TrueLife - From Myth to Life: Joseph Campbell Understanding the Hero’s Journey, Part 3

Episode Date: September 17, 2020

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/Transcript:https://app.podscribe.ai/episode/52388743Speaker 0 (0s): Is two big, giant metrics back. They look at me and judge me by my side is where you don't ever let somebody tell you, you can't do something. Not even me. All right. You've got a dream. You've got to protect it. People can't do something themselves. They want to tell you, you can't do it. You want something? Go get it, period. Does it get easier? No yes. It gets easier. Yeah. The more, you know who you are and what you want, the less, they look at things of say, you know, yeah, Speaker 1 (1m 25s): I said it before, and I'll say it again. Life moves pretty fast. Speaker 0 (1m 30s): You don't stop and look around once in a while you could miss It PMC things that have started a few things you never felt before you meet people was a different point of view. Hope you live a life. You proud. If you find that you're not hope you have the strength. And again, Speaker 1 (2m 7s): Welcome back heroes and heroines friends. Good. Look at people and intelligent forces of nature. I was so happy. You're back. I am digging this Joseph Campbell. I'm trying to really integrate some of these mythological journeys into my life. It's easy to do. Once you begin to understand the hero's journey. Once you began to understand the power of myth, you can really integrate into your life. And I think you can make your life as well as the life of the people around you. Better. Speaker 0 (2m 47s): Interesting and enjoyable. Let's jump right in here. Speaker 1 (2m 55s): The question will begin with, to mr. Campbell is given you know about human beings. Is it conceivable that there is a part of wisdom beyond the conflicts of truth and illusion by which our lives can be put back together again? Can we develop new models, Joseph Campbell, they are already here in the religions. All religions have been true for their time. If you can recognize the enduring aspect of their truth and separate it from the temporal applications, you've got it. We have spoken about it right here, the sacrifice of physical desires and fears of the body to that, which spiritually supports the body is the body learning to know and express its own deepest life in the field of time. One way or another. We all have to find what the best Foster's the flowing of our humanity in this contemporary life and dedicate ourselves to that. Not the first Cause, but a higher Cause Joseph Campbell. I would say a more inward Cause hire is just up there and there is no up there. We know that that old man up there has been blown away. You've got to find the force inside you. This is why Oriental gurus are so convincing. Two young people today, they say is in you go in and find it. But isn't it only the very few who can face the challenge of a new truth and put their lives and a quarter with it. Joseph Campbell, no, not at all. A few, maybe the teacher's and the leader, but this is something that anybody can respond to just as anybody has the potential to run out, to save a child. It is within Everybody to recognize value's in his life that are not confined to maintenance of the body and economic concerns of the day. When I was a boy and red Knights of the round table, that myth stirred me to think that I could be a Hero. I wanted to go out and do battle with dragons. I wanted to go into the dark forest and slate evil. What does it say to you that myths can because the son of an Oklahoma farmer to think of himself as a Hero Joseph Campbell myths inspire the realization of the possibility of your perfection, the fullness of your strength and the bringing of solar light into the world. Slaying monsters is slaying the dark thing. Myths, grab you somewhere down inside as a boy, you go at it one way. As I did reading my Indian stories later on myths, tell you more and more and still more. I think that anyone who has ever dealt seriously with religious or mythic ideas will tell you that we learned them as a child on one level, but then many different levels are revealed. Myths are infinite in the revelation. How do I slay that dragon in MI what's the journey. Each of us has to make what you call the soul's high adventure. Joseph Campbell, my general formula for my students is follow your bliss, find where it is, and don't be afraid to follow it. Is it my work or my life Joseph Campbell. If the work that you are doing is the word that you chose to do because you are enjoying it. That's it. But if you think, Oh no, I couldn't do that. That's the dragon locking you in? No, No I couldn't be a writer or no, no, I couldn't possibly do what so-and-so was doing in this sense. Unlike heroes, such as Prometheus's or Jesus, we're not going on our journey to save the world, but to save ourselves Joseph Campbell. But in doing that, you saved the world, the influence of a vital person. Vitalizes there's no doubt about it. 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. When I take that journey and go down there and slay those dragons, do I have to go alone? Joseph Campbell, if you have someone who can help you, that's fine too. But ultimately the last deed has to be done by oneself. Psychologically, the dragon is one's own binding of oneself to one's ego. We are captured in our own dragon cage. The problem of the psychiatrist is to disintegrate that dragon break it up so that you may expand to a larger field of relationships. The ultimate dragon is within you. It is your ego clamping you down. What, what is my ego, Joseph Campbell, what you think you want, what you will to believe, what you think you can afford, what you decide to love, what you regard yourself as bound to be. It may be all much to small in which case it will nail you down. And if you simply do what your neighbors tell you to do, you're certainly going to be down. Your neighbors are then your dragon, as it reflects from within yourself are a Western dragons represent greed. However, the Chinese dragon is different. It represents the vitality of the swamps and comes up, beating its belly and bellowing, right? Yeah. I'd say a lovely kind of dragon. One that yields the bounty of the water is a great glorious gift. But the dragon of our Western tails tries to collect and keep everything to himself. And his secret cave. He guards things, heaps of gold and perhaps a captured Virgin. He doesn't know what to do with either. So he just guard's and keeps it. There are people like that and we call them creeps. There is no life from them, no giving. They just glue themselves to you and hangs around and try to suck out your life. Carl Young had a patient who came to him becau...

