I can absolutely guarantee that after a short orientation, you will be able to find yourself on the map illustrated above. Now, whether you build on that discovery and successfully find your way to the fulfilment of your human journey, also known as self-actualization, salvation, and the liberated life, is entirely your choice. You mightContinue reading “Our Human Adventure”
Tag Archives: Joseph Campbell
Endangered Species
It’s weird to think that humans are still on the journey to actualizing our full potential as a species. All other species, as far as we can tell, reach fulfillment in each generation, where the young develop to maturity as the adults nurture them along. For the most part, genetic codes and the drives ofContinue reading “Endangered Species”
The Mythology of You
There’s a part of you that really wants to be somebody special. Admit it. We all do – at least all of us did for a good part of our life. It’s the Hero Journey that figures so prominently in world mythology, which Joseph Campbell interpreted brilliantly in his seminal work The Hero With aContinue reading “The Mythology of You”
The Power of Myth
I keep coming back to the ideas of “mythic themes” and the “four ages of life” in this blog. They are in the background of just about everything else I think and write about. My ancestral heritage for this stream of thought includes Mircea Eliade, Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and Northrop Frye – all pioneersContinue reading “The Power of Myth”
Hero’s Journey
Let’s get “mythological” for a few minutes. You are the hero on a journey to find your true self. (Why you would have to go anywhere to find your true self is not something you pause to really think about.) On the way, you enter a bazaar where all kinds of costumes are available forContinue reading “Hero’s Journey”
Letting Go, Coming Together
In Spiritual Direction I offered a way of understanding human development following the evolutionary map of consciousness across its generative, individuative, and unitive principles. I suggested that these three principles are what inform the narrative structure of Joseph Campbell’s “monomyth” throughout the world’s mythologies, using the New Testament Hero Myth of Jesus in Luke-Acts asContinue reading “Letting Go, Coming Together”
Becoming Aware
To call something an “illusion” commonly assumes that it was somehow designed to deceive or mislead us into believing what isn’t true. To believe an illusion is to live in delusion, and no one wants that. What we want is the pure and simple meaning of things, without any spin or labels or partisan agendas.Continue reading “Becoming Aware”
Your Hero Path
The design intention of our sacred stories goes far beyond explaining the universe and our place in it. Even if for so long this intention was not self-conscious, in the sense that our first storytellers did not sit down with a plan to map reality and chart the human journey through life, the product ofContinue reading “Your Hero Path”
Human Progress
In The Power of Myth Joseph Campbell says that “Heaven and hell are within us, and all the gods are within us.” He read the world’s mythologies as “magnified dreams” (ibid) projecting through metaphor and fiction the inner potentialities and evolutionary adventure of the human spirit. Even if the Hero of this journey typically returnsContinue reading “Human Progress”
The Three Stages of Consciousness
In this post I want to play with a big backgrounding idea that’s been shaping my thoughts on human nature and creative change for some time now. It’s about consciousness and how our human evolution and individual development can be understood as progressing through three distinct stages. I’m using this term in both its temporalContinue reading “The Three Stages of Consciousness”
Tracts of Revolution 