Lecture I.2.2 - The Inward Journey

This forum is for focused discussions on The Collected Lectures of Joseph Campbell. Each lecture has its own dedicated conversation.

Moderators: Clemsy, Martin_Weyers, Cindy B.

CarmelaBear
Associate
Posts: 4087
Joined: Wed Nov 27, 2002 3:51 pm
Location: The Land of Enchantment

Post by CarmelaBear »

lunaronin wrote:This in a way reminds me of how I passed through my own darkness. I guess in a way--in hindsight--I had my own hero's journey, although it certainly didn't seem so at the time.

....I never once considered it a personal 'hero's journey,' but reading the lecture and your comments, everyone, maybe it was. The experience most definitely transformed me from what I was. I don't think it made me shift into an adult mode of thinking. I attribute that to another book I recently read dedicated to just that. However, that experience certainly put me on the right track and prepared me for the different shift in consciousness. Looking back, the experience changed me for the better, and now I have more strength for other conflicts. 'Adversity prepares you for adversity.'
Welcome the conversations, lunaronin. Finding out about your personal experience of a hero's journey enriches our lives. The gift is appreciated as a unique example of how we overcome our difficulties by picking up the clues inherent in our rich culture of myth and symbol. The inner journey is the situs of the great battles to be waged and the source of all we know as experience, action in time and space, identity as actors.

What I found particularly inspirational was that your knight-self did not need to destroy the demon within. In my view, it is the greatest of victories.

Thank you for your account of your time in the forest.

~
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

lunaronin
Associate
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Aug 24, 2010 1:39 am
Location: the River Valley of the Great Desert at sunset

Post by lunaronin »

I'm glad you enjoyed that story, carmela. Like I said before, that was sort of my 'hero's journey,' even though it seemed quite far from that at the time. However, it was my journey through the darkness that made me the person I am today. That is a journey most people in today's world simply do not take and do not want to take. To most modern people, the less they look into themselves, the better. However, unlike what most popular religions teach, there is no war going on between light and dark, good and evil. Like the yin and yang of the Taoist philosophy, they are but two co-equal and co-dependent halves of the same whole. In the special features of the Silent Hill movie--particularly the making-of feature--the director of the movie, Christophe Gans, said that in Eastern philosophy/religion, a special phenomenon occurs that is in total opposition to what is believed in the West. That phenomenon is the understanding that each and every one of us has within us both light and dark. In essence, we are our own gods and our own demons. There is no distinction. My own experience can confirm that. Furthermore, somewhere in the first Kingdom Hearts game is the great line paraphrased as 'The closer you get to the light, the deeper the shadows grow.' Think about that for a moment if you will.

The common hero's journey should not be about dispelling darkness because that will inevitably prove life-consuming (as in you will spend your whole life in the 'battle' if you are not wholly dedicated to it). It should be about finding a balance between the two. That--for me, at least--was the key to finding my way through my own darkness.

However, every person is unique and must find their own answers to their own questions. Like Galahad, the best way to fulfill our journeys is to pass through the dark forest where there are no paths already laid out for us. We much each find our own way as best we can. Otherwise, how can we truly say that we even journeyed at all?

P.S. Thanks for the welcome.

CarmelaBear
Associate
Posts: 4087
Joined: Wed Nov 27, 2002 3:51 pm
Location: The Land of Enchantment

Post by CarmelaBear »

Oh, so true. It is as you say, and as we learn from the master of myth, the great Professor Campbell.

The demon within me is a frightened one. If only briefly, she imagines the worst and freaks out. Once, my demon was confronted with race and class differences that were charged with emotion.

After I completed Harvard Law School, no firm or government organization would have anything to do with me. Even admirers feared me. I am a piece of work.

I went home to New Mexico, where my father was recovering from major heart surgery and my mother died a few days before I took the bar examination for admission to the state bar. I failed the exam by a point or two on account of grief and my father reacted to this news with rage. He called me "stupid" (an oft-repeated refrain) and sent me packing. I had no cash or close friends in New Mexico, and I used my credit cards to fly back to Boston where I took the first job that came along as a paralegal in a law office.