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Hears through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Kodex Seraphini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Me by my size, do you? Don't ever let somebody tell you you can't do something. Not even me. You got a dream, you gotta protect it. People can't do something themselves.

They want to tell you you can't do it. You want something, go get it. Period. Does it get easier? No. Yes. It gets easier. Oh yeah?

Look at you. The more you know who you are and what you want, the less you let things upset you. Yeah. Yep, I said it before and I'll say it again. Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while.

You could miss it. I hope you see things that start with you. Feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again. Welcome back. heroes and heroines, friends, good-looking people, intelligent forces of nature.

So happy you're back. I am digging, this Joseph Campbell. I'm trying to really integrate some of these mythological journeys into my life. It's easy to do. Once you begin to understand the hero's journey, once you begin to understand the power of myth, you can really integrate it into your life. and I think you can make your life as well as the life of the people around you better interesting and enjoyable let's jump right in here the question we'll begin with to mr. Campbell is

given what you know about human beings is it conceivable that there is a port of wisdom beyond the conflicts of truth and illusion by which our lives can be put back together again? Can we develop new models? Joseph Campbell. They are already here in the religions. All religions have been true for their time. If you can recognize the enduring aspect of their truth

and separate it from the temporal applications, you've got it. We have spoken about it right here, the sacrifice of physical design. desires and fears of the body to that which spiritually supports the body is the body learning to know and express its own deepest life in the field of time. One way or another, we all have to find what best fosters the flowing of our humanity in this contemporary life and dedicate ourselves to that. Not the first cause, but a higher cause, Joseph Campbell. I would say a more inward cause.

Higher is just up there, and there is no up there. We know that. That old man up there has been blown away. You've got to find the force inside you. This is why Oriental gurus are so convincing to young people today. They say, it is in you go and find it. But isn't it only the very few who can face the challenge of a new truth

and put their lives in accord with it? Joseph Campbell. No, not at all. A few may be the teachers and the leaders, but this is something that anybody can respond to. Just as anybody has the potential to run out to save a child. It is within everybody to recognize, values in his life that are not confined to maintenance of the body and economic concerns of the day.

When I was a boy and read Knights of the Round Table, that myth stirred me to think that I could be a hero. I wanted to go out and do battle with dragons. I wanted to go into the dark forest and slay evil. What does it say to you that myths can cause the son of an Oklahoma farmer to think of himself as a hero. Joseph Campbell. Myths inspire the realization of the possibility of your perfection, the fullness of your strength, and the bringing of solar light into the world. Slaying monsters is slaying the dark things. Myths grab you somewhere down inside. As a boy, you go at it one way. As I did reading my Indian stories. Later on, myths tell you more and more. And more. And and still more.

I think that anyone who has ever dealt seriously with religious or mythic ideas will tell you that we learn them as a child on one level, but then many different levels are revealed. Myths are infinite in their revelation. How do I slay that dragon in me? What's the journey each of us has to make what you call the soul's high adventure?

Joseph Campbell. My general formula for my students is, follow your bliss. Find where it is and don't be afraid to follow it. Is it my work or my life? Joseph Campbell. If the work that you are doing is the work that you chose to do because you are enjoying it, that's it. But if you think, oh no, I couldn't do that.

That's the dragon locking you in. No, no, I couldn't be a writer or no, no, I couldn't possibly do what so-and-so is doing. In this sense, unlike heroes such as Prometheus or Jesus, we're not going on our journey to save the world, but to save ourselves, Joseph Campbell. But in doing that, you save the world. The influence of a vital person vitalizes. There's no doubt about it.

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.

When I take that journey and go down there and slay those dragons, do I have to go alone? Joseph Campbell. if you have someone who can help you, that's fine too. But ultimately, the last deed has to be done by oneself. Psychologically, the dragon is one's own binding of oneself to one's ego. We are captured in our own dragon cage. The problem of the psychiatrist is to disintegrate that dragon.

