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Thank you James for your kind words to me as well! And the link! A lot of treasures shared on these boards!

And thank you Bradley for your response to my question. Your reply reveals the core…a poignant observation. But the health and well being is hidden within the gift of observation. A bird can choose to alight upon any part of the “human” grid…or fly through…it’s being aware of the choices one makes at any point in  her/his life.

It is “Being conscious” as you said.

When you mention a pacification encouraged by (these systems) to see and live life on a surface level…

That rings true at least for me. Sometimes the answer or maybe resolution or question “lives deeper?” and if these type of systems only encourage a surface level or even claim the “surface” (system) for the deep…

Then how can that inner healing occur?
The language of myth challenges all of us to see, hear, think and feel deeper…and allow for mystery and poetry…irony…objectivity. (The latter two are hard when there is pain and fear)

The irony to me is that the mythic way and grammar of Creativity leads the way back into a humanistic and compassionate approach to life and each other. And recognizing as Parceval did that compassion is Deeper than the systemic definition of it…deeper than etiquette alone. That it can be spontaneous, a creativity born out of the heart? Like the Policeman who saved the man on the bridge? It’s mind blowing how One on One moments can open to the Transcendent allowing a glimpse of the human connection we all share…if we allow ourselves that creative objective view!

We all do the best we can within those systems we traverse every day.
I just hope the language of myth remains to keep the balance and to remind us sometimes it takes something deeper and more subtle than “a think tank,” to behold the travails, grails and stories of all our lives and crossing paths on spaceship earth.

Thank you for your tremendous essay and your lovely responses to me!
It is a very hopeful place to be!

And thank you Stephen for providing these spaces of CoHo and being welcoming to so many. It’s really a pleasure and a treasure to be able to read these excellent essays and to be able to participate in conversations with these knowledgeable, authors, philosophers, professors  and other participants  on the board.
This is close as I’ll ever come to auditing a philosophy class! It’s a joy!
Thank you everyone!!

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I think it takes patience to allow the Grammar of Creativity  to impress itself upon and into ones psyche…to be able to bypass the Fear of being Objective.
Or fear of experiencing Objectivity.
The subjective: categorizes…the objective sees many views at once. It’s not an easy balance…but it is freeing and kinder.
Jung’s comment (referenced both by James and Bradley) about “religion being a defense against religious experience,” brings another thought to mind.
In life, there are always these systems or a “system,” which we need as much as saying “yea!” to life, because it’s just another part of the story.
Yet sometimes I wonder if “the system,” or “systemic,” which have their part to play, Also are a defense against the mythic life or transcendent experience?
The transcendent rests in that place of mystery, as Campbell so eloquently said in the clip James provided.
The systemic exists to answer most questions and to keep the cogs turning. People can still make, experience journeys in the systemic forest, but it seems at times,  the systemic also exists to scorn Mystery and the transcendent. Though Stephen and Bradley may have a different take since I have not dived as deeply into Jung as the others here on the board!
My thought was that if the systemic (even though we also need it) spurns the transcendent and mythic experience, that THAT would cause a schism in the human psyche that would “manifest,” in all kind of strange happenings. Those manifestations could be a result of trying to balance a loyalty to the system and a deeper yearning inside, which desperately calls for an individuation experience, not always recognized by the system.
It might be a Calling and A place where objectivity, Irony bring a better, calmer perspective and allow the Grammar of Creativity to knock at the door…by opening the heart to listen and letting the head quiet down. So needed!
But there may be a better take on this from those more knowledgeable in the field!
I think that quote of Campbell’s about not being swallowed by the system probably would fit into this. Or learning to move through it without becoming rigid oneself.
Well back to those creative lit thoughts that lean into a little more light and hope! (Thanks to All!)

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To James:

you write: “a small light in a dark room that brings hope and meaning into mere existence” for both ourselves as well as sharing our pain with others. The Journey of the Hero is so important in a time of so much confusion and chaos; and it is work that people like you are doing that will help others to find their way forward. Thank you again for your extremely kind and generous help.

 

Beautiful!

Think you just “lit” another candle, another prayer.

 

And the Joseph Campbell clip you chose is perfect!

 

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The butterfly is realized…

This evening as I waited to enter a dump site….a bright orange and black monarch flickers up above my hood and flies into the tall trees above.

