet to be invented – but The Razor’s Edge was never a book much read on the hippie trail.
Stiff-necked, fabulously wealthy, and in so many ways a product of Edwardian England, Maugham was highly improbable material for a cult hero. Much more likely were the novels of Herman Hesse, The Tibetan Book of the Dead and Timothy Leary’s hymn to LSD, The Politics of Ecstasy.The hippie trail wound across Europe, through Istanbul, on to Tehran, Kabul in Afghanistan, through the Khyber Pass to Peshawar and Lahore in Pakistan, and then on to Kashmir, India and Nepal.
It was no coincidence that the route led through the principal hash-producing regions of the world – Afghanistan, Chitral in northern Pakistan, Kashmir, the Kullu valley in India, and Nepal.In this sense, the hippie trail can be seen as a sort of drug-addled version of the Grand Tour of the 17th and 18th centuries, when members of the aristocracy and the upper classes would journey through the cultural capitals of Europe in search of artistic enlightenment.
On the hippie trail the search was less for an appreciation of Renaissance art than for adventure and enlightenment of a spiritual kind: Paris, Florence and Rome supplanted by the ruined temple complexes of Hampi; Dharamsala to see the Dalai Lama; Bangalore and the ashram of the miracle-working swami Sai Baba, and the beaches of Goa.
There were particular pilgrims’ rests: The Pudding Shop in Istanbul for nourishment, the swapping of information about cheap hotels, dangerous roads and the availability of a ride. The cockroach-infested Sigi’s hotel on Chicken Street in Kabul (actually, most hotels on the hippie trail were cockroach-infested).In Kathmandu (where Sobhraj was arrested in 2003 in the five-star Yak and Yeti hotel), there was “Freak Street” and the Blue Tibetan café, where in 1967 Richard Alpert, an associate of Timothy Leary, in search of a more lasting high than acid, was approached by a Westerner with shoulder-length hair and dressed only in a dhoti.
This was Kermit Michael Riggs, a 6ft 4in blond surfer from Laguna Beach, California who had followed the hippie trail to India in 1964, taken the name Bhagavan Das and was living the life of a sadhu. Alpert was bowled over. After five days in Alpert’s hotel room, eating peach melbas and getting high on hash and mescaline, Bhagavan Das took Alpert on a prolonged tour of spiritual sites, eventually leading him to a remote mountaintop ashram, where he was introduced to a little man in his 60s wrapped in a blanket named Neem Karoli Baba. Alpert became Baba’s disciple, changed his name to Ram Dass, and returning to America wrote a book about his transformation, Be Here Now – which went on to sell more than a million copies, and find its way into countless rucksacks on the hippie trail.
Bhagavan Das was by no means unique; dozens of Westerners adopted the sadhu life and simply never went home. (At the Kumbh Mela festival in Haridwar some 30 years ago I encountered a half-naked middle-aged sadhu from Kettering.)
Ginsberg spent more than a year in India but never gained the spiritual realisation he sought. “I wanted to be a saint,” he wrote in his Indian Journals. “But suffer for what? Illusions?” Many on the hippie trail would come to feel the same way. Illness, poverty, exhaustion, a lack of Western comforts – a cold water shower of reality and a sense that the party was over, would lead most back home. The Iranian Revolution in 1978 and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan a year later would effectively seal the hippie trail for good.You could say that in a sense the trail was reopened 30 years later, renamed as “the gap year”, with full moon parties on the beaches of Goa and bungee-jumping in Nepal, all financed by the bank of mum and dad – and with the added security of a bargain flight home. But where’s the adventure in that?
Hello everyone; sorry I’ve been absent for so long. These have been absolutely terrific responses to this topic. My holiday approach this year was to try and just listen to whatever came past my radar that informed me from my Christmas past experiences and sure enough several made themselves apparent changing my perspective in a very meaningful way.
(First off welcome to the forums Andreas; sorry it’s taken me awhile to respond. It seems you are already engaged and I definitely am looking forward to the new times ahead with you; your presence here is definitely appreciated!)