Break him up so that you may expand to a larger field of relationships. The ultimate dragon is within you. It is your ego clamping you down. Now, what is my ego, Joseph Campbell? What you think you want, what you will to believe, what you think you can't afford, what you decide to love, what you regard yourself as bound to be. It may be all much too small, in which case it will nail you down. And if you simply do what your neighbors tell you to do, you're certainly going to be nailed down. Your neighbors are then your dragon as it reflects from within yourself.

Our Western dragons represent greed. However, the Chinese dragon is different. It represents the vitality of the swamps and comes up beating its belly and bellowing. That's a lovely kind of dragon. One that yields the bounty of the waters, a great, glorious gift. But the dragon of our Western tales tries to come. collect and keep everything to himself. In his secret cave,

he guards things, heaps of gold and perhaps a captured virgin. He doesn't know what to do with either, so he just guards and keeps. There are people like that, and we call them creeps. There is no life from them,

no giving. They just glue themselves to you and hang around and try to suck out your life. Carl Jung had a patient who came to him, because she felt herself to be alone in the world on the rocks and when she drew a picture for him of how she felt there she was on the shore of a dismal sea caught in rocks from the waist down the wind was blowing and her hair was blowing and all the gold all the joy of life was locked away from her in the rocks

the next picture that she drew however followed something that he had said to her a flash of lightning strikes the and a golden disc is being lifted out. There is no more gold locked within the rocks. There are golden patches now on the surface. In the course of the conferences that followed, these patches of gold were identified. They were her friends. She wasn't alone.

She had locked herself in her own little room in life, yet she had friends. Her recognition of these followed only after the killing of her dragons. I like what you say about the old myth of Theseus and Aeronade. Theseus says, I'll love you forever if you can show me a way to come out of the labyrinth. So she gives him a ball of string,

which he unwinds as he goes into the labyrinth and then follows to find the way out. You say all he had was the string. That's all you need, Joseph Campbell. That's it. That's all you need. An Ariadne thread. Sometimes we look for great wealth to save us, a great power to save us, or great ideas to save us, when all we need is that piece of string, Joseph Campbell.

That is not always easy to find, but it's nice to have someone who can give you a clue. That's a teacher's job to help you find. your Ariadne thread. Like all heroes, the Buddha doesn't show you the truth itself. He shows you the way to the truth? Joseph Campbell. But it's got to be your way, not his.

The Buddha can't tell you exactly how to get rid of your particular fears, for example. Different teachers may suggest exercises, but they may not be the ones to work for you. All a teacher can do is suggest. He is like a lighthouse that says, There are rocks over there. Steer clear. There is a channel. However, out there. 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? A living myth presents contemporary models. Today we have an endless variety of models. A lot of people end up choosing many and never knowing who they are. Joseph Campbell. When you choose your vocation, you have actually chosen a model and it will fit you in a little while. After middle life, for example, you can pretty well tell what a person's profession is.

Wherever I go, people know I'm a professor. I don't know what it is that I do or how I look. look, but I too can tell professors from engineers and merchants. You're shaped by your life. There is a wonderful image in King Arthur, where the knights of the round table are about to enter the search for the grail in the dark forest, and the narrator says, they thought it would be a disgrace to go forth in a group. So each entered the forest at a separate point of his choice.

You've interpreted that to express the Western emphasis upon the unique phenomenon of a single human life, the individual confronting darkness, Joseph Campbell. What struck me when I read that in the 13th century, Quest Dalsank Rao, was that it epitomizes an especially Western spiritual aim and ideal, which is of living the life that is potential in you and was never in anyone else as a possibility. 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.

In the traditional Orient, on the other hand, and generally in all traditionally grounded societies, the individual is cookie molded his duties are put upon him in exact the precise terms and there's no way of breaking out from them when you go to a guru to be guided on the spiritual way he knows just where you are on the traditional path just where you have to go next just what you must do to get there he'll give you his picture to where so you can be like him that wouldn't be a proper western pedagogical way of guidance. We have to give our students guidance in developing their own pictures of themselves. What each must seek in his life never was on land or sea. It is to be something out of his own unique potentiality for experience, something that never has been and never could have been

experienced by anyone else. There's the question Hamlet asked. Are you up to your destiny? Joseph Campbell Hamlet's problem wasn't that he wasn't he was given a destiny too big for him to handle and it blew him to pieces that can happen too

which stories from mythology help us understand death Joseph Campbell you don't understand death you learn to acquiesce in death I would say that the story of Christ assuming the form of of a human servant, even to death on the cross,

is the principal lesson for us of the acceptance of death. The story of Oedipus and the sphinx has something to say about this too. The sphinx in the Oedipus story is not the Egyptian sphinx, but a female form with the wings of a bird, the body of an animal, and the breast, neck, and face of a woman. What she represents is the destiny of all life. She has sent a plague over the land, and to lift the plague, the hero has to answer the riddle that she presents. What is it that walks on four legs, then on two legs, and then on three?