The interpersonal dynamics in the law office were negatively affected by my presence. I was too overwhelmed with grief and defenses to relate effectively in what turned out to be a rather complex social situation. I was fired.

Since I was a member of the Harvard Club of Boston, I went round to the back door to apply for a menial job. I was hired as a downstairs maid. After my shift I would go upstairs as a member and read the free newspapers in the lobby. It was less than a week before someone noticed that the member of the upstairs club was also a downstairs maid.

I was instantly promoted to a cushy upstairs job as the linen clerk, a job coveted by one of the other maids who had been a loyal and hardworking employee for many years. When she learned I had the job she wanted, she (an African-American from a poor neighborhood) became understandably upset. I overheard her venting in harsh tones and overheard one of the upstairs managers say "They (meaning the other maids) have it in for her (me)". In the meantime, I was informed by management that the law firm representing Harvard University was mulling over the possibility of hiring me as a clerk.

I misunderstood what I was hearing. My shadow side became paranoid for a period of about 12 hours. It was long enough for me to write a poem, to read a newspaper, and to make associations in my mind that would prove both insightful and disasterous. I wrote a poem that expressed a demon's rage at archetypal people and institutions in the local news. The political and social context in Boston was so charged that I ended up achieving two rather bizarre things.

I brought an Ivy League campus "movement" over phony racial issues to a sudden halt, and I got myself arrested for writing and communicating a politically incorrect poem. Mind you, I had a career at UNM for being a super-liberal civil rights advocate who sacrificed many important things to promote and defend the rights of Blacks and Native Americans and every other member of minority groups. My angry poem was not the work of a die-hard liberal. It was the side of me that recognized the limits of the causes I had once espoused with viral enthusiasm.

I was eventually convicted of a few misdemeanors and sentenced to two years of unsupervised probation.

My father found my predicament amusing and welcomed me back home, sending me a plane ticket and paying for the return ticket for my sentencing hearing. I took the bar exam again and the Supreme Court of New Mexico ruled that the arrest and conviction in Massachusetts was discriminatory and a violation of my Constitutional rights. I've never asked to have my criminal record expunged, and I hope it remains on the record as an opportunity to learn. My demon is really demonic and terribly misunderstood. My saintly side is rather obnoxious sometimes and nowhere near as charming as the demon. They are foils, one for the other.

The shadow me used a set of words within a socio-political context that was not in a mood to be challenged by an outsider. The enlightened me was absolutely confident of the non-lethal and non-hateful nature of my emotional poetic and prose expressions, which on their face, looked unspeakably wicked and mean.

My demon reared her ugly head again a number of years ago, alienating a long-time friend and law school professor, who struggles with his own shadows and light.

The balance between the mischievous and aggravating demon and the enlightened god has never been precarious. My demon shadow has always been broadly overpowered by the side of me that is a fanatically saintly person. Alas, I thoroughly internalized lessons of goodness, and it is not possible for life to reverse the process. I live inside an ethical bubble, even when my demon shadow is running amok. My demon and saint can be dreadfully scary and irritating to the max, and still come out as fine and great as the human spirit can muster on a bad day.

In the last few years, despite the exhaustion that comes from years of step-and-fetch-it menial labor on behalf of my patient, I live in bliss. I love both the awful stuff and the wonderful stuff that is life. It all makes sense to me.

I credit Campbell for removing the last of the clouds that hung over my head after the deaths of a number of people who were dear to my heart and soul.

Both the easy freedom and joy as well as the hard commitment and sense of duty, account for much of my current situation. I am in transition away from caregiving and toward something else.....not sure what yet. I'll probably be president, but only if the people in my country can bring themselves to be Americans in the truest sense of the word.

Again, thank you for your accounts. Thank you for reading my rambling missives.

~
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

lunaronin
Associate
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Aug 24, 2010 1:39 am
Location: the River Valley of the Great Desert at sunset

Post by lunaronin »

Thank you for your account, as well.

The demon of fear is one that is to be feared indeed. I know a little of what you might have went through in a couple of those cases. Fear caused me to lose a dear friend, as well--one that I had hoped to one day marry. The good thing is, in learning the ins and outs of fear, one learns to not be fearful. After losing my friend to fear, I decided to never again be conquered by fear.