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Dear Kristina,

I wanted to come back to your essay and other comments…

The leaves are just now changing in my part of Nature and the Goddess of Fall is revealing her presence in her own time.
You mention offering paper to fire…

For me the building of fire in a stove is inescapable from ritual…my Dad taught me and it’s a gift never forgotten…my chimney has been cleaned and I am excited! To watch the dance of flames…the fire Goddess and her attending Sprites in a crackling flamenco sparking behind the glass doors…

The last time I was here…unfortunately I wandered off on several tangents chattering in my own mind… and never told you how beautiful your essay was! Or how much I love this paragraph you wrote:

Rituals give our left brain a break. They give the gods and goddesses room to speak, move and act through us – we let them alter us. The autumn equinox is coming up in the northern hemisphere on September 22. A suggestion is to offer your present troubles to a piece of paper, and then offer the paper to the ritual fire so that the words and papyrus can be reduced to the elements. And then allow the elements to be reformed into new patterns so that they can nurture and comfort you. And most crucially, bow down and pay homage to the Great Goddess. Allow her to reshape, recast and remould you for the coming season.

Put quite simply, do whatever you need to do, so long as your head falls below your heart. It’s the quickest and finest type of ritual to move you from one state of being to another.

“Do what you want to do as long as your head falls below your heart.” ( Love it!) Guess I’m still standing on the threshold…with leaves turning and waiting for a cold snap to build a fire…and toast the Goddess with a glass of cider!
Thank you for your kindness and patience! I wanted to put down the semantics and allow my head to fall below my heart. Nature has a way of doing that reminding what is important and sometimes I can almost feel that invisible Goddess gently but firmly turning my chattery head to look out the window and see a fawn lying in my yard at the threshold where two worlds meet.
Or she grabs my ears with the cry of a hawk above my head!
Thank you Kristina for your beautiful piece! And following beautiful posts!

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Your ending paragraph is so beautiful and moving and painfully true!

 

Perhaps you’ve looked around and noticed how unforgiving and thoughtless culture is becoming; aesthetic sensibilities wane as we flirt with the neo-brutalism that encroaches upon so many aspects of contemporary life. Is it possible that irony may free us from the conventional constraining literalism of existence? Through irony might we see more deeply into the metaphor that is life, and in so seeing grow wiser, more joyful, humbler, and indeed, more compassionate?

 

I feel it everyday…and the Hope for something else…

There are days when one thinks that looking in the mirror would be good ALL around.

And other days we are just doing the best we can.

Your last question feels like a prayer or a small flame lighting the darkness…

It is really beautiful…

Through irony might we see more deeply into the metaphor that is life, and in so seeing grow wiser, more joyful, humbler, and indeed, more compassionate?

I love it! We have become so serious yet deeply long for that laughter and joy…even if we are hurting too much to see it. Irony can be a freeing and healing place to be…Thank you for reminding us Bradley!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I wanted to jump back to this essay of yours Bradley:  “Ego, Irony and the Goddess.” Just read it last night.

You write: Irony is the indispensable attitude for engaging the goddess in her depths and darkness—darkness that places the radiance of transcendence in bold relief. Irony is life’s language; it grants one multiple points of view, it lets one see oneself seeing oneself, and mercifully, irony saves us from sarcasm, cynicism, and desuetude, the demoralized manifestations of broken hearts.

When you mention multiple points of view, to me that conveys almost a hawk or birds eye view…something out of the fray, which sees more clearly? And remains untethered and free of prevailing tangles?

I am curious Bradley: What do you think of Cognitive Dissonance? After reading your essay, I would take that Cognitive Dissonance is an imbalance in the ego…which is stubbornly unable to see itself and remains in an unhealthy state because of refusing to see its split image in the mirror,,

BUT Irony can recognize Cognitive Dissonance and is perhaps its antidote? (Because Irony can SEE from many point of views but is not required to invest Belief in them? That it’s granted that objective gift of seeing many views at once and it’s a much healthier place to be?)

What are your thoughts on this?

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Ok here is part two.

My Mom, the astronomer once told me about nature: “reflect the beauty you feel.” For her the heavens she observed were inextricably linked with poetry…her favorite Rilke’s “You darkness that I come from…” and she loved the natural world and all its colors as she was an earth scientist and artist too.
Walking in forests I understand her love of green…I’ve been happily arrested by the green of trees beyond my imagining suspended in the experience which becomes a physical sense as I remain transfixed in this greening and I happily both reflect and in reflecting disappear…not losing myself but finding Self. Fall too my favorite time of year…colored leaves, flying hawks, cold apple cider and crisp wind with adventures just waiting to happen!

It’s the same when deer appear reminding me I share the world with something More than myself. And to not wallow in melancholy when there is so much more to behold!
IF I remember to pause. And allow the winds to blow away the webs of thought and mind chatter. (My Dad-the math teacher—loved nature and poetry  too…and hearing him recite Tolkien’s Misty Mountains poem may also have informed various life adventures and loves and delights!)