The answer is man. The child creeps about on four legs. The adult walks on two, and the aged walk with a cane. The riddle of the sphinx is the image of life itself through time. childhood, maturity, age, and death. When without fear you have faced and accepted the riddle of the sphinx, death has no further hold on you, and the curse of the sphinx disappears.

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 and 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. Wow, I better read that again because that is beautiful.

the conquest of fear yields the courage of life. The conquest of fear yields the courage of life. That is the cardinal initiation of every heroic adventure, fearlessness and achievement. All right, you guys should write that down. I'm going to write it down. That's something that you should write down, maybe put in your rearview mirror,

or maybe in your bathroom mirror, or you might want to add that to maybe one of your mantras in the morning. The conquest of fear, yields the courage of life. I remember reading as a boy of the war cry of the Indian braves riding into battle against the rain of bullets of Custer's men. What a wonderful day to die.

There was no hanging on there to life. That is one of the great messages of mythology. I, as I know, as I now know myself, am not the final form of my being. we must constantly die one way or another to the selfhood already achieved. I, as I now know myself, am not the final form of my being. Do you have a story that illustrates this? Joseph Campbell.

Well, the old English tale of Sergei Winn and the Green Knight is a famous one. One day a green giant came writing on a great, Green horse into King Arthur's dining hall. I challenge anyone here, he cried, to take this great battle axe that I carry and cut off my head, and then one year from today, meet me at the Green Chapel,

where I shall cut off his head. The only knight in the hall who had the courage to accept this incongruous invitation was Galen. He arose from the table. the Green Knight got off his horse handed Gawin the axe, stuck out his neck, and Gawin

with a single stroke, chopped off his head. The Green Knight stood up, picked up his head, took back the axe, climbed on to his horse, and as he rode away, called back to the Estanish Gawain, I'll see you in a year. That year, everybody was very

kind to Gailen, a fortnight or so before the term of the adventure. He rode off to search the Green Chapel and keep faith with the giant Green Knight. As the date approached, with about three days to go, Gaywin found himself before a hunter's cabin, where he asked the way to the Green Chapel. The hunter, a pleasant, genial fellow,

met him at the door and replied, well, the chapel is just down the way, a few hundred yards. Why not spend your next three days here with us? We'd love to have you. And when your time comes, your green friend is just down the way. So Gaywin says, all right. And the hunter, that evening says to him, now, early tomorrow, I'm going off hunting. But I'll be back in the evening when we shall exchange our winnings of the day.

I'll give you everything I get on the hunt. And you give me whatever will have come to you. They laugh. And that was fine with Gaywin. So they all retired to bed. In the morning, early, the hunter rides off while Gaywin is still asleep. Presently, in comes the hunter's extraordinarily beautiful wife, who tickles Gaywin under the chin and wakes him and passionately invites him to a morning of love.

Well, he is a knight of King Arthur's court, and to betray his host is the last thing such a knight can't stoop to. So Gaywin sternly resists. However, she is insistent and makes more and more of an issue. of this thing until finally she says to him, well then, let me give you just one kiss. So she gives him one large smack, and that was that. That evening, the hunter arrives with a great hall of all kinds of small game, throws it onto the floor, and Gawin gives him one large kiss. They laugh, and that too was that. The second morning, the wife again comes into the room, more passionate than ever, and the fruit of the encounter is two kisses.

The hunter in the evening returns with about half as much game as before, and receives two kisses, and again they laugh. On the third morning, the wife is glorious and gay when a young man about to meet his death has all he can to keep his head and retain his knightly honor. With this last gift before him of the luxury of life, This time he accepts three kisses, and when she has delivered these, she begs him as a token of her love to accept her garter. It is charmed, she says, and will protect you against every danger. So Gaywin accepts the garter, and when the hunter returns with just one silly, smelly fox, which he tosses onto the floor, he receives in exchange three kisses from Galen, but no garter.

Do we not see what the tests are of this young knight, Gawain? They are the same as the first two of Buddha. One is of desire, lust. The other is of the fear of death. Gawain had proved courage enough in just keeping his faith with this adventure. However, the garter was just one temptation too many. So when Gainwin is approaching the green chapel, he hears the green knight there. wetting the great axe whiff whiff whiff whiff

gawain arrives and the giant simply says to him stretch your neck out there on this block gaywin does so and the green knight lifts the axe but then pauses no stretch it out a little more he says gaywin does so and again the giant elevates the great axe a little more he says once again Gaywin does the best he can and then whiff, only giving Gainwin's neck one little scratch. Then the Green Knight, who is in fact the hunter himself, transfigured explains, that's for the garter. This, they say, is the origin legend of the order of the knights of the garter. And the moral of the story? Joseph Campbell.

