Perfection isn’t human. Human beings are not perfect. What evokes our love–and I mean love, not lust–is the imperfection of the human being. So, when the imperfection of the real person peaks through, say, ‘This is a challenge to my compassion.’ Then make a try, and something might begin to get going.

 

                         Joseph  Campbell is one of my heroes.

                          Also, he wrote about the hero’s path –

 THE HERO WITH 1000 FACES

 

 

• As Freud has shown, blunders are not the merest chance. They are the result of suppressed desires and conflicts. They are ripples on the surface of life, produced by unsuspected springs. And these may be very deep – as deep as the soul itself. The blunder may amount to the opening of a destiny.

  Campbell also wrote:  “Where you stumble and fall, there you will find gold.”

  ***

  Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.

• The hero’s journey always begins with the call. One way or another, a guide must come to say, ‘Look, you’re in Sleepy Land. Wake. Come on a trip. There is a whole aspect of your consciousness, your being, that’s not been touched. So you’re at home here? Well, there’s not enough of you there.’ And so it starts.

•                                    ***

THIS short first article is just the beginning of my study of this remarkable, heroic man.

For you,  perhaps his words will be THE CALL.

 

 

 

(C) 2017  by William G. Milne – assembled

PART 1 of 2

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

***********

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

Joseph Campbell

 

 

Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.**********

*

Nietzsche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life, the idea came to him of what he called “the love of your fate.” Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, “This is what I need.” It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment-not discouragement-you will find the strength is there. Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow.

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

You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.

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

 

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

****************************

NOTE:

_______________

                      The mystery I find in this man – is that he has been working at the same rock cliff as I have.

And when you pierce the stone with a pick, the sun shines through, and you  are enjoying a new dawn, golden above a calm lake – you are not in the dead end rats’

alley you had been in before.

                     I found myself in a disaster that seemed as if it would never end. My plans and my habitual life had been wrenched away from me. I was in jail,

naked in a dark cell. With no writing material, nothing to read – not even a pencil –

It was a sudden, total shift. There was no choice in the matter. I was arrested; I had been stopped in my tracks.

                 I had no choice but to learn how to look within.

 

                            What makes me laugh, what makes me delighted with Joseph Campbell is he would see this whole happening as a positive experience, as an opportunity to be cherished. An opportunity to find gold.

And now, many years after the experience, I agree with him. Because that’s the way it was, that is the kind of experience it tuned out to be.

 

 

 

 

(C) 2017 by William G. Milne/ Walker Ballantine