I am afraid of snakes, but I believe I am ready now to end that fear. There was an event for kids at the library near where I work. At it the event organisers were supposed to have reptiles and amphibians, including snakes. I really wanted to go so I could test my new-found courage, but unfortunately, I had to work at that time and couldn't make it.

Still, bravo for making it this far in your journey. Bruce Lee once said that maturation is not a process that ends with you suddenly being mature. It is a lifelong process full of maturations. So it is with the journey of life. It's never quite over until it's over, but many experiences each leave you with a little lesson to help you on your way. At least that's how I see it. We don't always get the messages, but they're there.

Good luck to both and all of us in whatever future turns life may bring. The people who first posted in this topic say that life is full of hero journeys. I'd have to agree. I've undergone many already--mostly in my head pondering possible scenarios. But it is true. Life is full of heroic journeys, and all the heroes in all the myths are really just actors standing in for ourselves. We are the heroes of our own lives and our own stories. Let's hope we can each truly make our lives heroic in our own little ways. I know I'll try.

CarmelaBear
Associate
Posts: 4087
Joined: Wed Nov 27, 2002 3:51 pm
Location: The Land of Enchantment

Post by CarmelaBear »

There are two three views of the hero journey that interest me in particular.

The first of the three is the individual journey. There are stories of tiny newborns, who for lack of human touch, die within days. There are small children, who are born with terminal illnesses, live a life of extreme physical and emotional suffering and die as children. You can go through the normal life cycle to those with the greatest and most fulfilling longevity, and the individual life is peppered with the consequences of events outside awareness and control, required by circumstances to find a way along a path that is always unique.

The second view is that of the planet, where we are recent and remarkably vulnerable inhabitants of a little rock in a vast universe that is only one of an even more enormous reality that is so mysterious that there can be no hope of our ever being capable of observing it in all its glory and power. The planet is, at present, a hospitable haven for organic matter, including the complex organisms that are systematically unravelling the fabric of the ecosystem that sustains organic life. This is the "forest" of our quest to achieve heroic boons to bring back to those who remain behind to keep the fires burning.

The third view is that of the dominant species on this rock of a planet in a huge, expanding universe. This species has developed what is called a "global economy" and obviously has a worldwide network of communications and transportation supported by the global economy. However, there is something missing. There is no such thing as "global" or worldwide civil law. There is law between individual nation-states ranging from the developed ones with the power to destroy the species through nuclear warfare to tiny principalities and Indian nations. There is law between nations that attempts to regulate the global economy, the exchange of information and goods and services. And yet, there is no civil law that governs the world.

Humanity lives by rules, of course. We have our bodies in common, though some bodies can be deliberately destroyed through lawful and institutionalized means or through what we call "crime" or "terror" or "act of war". Somehow, the vast majority of our numbers manage to live and survive and many actually thrive, always by accessing resources internal or external to our individual body-minds. We adapt to whatever conditions we face. As a species, We tend to reproduce with little regard for the welfare of humanity as a whole, which is generally suffering from the natural consequences of a population explosion. Our personal and local and social issues are far more compelling than any abstract and impersonal concern for the whole of our species.

Humanity does engage in mass killing, but we are so good at reproduction that the population curve simply rises and rises as demand for resources increases and increases.

Humanity is fat with people. Humanity is enjoying the ride to the morgue. What an adventure! What a mindless, lawless and wild west time we are having as heroes with a thousand ways to ignore the obvious.

~
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

lunaronin
Associate
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Aug 24, 2010 1:39 am
Location: the River Valley of the Great Desert at sunset

Post by lunaronin »

I recently read Joseph Campbell's book The Inner Reaches of Outer Space. In it, he said that we needed a new mythology to unite all the peoples of the world since all the peoples of the world are coming more and more into a global community. The new mythology would need to incorporate the modern scientific discoveries and cosmologies--not heaven, earth, and hell but this tiny rock revolving around an average star on the edge of a common galaxy out of billions of other galaxies in an endless universal sea which sprang from a big bang billions of years ago. What you wrote last time reminded me of this.