Now as to this topic; the first thing I noticed during the holidays was there were little hints or clues that would just present themselves as I would be going about my normal routines and everything would just stop. What I mean by that is the theme of “transformation”; (which I think is one of the main messages of this holiday season); would appear in some form like a movie or interaction of some kind. One of these for example was the movie: “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens was playing in the background while I was doing something and towards the end Ebenezer Scrooge was confronted by a vision of his mortality and the possibility of a life unlived where he sees his grave and no one cared whether he had lived or died; and he becomes totally transformed.
But the one that really got my attention was this little clip of: “It’s A Wonderful Life” that Jimmy Stewart describes to Johnny Carson of why it became one of the most iconic Christmas masterpieces ever made! This message of love and friendship are the inward values that make life worth living I found were reflected by several different moments throughout the coming days when out of nowhere old friends of mine would reach out to me to let me know about something they had seen and share it; or wanted to see how I was doing! It was extremely moving and reminded me that amid the surface display of everyday living the importance of the invisible life that supports the visible one often goes unnoticed; and that this is one of the main messages of the holiday season we can experience each year if we are open to it.
This holiday first posting I think has been a great success and I hope will become a tradition like the one that Michael first put together back on the older version of CoaHO.
Hey everyone; it’s been awhile since I’ve posted on this thread but I wanted to include a short clip on Dennis Patrick Slattery’s book that may line up with what is currently being discussed concerning the process of writing one’s personal myth. For me Diane Osbon’s book: “Reflections on the Art of Living – A Joseph Campbell Companion”; has been crucial in my journey for it was written in 1991; but: “Riting Myth Mythic Writing”; was written in 2012; and deals more with the actual writing process of one’s myth than the other which for me deals more with understanding how to incorporate “Joseph’s themes” into one’s life.
I’ve been spending some time on Slattery’s website listed earlier; which has quite a bit of material concerning his own process including some fascinating posts on his Painting and Pottery; (one of which has some pieces on Carl Jung’s: “Red Book”. I bring this up because although writing is still the main focus of this thread; Marianne’s quote earlier about incorporating “all” the arts lies at the heart and soul of the inner: “sacred space”; which Joseph felt was critical for human well being in modern life. You could say hobby or craft is one aspect; and indeed Jung’s process of: “Play” is one of the avenues this inner expression begins to take place. But Slattery approaches this idea in a very unique way which the clip talks about:
Dr. Gardner,
First of all a warm welcome and I also would like to echo my appreciation of your beautifully written and very thoughtful piece. The first part was for me particularly moving as it spoke to an experience we all have in common; (that of losing someone close); and the poignant way you expressed your grief spoke to this in a very powerful way. This experience of life’s emotional connection and fragility touches us all at some point; and the way it changes our world can often go far beyond the ability of words to describe it. As one of life’s major constants this affect of loss is far too often not as fully appreciated or comprehended as to the power of it’s ability to define as well as color our view of life as we move through it’s various stages toward our own exit. But moments such as these can also add depth as well as understanding to a larger context in which we play our part; but then we are not usually aware of our own process as we live out our lives either. How many books and poems have been written about this subject is not the point I got from this piece; but the shared humanity was; for it reminded me of the gateway, portal, or threshold moments where one’s life is forever changed. I would say that most people have had some encounter with this experience; and more than likely this experience was profound; for how often have we heard the expression: “and my world just stopped”! (Yes; a “still-point moment” to be sure!)Our lives all contain individual mixtures of: trajectory, chance, and destiny of which we may or may not be aware. And what these elements have to do with how we interpret the meaning in how our lives are constructed (also) includes life’s “mystery”; which can blindside us with death’s entrance and we are left devastated and bewildered by our loss and inability to grapple with the profoundness of it’s enormity. To consider the nature of existence includes the realization of death as it’s final act of definition; whether symbolized by the: “Ouroboros”; or ritualized within the world’s great mythic traditions. And to understand the nature of the cosmos as Joseph suggests is to accept the realization that: “life has no meaning”; we bring the meaning to it; (being alive is the meaning); and this “is-ness” in which we are enclosed as he also suggests includes: “we participate in a wonder”; but this realization is also enveloped within a nightmare landscape of: “life eating life”; in which we all: (as best we can); try to engage and contribute with joyful compassion in it’s suffering as we try to find our way.