Perhaps this muse on deep delight is also another way of looking at Dylan Thomas’s “Fern Hill,” the last line “Though time held me green and dying…I sang in my chains like the sea.”
Or Gerard Manly Hopkins, “Inversnaid where he celebrates and delights in the weeds and wilderness…or the Whitman Yawp! That delight exists in spite of all the other shadows of the world and along side. Not all is lost in darkness, where there is darkness sometimes there are stars…or meteors and braving a cold November night is always worth the chill and solitude the radiance of each meteor piercing my soul for the memories once shared. I would have it no other way!

Alas! Now I’ve leaned more toward the poetic than the mytho but suppose it brings it to the human experience?

Now I need to dig back into your lovely essay and my other Campbell books! Thank you!

 

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Bradley, your essay is beautiful!

“Myth: The Grammar of Creativity,” I love that! This essay is still sinking into the bones!

Poetry called me to adventure as a young child…and those words that had a magic to convey both joy and sorrows in these other lands of mind were an absolute delight to me!  Then when I found words to create my own poems…I could lose myself in the moment of it!

Thanks to a re-airingof The Power of Myth on PBS in the late 90s, at 17, I was finally old enough to appreciate Joseph Campbell and found myself completely compelled! Searching for as many Joe Campbell books as I could find!
Mythopoetic? Yes! Love that term!
And I love your reference to delight where there is no pain, no thought…just experience.

And the experience of delight can lead to transcendence. It reminds me of a line in a George Harrison song “about do without doing…”  (knowing the ways of heaven without going out the door—-that kind of metaphor… “The inner light.”)

Or perhaps it’s when one stops looking for what is lost then they will see it? Well sometimes…laugh.

That place of “delight,” seems to be a very healing place.
I wish could remember the poet Campbell referenced who was talking about the whole world joining a dance…think it was in the collection Reflections for Living…thought it was Ginsberg but think it was another poet.
But my take was that where joy or delight was found…that it would spread. Not of conscious intent but because of spontaneity.
I’ve found while being in joy…doing things in the moment not for a cause only for the joy of it, with no expectations, that marvelous and unexpected adventures have happened.
Dance has especially been that way for me…I trained and have performed professionally and coached and choreographed for others…but love free form too. And I love being lost in the delight and joy of moving in rhythm and form to the music. Or seeing the joy you feel reflected in others eyes. Or delighting in watching others do what they love! Or just experiencing joy in any moment!
I love seeing something beautiful  in nature that stills me and feeling it’s beauty radiating into the heart.
Every moment can hold unexpected delight! Including helping or giving to those whom you care about!

Delight and poetry! What a hopeful place to be Bradley! We need more of that desperately! Thank you!

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One correction addendum: when referencing the joy of a child, I meant on a deeper level (not indulgence)…and taking in mind raising of the child as well…so the child is Aware of the world and other people in it.
Linda McCartney comes to mind and I don’t remember the exact quote, but it had to do with raising her children to be “kind.” (Or to be good humans) noticing there is no strict punishing force in that statement or anything holding them back from finding their passions. Through passions? Compassion? Caring? Ok will sign off.

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That’s brilliant Stephen! I don’t even need questions (ha ha.) That’s it to a T! And it would be very difficult, yes. That is an excellent point and observation! I’m sure it ties into the joyful sorrows of the world. I think can see something from that side of it…if one imagines a child being born and experiencing joys of being alive and learning should one tell the child to never smile or laugh because the world is a sorrowful place where others are hurting? What if the child’s joy is what leads to her/him making a positive dent? Compassion to (suffer with) comes from Love not guilt…my take.
I probably would struggle more with Campbell’s take on War (there are more nuances around that subject today even beyond “tribalism,” and “ignorance,” alone.) And the word has almost become a household metaphor for any kind of “activism,” for change. BUT I much prefer to lean into Peace, Love and Understanding (Elvis Costello) to “give that more of a chance” in my thoughts!! ( or Maybe because  it was John Lennon’s B-day yesterday?)And yes I re-edited this in case the post looks different today Stephen.  I don’t want to be a gloomy harbinger or ruminator…these times are hard enough! The Native raven is my happier metaphoric totem…even if alas there is some scots/Irish in my background too! If the melancholy psyche does come out to play, I find it goes much better with music and rain…healing places to be! (And transform!) But back to subject!

Thank you so much for your answer Stephen! That is the same rascally sense of Campbell I have gleaned!
Also love the way you say his “seeming,” indifference…which suggests to never read a book by its surface…Campbell would want us to “see,” deeper.