The moral, I suppose, would be that the first required. for a heroic career are the knightly virtues of loyalty, temperance, and courage. The loyalty in this case is of two degrees or commitments. First, to the chosen adventure, but then also to the ideals of the order of knighthood. Now, this second commitment seems to put Gaywin's way in opposition to the way of the Buddha, who, when ordered by the Lord of Duty to perform the social duties proper, to his cast, simply ignored the command, and that night achieved illumination as well as released from rebirth. Gaywin is a European and like Odysseus, who remained true to the earth and returned

from the island of the sun to his marriage with Penelope. He has accepted as the commitment of his life, not released from, but loyalty to the values of life in this world. And yet, as we have just seen, whether following the middle way of the Buddha or the middle way of Gawain, the passage to fulfillment lies between the perils of desire and fear. A third position closer than Gawain's to that of the Buddha, yet loyal still to the values of life on this earth is that of Nietzsche. In thus spake Zarathustra, in a kind of parable, Nietzsche describes what he calls the three transformations of the spirit.

The first is that of the camel, of childhood and youth. The camel gets down on his knees and says, Put a load on me. This is the season for obedience, receiving instruction, and the information your society requires of you in order to live a responsible life. But when the camel is well loaded, it struggles to its feet and runs out into the desert,

where it is transformed into a lion. The heavier the load that had been carried, the stronger the lion will be. Now the task of the lion is to kill a dragon, and the name of the dragon is thou shalt. On every scale of this scaly beast, a thou shalt is imprinted. Some from 4,000 years ago,

others from this morning's headlines. Whereas the camel, the child, had to submit to the thou shouts, the lion, the youth, is to throw them off, and come to his own realization. And so, when the dragon is thoroughly dead, with all its thou shouts overcome,

the lion is transformed into a child moving out of its own nature, like a wheel impelled from its own hub. No more rules to obey. No more rules derived from the historical needs and tasks of the local society, but the pure impulse to living of a life in flower. So we return to Eden, Campbell, to Eden before the fall. What are the thou shouts of a child that he needs to shed? Joseph Campbell.

Everyone that inhibits his self-fulfillment. For the camel, the thou shalt is a must, a civilizing force. It converts the human animal into a civilized human being. But the period of youth is the period of self-discovery and transformation into a lion. The rules are now to be used at will for life, not submitting to as compelling thou shouts. Something of this kind has to be recognized and dealt with by any serious student of art. 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.

That is the time for the lion deed. 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 don't behave as the person behaves who has never mastered an art. you say the time comes how does a child know when his time has come in ancient societies the boy for example went through a ritual which told him the time had come he knew that he was no longer a child and that he had to put off the influences of others and stand on his own we don't have such a clear moment or an obvious ritual in our society that says to my son you are a man Where is the passage today? Joseph Campbell.

I don't have that answer. I figure you must leave it up to the boy to know when he has God his power. A baby bird knows when it can fly. We have a couple of birds' nest right near where we have breakfast in the morning. And we have seen several little families launched. These little things don't make a mistake. They stay on the branch until they know how to fly, and then they fly. I think somehow inside a person knows this.

I can give you examples from what I know of students in art studios. There comes a moment when they have learned what the artist can teach them. They have assimilated this craft and they are ready for their own flight. Some of the artists allow their students to do that. They expect the student to fly off. Others want to establish a school and the student finds he has got to be nasty to the teacher or to say bad things about him in order to get on his own flight. But that is the teacher's own fault. He ought to have known it was time for the student to fly.

The students I know, the ones who are really valid as students, know when it is time to push off. There is an old prayer that says, Lord, teach us when to let go. All of us have to know that, don't we? Joseph Campbell. That's the big problem of the parent. Being a parent is one of the most demanding careers I know. When I think what my father and mother gave up of themselves to launch their family, well, I really appreciate it. My father was a businessman, and of course, he would have been very happy to have his son go into business with him and take it on.

In fact, I did go into business with dad for a couple of months, and then I thought, geez, I can't do this. After he let me go, there is that testing time in your life when you have got to test yourself out to your own flight. Myths, they used to help us know when to let go.

Joseph Campbell. Myths formulate things for you. They say, for example, that you have to become an adult at a particular age. The age might be a good average age for that to happen, but actually, in the individual's life, it differs greatly. Some people are late bloomer and come to particular stages at a relatively late age. 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. What about happiness? If I'm a young person and I want to be happy, what do myths tell me about happiness? Joseph Campbell. The way to find out about your happiness is to keep your mind on those moments when you feel most happy. When you really are 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 I call following your bliss. But how does mythology tell you about what makes you happy?