To look at the stars and the universe which frames them is to consider something so overwhelming we are left only with our own humble ability to make sense out of something for which there is no meaning or explanation; yet here we are in a little ship on an ocean without a rudder looking for a North Star to guide us; but that star is “our star” that will point us in the right direction for our lives if we but listen to the human heart; the only thing that has properly guided mankind throughout the ages of his existence.
I really enjoyed your terrific piece and thought about it most of the day. Although my offering is not what I would call formal what moved me the most was the personal aspect; which reminded me of: Dorthey and her companions in the “Wizard of Oz”; each had their gifts to bestow; but it was Dorthey’s steadfast devotion to her quest that in the end took her home.
Stephen; I think you articulated this aspect of what I would call mimicking or parroting Joseph’s thoughts and ideas really well. And I would be surprised if most people who hold his insights up as something to emulate didn’t at some time or another find themselves suspect in some way to falling under this spell. Speaking for myself this definitely would be true since I consider him in many ways a kind of mentor even though I never met him. But saying that I think this only natural since any culture pushes us as human beings in some kind of direction; whether we are aware of it or not; (especially concerning things like peer pressure).
But more and more I keep finding myself questioning: “is what I’m saying and thinking a reflection of what I truly think and feel; or are these things echo’s from Joseph’s influence?”; and if I’m honest I would have to say in many ways they absolutely are! But as I’m coming to realize more and more I think it was Joseph’s intent to use the things he shared as more of a roadmap to developing my own point of view; my own voice; my own way of experiencing and looking at the world through the context of my own life experiences.
Eastern and Western cultures are very different; but the world is rapidly changing in many ways – while at the same time people are trying to hold on to many of the timeless values born out of the perceptions that produced them. We can say: “there is nothing new under the sun”; but within this new: “freefall into the future”; mankind is experiencing the cross-pollination of cultures in ways I think are going to affect the ways we experience the world and our lives within it in ways we can’t yet know. The computer and the internet; the human genome; going to the moon and then on to inter-steller space; the coming of climate change and global warming; and now this global virus pandemic are all examples to consider.
Disagreeing with Joseph is a difficult question for me since I have been so influenced by his ideas; (especially concerning with the unlocking of Carl Jung’s ideas as applied to my own life which is now forever changed); but I don’t want to digress. Below is a quote of mine from the mentoring thread which might better describe my feelings about this; some of which was borrowed from a conversation Joseph had with Michael Toms in: “An Open Life” on page 123.
___________________________________________________Joseph:
If I do have a guru of that sort, it would be Zimmer–the one who really gave me the courage to interpret myths out of what I knew of their common symbols. There’s always a risk there, but it’s the risk of your own personal adventure instead of gluing yourself to what someone else has found.”
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Me:
To me this is a central feature that should be held up as something to strive for; the ability to not only follow your own unique individual path; but to use your own point of view as a guide. Something that speaks to you out of your own center in your own voice; something that gives you a sense you are following your own: “North Star” as your guide. We all need models and the mentor I think helps the individual to find and develop their own idea of possibility of their own: “reason for being”.; or put another way: their own: “personal myth”. I think this is Joseph’s main theme around which many of the other aspects or dimensions constellate. (The hero is a major archetype that resonates in everyone; and Joseph stated this another way from the ancients: “It is in you, go and find it”.)
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I don’t know if the above adequately addresses or applies to the overall themes in this thread of disagreeing with Joseph or not; (perhaps a mixture of light and dark with shades of grey mixed in). But at this stage of my life I don’t think I could easily separate where one ends and the other begins. I currently just started reading a new book Stephen recommended on another thread: Dennis Patrick Slaattery’s: “Riting Myth Mythic Writing”; which may help provide some clues concerning my personal myth and my own voice as separate from Joe’s influence. Anyway; I thought this might add something concerning Stephen’s above post since we all have Joseph’s influence in common; but we might view his ideas in completely ways through very different cultural lenses. Hopefully this humble addition will contribute something to Nandu’s topic.