Campbell’s “mythic take on Fear,” would be very challenging as well. Though looking deeper one might sense Campbell would be “saddened,” by it.
One also wonders if Joe Campbell would go charging out that gate beyond the bounds even if we were all yelling and begging him to stop…to turn around and come back because he “has to!”
BUT I think there IS one thing that would stop him…Jean.
If Jean told him to stay and not charge with worry in her eyes…that she needed him not to charge…he would turn towards her…

Because just like the knight who was asked to become Christian that Joe Campbell once referenced…the knight who became Christian because the woman he loved/admired was Christian

so too I think Joe Campbell would turn to his Goddess because where she was the world would fall away…and he would do it for her!

You are right too Shaahayda love Stephen’s answer as well as both of yours. (The cosmology of the time…now that opens thoughts out a bit…love that!)

and apologies for the tangents and straying into the weeds! Perhaps mornings might (chuckle) bring more succinct clarity!

Next round maybe challenging Campbell. But will try to give it a space.

 

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Butterflies, transformation/metamorphosis  yes R-3!

In many cultures butterflies represent the soul.

And here is my shortest post of the year!

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sorry these are slightly off thread…but certainly invites the imagination to the in between (imagination filling the in between) journeys of exploration from here to Out there and back.
The wait has been worth it and perseverance has persevered!

This is more related to that transition to space exploration from (rather than UFO to earth)

Missed this Mars article on the discovery of a lakebed on Mars…thanks to the Perseverance Rover.

https://www.space.com/amp/mars-rover-perseverance-confirms-lake-delta-jezero-crater

this NASA one below is more detailed…

https://mars.nasa.gov/news/9054/nasas-perseverance-sheds-more-light-on-jezero-craters-watery-past/

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Poetry… that call came from Beauty and the Beast (my parents vetted it for me) and I am thankful. Ron Pearlman was a former Shakespearean actor.
And not only was there this mythical/real underworld below the (dragon tunnels) but also worlds of poems and poets…Shakespeare and Frost I knew…but new names echoed in my young head…and I had to find every poem recited…every poet mentioned!
Libraries and bookstores called! I eagerly scanned shelves and flipped through volumes searching for these treasures made of words and sounds and images!
I gained a reputation among my friends of being someone who memorized a lot of stuff. Heh heh. But I loved it! It must have seemed strange but in my preteen and early teen years names like Percy Bish Shelly and Walter De la Mare and Lord Byron…danced in my head!

During a break in a youth play production, I recited (Xanadu-Samuel Taylor Coleridge) to the musical arranger. She looked at me and said “I have a challenge for you. Look up Alfred Noyse, “The Highwayman.”
I did…and it became my new favorite! That one was “acted out.” To be clear no one was making me memorize…I had zeal for it!
The greatest challenge because of the rhythm and wording was “Fern Hill,” yes Dylan Thomas. I loved and love it…moving through the images…walking through the orchards hearing the foxes bark “clear and cold” and the “sabbath ringing slowly in the pebbles of the holy stream.”

the wishes “racing through the house high hay…”

It’s especially poignant and freeing at the same time. The last line always catches me. “I sang in my chains like the sea.”

And one of my very favorites but I have no idea which translation I memorized…Renoir Marie Rilke…

And to wind back to dragons but only the opening lines Rilke: How should we be able to forget those myths at the beginnings of all people? The myths about dragons who at the last moment turn into princesses?

Because of all these poets including “ “new”poems I learned from Frost and Shakespeare…I began writing my own poems.

B&B was a call to adventure!!

Yes, there was a beast in the tunnels but the treasure was not a prince or princess…the treasure and beauty was words and poetry!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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What a beautiful and poignant response!
I almost was going to take this post off…so I suppose could say the 2nd question was muddy and uncertain.
And in reflection later…felt like i might be standing on a bridge.
Everyone approaches from a different path in the forest but all participate in the mythic dynamic…the wonder…Perhaps Campbell puts it much better in reference to staying in touch with ones spiritual center. I might erase my confusing question and replace it with #3.
It felt kind of awkward so it’s an uncertain out loud musing that’s trying to work through to something else and I have no clue what. Maybe it was momentarily imagining a parallel universe in which the system is mistaken for the center? And in that Universe Campbell would point out pointing beyond to point back IN…to the transcendent and Journey of the spirit which we all share? I kind of think it was a limb heh heh. And I keep seeing/hearing/experiencing enough beauty and wonder and am continually surprised…so in better reflection no weird parallel universe system will swallow us. And that’s a very hopeful place to be! I prefer trees and starlight  over black holes!
After reading your post Shaahayda, that funny little limb is no longer necessary, because whatever 2nd subconscious question was rumbling and rambling inside my head was answered.
Thank you!!

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