Campbell. It won't tell you what makes you happy, but it will tell you what happens when you begin to follow your happiness, when the obstacles are that you're going to run into. For example, there's a motif in American Indian stories that I call the refusal of suitors. There's a young girl, beautiful, charming, and the young men invite her to marriage. No, no, no, she says, there's nobody around good enough for me. So a serpent comes. or if it's a boy who won't have anything to do with girls, the serpent queen of Great Lake might come. As soon as you have refused the suitors,

you have elevated yourself out of the local field and put yourself in the field of higher power, higher danger. The question is, are you going to be able to handle it? Another American Indian motif involves a mother and two little boys. The mother says, you can play around the houses, but don't go north. So, of course, they go north. That's the adventurer.

And what is the point of that? Joseph Campbell. With the refusal of suitors, of the passing over a boundary, the adventure begins. You get into a field that's unprotected, novel. You can't have creativity

unless you leave behind the bounded, the fixed, all of the rules. Now there is an Iroquois story that illustrates the motif of the rejection of suitors. A girl lived with her mother in a wigwam on the edge of a village. She was a very beautiful girl, but extremely proud and would not accept any of the boys. The mother was terribly annoyed with her. One day, they're out collecting wood quite a long way from the village, and while they were out, an ominous darkness comes over to them.

Now, this wasn't the dark of night descent, When you have a darkness of this kind, there's a magician at work somewhere behind it. So the mother says, let's gather some bark and make a little wigwam for ourselves and collect wood for a fire. And we'll just spend the night here. So they do exactly that and prepare a little supper. And the mother falls asleep. Suddenly, the girl looks up and there is a magnificent young man standing there before her with a wampong, Palm sash, glorious black feathers, a very handsome fellow. He says, I've come to marry you,

and I'll wait for your reply. And she says, I have to consult with my mother. She does so. The mother accepts the young man, and he gives the mother the wampom belt to prove he's serious about the proposal. Then he says to the girl, tonight, I would like you to come to my camp. And so she leaves with him. Mere human beings. beings weren't good enough for this young lady. And so now, she has something really special. If she hadn't said no to the first suitors who came through the routine social convention, Joseph Campbell, then she wouldn't be having this adventure.

Now, the adventure is strange and marvelous. She accompanies the man to his village, and they enter his lodge. They spend two nights and days together, and on the third day he says to her, I'm going off today to hunt. So he leaves. But after he has closed the flap of the entrance, she hears a strange sound outside. She spends the day in the hut alone.

And when evening comes, she hears the strange sound again. The entrance flap is flung open and inslides a prodigious serpent with tongue darting. He puts his head on her lap and says to her, Now, search my head for lice. She finds all sorts of horrible things there. And when she has killed them all, he withdraws his head, slides out of the lodge, and in a moment after the door flap has closed, it opens again and in comes her same beautiful young man. Were you afraid of me when I came in?

That way I just now? He asks. No, she replies. I wasn't afraid at all. So the next day he goes off to hunt again. And presently, she steps out of the lodge. to gather firewood. The first thing she sees and is an enormous serpent basking on the rocks. And then another and another, she begins to feel very strange, homesick and discouraged,

and returns to the lodge. That evening, the serpent again comes sliding in, again departs and returns as a man. The third day when he has gone, the young woman decides she's going to try to get out of this place. She leaves the lodge and is in the woods alone, standing, thinking. When she hears a voice, she turns, and there's a little old man who says, Darling, you are in trouble. The man you've married is one of seven brothers.

They are all great magicians, and like many people of this kind, their hearts are not in their bodies. Go back into your lodge, and in a bag that is hidden under the bed of the one to whom you are married, you will find a collection of seven hearts. This is a standard

worldwide shamanic motif. The heart is not in the body, so the magician cannot be killed. You have to find and destroy the heart. She returns to the lodge, finds the bag full of hearts, and is running out with it when a voice calls to her,

stop, stop! This is the voice, of course, of the magician. But she continues to run, and the voice calls after, you may think you can get away from me, but you never will. Just at that point, she's beginning to faint.

When she hears again the voice of the little old man, I'll help you, I'll help you. It says, and to her surprise, he's pulling her out of the water. She hadn't known that she was in water. That is to say, that with her marriage, she had moved out of the rational conscious sphere into the field of compulsions of the unconscious. That's always what's really,

represented in such adventures underwater. The character has slipped out of the realm of controlled action into that of the trans-personal compulsions and events. Now, maybe these can be handled, maybe they can't. What happens next in the story is that when the old man has pulled her out of the water, she finds herself in the midst of a company of old men standing along the shore, all looking exactly like her rescuer. They are the thunderers, powers of the upper air.