Stephen: I really like the way you framed this; (especially the last paragraph); since I think much of our lives can revolve around coming to this realization path of an individual destiny and life course. And the process involved with an individual experience of this can take many forms; especially concerning the life momentum out of which they have come.
(Stephen): “This does ring true. Archetypal energies will not be ignored. In the absence of a society that has space and place where such energy is observed and honored, what form might this dynamic then take? (I think of some mighty strange helpers and guides who have emerged the past couple years, initiating many, including a few of my friends and relatives, into strange shadowy worlds.)
How, then, do we properly honor this archetype? What I take away from John’s essay is that we do so not just through being mentored, but when we step up to the plate, actively acknowledging, embracing, and giving life to the Mentor born of our own experience and life wisdom.”
_______________________________________________________________________________I think the part: “born of our own experience and life wisdom” speaks to what the mentor is trying to transfer to the individual. A sense of: not only developing self-responsibility for their own life; but that they have the possibility of creating their own model for finding and fulfilling their own destiny; and if the situation presents itself of passing that (received) self-knowledge on. Joseph talks about this very subject concerning life models in society on pages 109-110; in Michael Tom’s: “An Open Life:
Joseph:
“The hero-as-model is one thing we lack, so each one has to be his own hero and follow the path that’s no path. It’s a very interesting situation.”Toms:
“Or at least the models we tend to use are very strange ones. I think of Hollywood stars…”Joseph:
“Oh, now those models come flashing in front of us and they are heros of sorts. I think of the athletic hero is right there. But these are bizarre kinds of heros because they can’t really be incorporated into one’s life. Actors, personalities, politicians–they’re mostly heros in life contexts that are not of the people who admire them. That’s just a curious result of the fact that our society’s changing so fast. But I think they are heros–there’s just no doubt about it. I think Martin Luther King was a hero. Kennedy was a hero–both Kennedy’s. And certain athletes.”Toms:
“They filled the model.”Joseph:
“They filled the model. But they’re not doing much for us in the way of helping us build our own lives. There are very few models for life. I think the individual has to find his own model. I found mine.”Toms:
“Isn’t it important to respect our own uniqueness?”Joseph:
“I think that’s the most important of all. That’s why, as I said, you can’t really follow a guru. You can’t ask somebody to give The Reason, but you can find one for yourself; you decide what the meaning of your life is to be. People talk about the meaning of life–there are lots of meanings of different lives, and you must decide what you want your own to be.”___________________________________________________________________________
Joseph talks about something on page 123; I think is extremely important concerning Jung’s ideas and developing his own independent way of interpreting something:
Joseph:
“You know for some people, “Jungian” is a nasty word, and it has been flung at me by certain reviewers as though to say, “Don’t bother with Joe Campbell; he’s a Jungian.” I’m not a Jungian! As far as interpreting myths Jung gives me the best clues I’ve got. But I’m much more interested in diffusion and relationships historically than Jung was, so that the Jungians think of me as kind of a questionable person. I don’t use those formula words very often in my interpretation of myths, but Jung gives me the background from which to let the myth talk to me.If I do have a guru of that sort, it would be Zimmer–the one who really gave me the courage to interpret myths out of what I knew of their common symbols. There’s always a risk there, but it’s the risk of your own personal adventure instead of gluing yourself to what someone else has found.”
_______________________________________________________________________________
To me this is a central feature that should be held up as something to strive for; the ability to not only follow your own unique individual path; but to use your own point of view as a guide. Something that speaks to you out of your own center in your own voice; something that gives you a sense you are following your own: “North Star” as your guide. We all need models and the mentor I think helps the individual to find and develop their own idea of possibility of their own: “reason for being”.; or put another way: their own: “personal myth”. I think this is Joseph’s main theme around which many of the other aspects or dimensions constellate. (The hero is a major archetype that resonates in everyone; and Joseph stated this another way from the ancients: “It is in you, go and find it”.)
