Joseph Campbell

The noted mythologist discusses the relationship of ancient myths to modern life, including discussions of recent heros, tales of love and marriage, the power of myth, and mythic themes

The Power of Myth

Laura Mei

You may have success in life, but then just think of it? What kind of life was it? What good was it — you've never done the thing you wanted to do in all your life. I always tell my students, go where your body and soul want to go. When you have the feeling, then stay with it, and don't let anyone throw you off.

The way to find 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.

People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.

We're so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about. When a spider makes a beautiful web, the beauty comes out of the spider’s nature. It’s instinctive beauty. How much of the beauty of our own lives is about the beauty of being alive.

The serpent, who dies and is resurrected, shedding its skin and renewing its life, is the lord of the central tree, where time and eternity come together.

Where you stumble, there lies your treasure. The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for. The damned thing in the cave, that was so dreaded, has become the center.

There is an important idea in Nietzsche, of Amor fati, 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 unravelled the whole thing. Furthermore, the more 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 you can swallow gives you its power, and the greater life's pain, the greater life's reply.

Nirvana is right here, in the midst of the turmoil of life. It is the state you find when you are no longer driven to live by compelling desires, fears, and social commitments, when you have found your center of freedom and can act by choice out of that. Voluntary action out of this center is the action of the bodhisattvas — joyful participation in the sorrows of the world. You are not grabbed, because you have released yourself from the grabbers of fear, lust, and duties.

matej yangwao

** spoiler alert **
           Spirituality and mythology is quite important to not tear society apart. Book endorses importance of one's spiritual inner self. 

≥Stories help us to harmonize our lives with reality.

≥Perfection is boring. Humans are interesting and lovable because they are not supernatural and immortal.

≥Myths give us the clue to the spiritual potential the human life holds. Real myths help us to turn inwards to find the inner value of doing the things we do — to experience life.

≥We need to read other people’s myths because we tend to interpret the myths of our own religion as facts.

≥In a homogenous culture, there are unwritten rules by which people live.

≥We seek myths to have instruction that will enable us to experience the divine presence.

≥Every moment of your life is a moment of eternity.

≥By mythologizing plants and animals, people turn their land into a place of spiritual relevance.

≥Sacred places no longer exist today. What we have are historical spots where we go to think about important things that happened there in the past.

≥When you’re on a journey, and the end keeps getting further and further away, then you realize that the real end is the journey.

The Power of Myth

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