That is, she is still in the transcendent realm. And to which she brought herself by her refusal of suitors. Only now having torn herself away from the negative aspect of the powers, she has come into possession of the positive. There's a lot more to this Iroquois tale of how this young woman, now in the service of the higher power, enabled them to destroy the negative powers of the abyss and how after that she was conducted back

through a rainstorm to the lodge of her mother. Would you tell this to your students as an illustration of how it, how if they follow their bliss, if they take chances with their lives, if they do what they want to, the adventure is its own reward? Joseph Campbell.

The adventure is its own reward, but it's necessarily dangerous. Having both negative and positive possibilities, all of them beyond control. We are following our own way, not our fathers, not our mother's way. So we are beyond protection in a field of higher powers than we know. One has to have some sense of what the conflict, possibilities will be in this field. And hear a few good archetypal stories like this may help us to know what to expect.

If we have been imbidden and altogether ineligible for the role into which we have cast ourselves it is going to be a demon marriage in a real mess. However, even here, there may be heard a rescuing voice to convert the adventure

into a glory beyond anything ever imagined. It's easier to stay home, stay in the womb, not take the journey, Joseph Campbell. Yes, but then life can dry up because you're not off on your own adventure. On the other hand, I have had an opposite, and to me, quite surprising experience in meeting and coming to know someone whose whole youth was controlled and directed by others from first to last. My friend is a Tibetan, who as a child was recognized as being the reincarnation of an abbot who had been reincarnating since about the 17th century. He was taken into a monastery at the age of about four, and from that moment never was asked what he would like to do. But in all things

followed to the letter the rules and instruction of his masters. His entire life was planned for him according to the ritual requirements of Tibetan Buddhist monastery life. Every stage in his spiritual development was celebrated with a ceremony. His personal life was translated into an archetypal journey so that although on the surface he would seem to be enjoying no personal existence whatsoever, he was actually living on a very deep spiritual level, an archetypal life like that of a divinity. In 1959, this life ended. The Chinese communist military station in Lhasa bombed the summer palace of the Dalai Lama, and a season of massacres began.

There were monasteries around Lhasa of as many as 6,000 monks all were destroyed, and their monks and abbots were killed and tortured. They fled, many fled, together with hundreds. Hundreds of other refugees across the almost impassable Himalayas to India. It is a terrible story largely untold. Finally, all these shattered people arrived in India, which can hardly take care of its own population, and among the refugees were the Dalai Lama himself and a number of the leading officers and abbots of the great monasteries now destroyed.

And they all agreed, Buddhist Tibet is finished. My friend and the other young monks who had managed, to escape were advised, therefore, to regard their vows now as of the past, and to feel free to choose either to continue somehow as monks or to give up the monastic life and try to find a way to reshape their lives to the requirements of possibilities of the modern secular man. My friend chose the latter way, not realizing, of course, what this would mean in the way of frustration, poverty, and suffering. He has had a really difficult time, but he has survived. He has survived it with the will and composure of a saint. Nothing phases him. I've known and worked with him now

for over a decade. And in all this time, I haven't heard one word either of recrimination against the Chinese or of complaint about the treatment he has received here in the West, nor from the Dalai Lama himself will you ever hear a word of resentment or condemnation? These men and all their friends have been the victims of a terrific upheaval, of terrific violence, and yet they have no hatred. I have learned what religion is from these men. Here is true religion alive today. Love thine enemies, Joseph Campbell. Love thine enemies because they are the instruments of your destiny. What do myths tell us about a God who lets two sons and one family die in a relatively short period of time and who continues to visit on that family one ordeal after another?

I remember the story of the young Buddha who saw the decrepit old man and said, shame on birth because to everyone who is born, old age will come. What does mythology say about suffering? Joseph Campbell. since you bring up the Buddha let's talk about that example the story of the Buddha's childhood is that he was born as a prince

and that at the time of his birth a prophet told his father that the infant would grow up to be either a world ruler or a world teacher the good king was interested in his own profession and the last thing he wanted

was that his son should become a teacher of any kind so he arranged to have the child brought up in an especially beautiful palace where he should be experiencing nothing, the least bit ugly or unpleasant that might turn his mind to serious thoughts. Beautiful young women played music and took care of the child, and there were beautiful gardens, lotus ponds, and all. But then one day, the young prince said to his chariot driver, his closest friend, I'd like to go out and see what life is like in the town. His father on hearing this tried to make everything nice so that his son, the

young prince should see nothing of pain and misery of his life or in the world. The gods, however, saw to it that the father's program for his son should be frustrated. So as the royal chariot was rolling along for the town, which had been swept clean with everything ugly kept out of sight, one of the gods assumed the form of a decrepit old man and was standing there within view. What's that? The young prince asked the charioteer. And the reply he received was, that is an old man. That's age. Are all men then to grow old? asked the prince. Ah, yes, the charioteur replied. Then shame on life, said the traumatizing young prince. And he begged sick at heart to be driven home. On a second trip, he saw a sick man,

thin and weak and tottering. And again, on learning the meaning of this sight, his heart failed him. And the chariot returned to the palace. On the third trip, the prince saw a corpse, followed by mourners. That said the charioteer is death. Turn back, said the prince, that I may somehow find deliverance from these destroyers of life, old age, sickness, and death.