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One little addendum I just remembered that might be worth mentioning. As I was thinking about what I was going to post there was a movie playing in the background. As I turned around to see what it was I realized it was a new takeoff version of the classic: Don Quixote that had Adam Driver as Sancho Panza set in modern times; with a very different twist on the plot which would be very difficult to describe. But my point in bringing this up has to do with the emotional power this story conveys concerning this “crazy” old man that thinks he is a knight errand with his noble squire setting out to right wrongs by fighting villains and charging at windmills to rescue his lady fair – Dulcinea; (and what the hero and his adventure symbolizes toward modern life). For those unfamiliar with this story it transfers a deeply poignant understanding of life and the importance of the hero which struck me immediately as relevant to this topic. The hero as a model or an archetype in this story brings a sense of meaning towards many of the things worth living for in a way that has served as a model for centuries. This book use to be one of “the” most read on the planet next to the Bible years ago; but with today’s social media I am not so sure that would still be the case. At any rate I thought it relevant to this topic even though the context might seem a bit far fetched.
________________________________________________________________________________(Thank you for your kind thoughts; there have been so many great points brought up in this discussion I’ll try to stop by and contribute something more later on.)
Mars; if I understand what you are saying we may have to agree to disagree on some of this; but my thoughts are still a work-in-progress so I appreciate your thoughtful perspective. The (editor) is a metaphor for a particular function that is being served within the individual; and as I mentioned earlier I’m not quite satisfied with my conclusions and I certainly do not claim to be an authority on this; but these are my impressions so far and of course I’m open up for more “clarity” concerning (Joseph’s) particular theme if you have it to offer.
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I want to add an addendum to Stephen’s opening question about what may be informing our blind spot; (which to me seems to refer to the Jungian: “personal unconscious”. I may be off track but I also think this (editor) might have a connection to the “collective unconscious” as well.
From Daryl Sharp’s Lexicon:
“Personal unconscious. The personal layer of the unconscious, distinct from the collective unconscious.
The personal unconscious contains lost memories, painful ideas that are repressed (i.e., forgotten on purpose), subliminal perceptions, by which are meant sense-perceptions that were not strong enough to reach consciousness, and finally, contents that are not yet ripe for consciousness.[The Personal and the Collective Unconscious,” ibid., par. 103.]”(and concerning the relationship to the: “collective unconscious” also taken from the Lexicon):
“The collective unconscious-so far as we can say anything about it at all-appears to consist of mythological motifs or primordial images, for which reason the myths of all nations are its real exponents. In fact, the whole of mythology could be taken as a sort of projection of the collective unconscious. . . . We can therefore study the collective unconscious in two ways, either in mythology or in the analysis of the individual.[“The Structure of the Psyche,” CW 8, par. 325.]
The more one becomes aware of the contents of the personal unconscious, the more is revealed of the rich layer of images and motifs that comprise the collective unconscious. This has the effect of enlarging the personality.
In this way there arises a consciousness which is no longer imprisoned in the petty, oversensitive, personal world of the ego, but participates freely in the wider world of objective interests. This widened consciousness is no longer that touchy, egotistical bundle of personal wishes, fears, hopes, and ambitions which always has to be compensated or corrected by unconscious counter-tendencies; instead, it is a function of relationship to the world of objects, bringing the individual into absolute, binding, and indissoluble communion with the world at large.[The Function of the Unconscious,” CW 7, par. 275.]
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I’m not completely satisfied with all of this yet; but it seems to me to suggest that much of what we don’t know about how we as individual’s perceive our world around us and our reactions to things may be pointing in this direction concerning our blind spot and how we react to things. “Emotion” of course takes this subject to whole other level; (especially where the Shadow is concerned because much of this processing has to with repressed psychic content and what stimulates it as well. And our editor is right in the middle of this processing of material by filtering data and helping in the decision making by assigning meaning it.