Just one trip more. And what he sees this time is a mendicant monk. What sort of man is that? He asks. That is a holy man, the driver replies. One who has abandoned the goods of this world

and lives without desire or fear, whereupon the young prince on returning to his palace, resolved to leave his father's house, and to seek a way of release from life's sorrows. Do most myths say that suffering is an intrinsic part of life and that there's no way around it? Joseph Campbell. I can't think of any that say that. If you're going to live, you won't suffer. Myths tell us how to confront and bear and interpret suffering.

But they do not say that in life there can or should be no suffering. When the Buddha declares, there is escape from sorrow. The escape is nirvana, which is not a place like heaven, but a psychological state of mind in which you are released from the desire and fear. And then your life becomes, Joseph Campbell, harmonious, centered, and affirmative. even with suffering Joseph Campbell exactly the Buddhist speak of the

Bodhisata the one who knows immortality yet voluntarily enters into the field of the fragmentation of time and participates willingly and joyfully in the sorrows of the world and this means not only

experiencing sorrows oneself but participating with compassion in the sorrows of others compassion is the awakening of the heart from beastial self-interest to humanity. The word compassion means literally suffering with. But you don't mean compassion condone suffering, do you?

Joseph Campbell, of course. Compassion condones suffering in that it recognizes, yes, suffering is life. That life is lived with suffering? Joseph Campbell. With the suffering. but you're not going to get rid of it. Who, when, or where has ever been quit of the suffering of life in this world? I had an illuminating experience from a woman who had been in severe physical pain for years,

from an affliction that had stricken her in her youth. She had been raised a believing Christian, and so thought this had been God's punishment of her for something she had done or not done at the time. she was in spiritual as well as physical pain. I told her that if she wanted release, she should affirm and not deny her suffering was her life. And that through it, she had become the noble creature that she now was.

And while I was saying all this, I was thinking, who am I to talk like this to a person in real pain when I have never had anything more than a toothache? But in the conversation, in affirming her suffering as the sharper and teacher of her life, she experienced a conversion. Right there. I have kept in touch with her since that was years and years ago, and she is indeed a transformed woman. There was a moment of

illumination? Yes, right there, I saw it. Was it something you said? Mythologically? Joseph Campbell. Yes, although it's a little hard to explain, I gave her the belief that she was herself the cause of her suffering that she had somehow brought it about there has an important idea in Nietzsche of amor fatig the love of your fate which is in fact your life as he says if you say no to a single factor in your life you have unraveled the whole thing furthermore the challenging or threatening the situation or context to be assimilated and affirmed the greater the stature of the person who can achieve it. The demon that you can swallow gives you its power. And the greater life's pain, the greater lives reply. My friend had thought, God did this to me. I told her, no, you did it to

yourself. The God is within you. You yourself are your creator. If you find that place in yourself, from which you brought this thing about, you will be able to live with it and affirm it, perhaps even enjoy it as your life. I'm going to pause there for a minute. And just leave it here with one last little quote. All life is suffering. All life is suffering, said the Buddha. And Joyce has a line.

Is life worth living? I think it's such a poetic place to stop for today. And if you can take anything away, take away this. The things in your life that bring you sorrow, the things in your life that you feel as if you're suffering, from are in fact the things that bring you your greatest strength. I remember talking to a friend of mine and we were talking about life and transgressions and things that we got wrong.

And I remember having this particular thought that those who seem to be the most disadvantaged actually have the most opportunity. And what I mean by that is, and you can even apply it to your life, the times when when you were the most disadvantaged. The greatest stories you'll ever hear, the ones are the ones that are the most inspiring. And the ones that are the most inspiring are the ones who have overcome the biggest obstacles.

So a good way to think of situations in your life or in your family's life or in the lives of people you care about is when they're at their lowest. This is the best opportunity for them to get through this and inspire other people. I also once made the claim that's what the life is trying to teach you. When life barrels you over, when it blindsides you, when some idle Tuesday makes me think of the world as this beautiful and loving, however mischievous and cruel vixen

that finds ways to teach you. When something horrible happens to you, that's because the earth, God, whatever spiritual, divine being you believe in, thinks you can overcome it. Not only does that divine being think you can overcome it, but it knows you have the strength to. And it's forcing you into this horrible situation so that you can overcome it, come out of it stronger,

and teach other people. If you think about that for a little while, I have found that it helps my life incredibly be more fulfilling. That's all I got for you guys today. I love you guys. I hope you have a great rest of your day. Aloha. So,