Hinduism already mentions the universe and ages of the universe--the cosmos, other worlds with life of their own. I was wondering why he did not suggest this as the new world mythology, especially since he loved Hinduism so much and it already seemed to have everything the new mythology would have. An idea came to me from what I heard from the Mythos DVDs. In it, the host Susan Sarandon said that one is born into Hinduism while one professes Buddhism. That's not to advocate Buddhism but to instead say that one cannot just enter into the Hindu religion lightly. One has to be born into it--probably because of the caste system primarily. So then, that cannot be the new world mythology that the modern era of mankind needs.

Mr. Campbell said all the old gods are dead and the new ones have yet to be born. It all kinda makes you wonder what kind of mythology we need and when it'll arise. I hope it'll be soon, although I don't know what could spark it besides science, which isn't always right but is getting closer all the time. We desperately need a mythology to unite us in the face of all the old myths that seem to be interested in nothing but separation. And yet it also needs to be nature-loving in order to help us remember how utterly vital the natural world is to us and to help us learn to treat it with deeper respect.

I don't know. Maybe it'll come to pass.

CarmelaBear
Associate
Posts: 4087
Joined: Wed Nov 27, 2002 3:51 pm
Location: The Land of Enchantment

Post by CarmelaBear »

Our mythologies may be organized and ritualized and maintained by institutions, but they begin with our common physical experience in the world. It begins with the body, the mind and the spiritual transcendence of the individual.

Our concern is first to survive.

To that end, we saw the source of our survival in nature. The first religions evidenced by archeological discoveries indicate that the First Source of power to keep body and mind and soul alive and inspired was Nature. There are burial sites going back many thousands of years that appear to venerate the animals we killed for food and shelter and tools. Humans hunted and gathered from the bounty of the earth and remembered the teachings of their parents and storytellers.

Later, the spirit of the earth itself was regarded as a whole. Some animals became domesticated stock and no longer required us to hunt. Plants could be cultivated and gardens could produce food. Families became tribes and settled in communities. The metaphor that seemed to personify the earth as the source of survival of body-mind-spirit was the mother archetype. The womb gives birth to human life. The earth is the source of new life and sustenance. The earth is the ground of being, the center of all that we know and understand. The mother teaches us the lessons of past, present, future.

Humanity's god was the Earth Mother for many thousands of years until we discovered that our growing of plants was directly tied to the weather and the weather followed seasons and cycles that could be predicted. The rivers and oceans could be the source of sustenance for thousands who could specialize into sets of artisans and craftspersons and traders. The heavens were carefully and systematically studied in great detail. Predictions guided timing of planting and harvesting great stores of food. The seas provided large catches of seafood and humans could take to boats and ships and trained animals to range far afield.

The spirit of the cosmos found the perfect metaphor in the father, distant and powerful and steady, predictable, certain. The patriarchal father archetype became the god of the Torah, the Bible, the Quran. The father-god and the father-teacher (the Buddha) was the provider and the focus of a humanity intent on increasing populations, controlling domains, conquering nature, and being the ultimate form of transcendence.

The animal spirit gave way to the earth mother, who submitted to the authority of the cosmic father until the Son of God became the sacrifice that saved humanity from the Shadow, from evil, from every unpleasant experience one could imagine......but only if we belong to the faithful and accept the son as our primary lord and saviour.

A universal concern about the earth and the cosmos gave way as our survival was not simply located in communities but was completely dominated by complex institutions and overwhelming military prowess. Survival became as much a mental and spiritual exercise centered on the gods as it was a To-Do List of tasks to be completed in order to stay safe and prosperous and establish families. Societies were deeply stratified. Individuals were born into a fate that had to be overcome in order to stay alive.

Throughout the world, agriculture and commerce gave way to empires led by the sons of the mighty, the Alexanders and the royal progeny with battle skills and a capacity to face death on behalf of something greater than themselves, something that brought survival, honor, glory, and unity with the Supreme Father. The sacrificial lamb was born. The meek rebel of humble circumstances traced his royal bloodline to the House of David,

A dominant religious sensibility overthrew the power of the cosmic father and cast our collective gaze on the carrot for which humanity works so hard. We work for Nirvana, for Heaven, for a kind of transcendence that lifts us out of our troubles and gives us a reason to feel free of our worst physical and experiential enemies.

So, there were the animals of power and speed and spirit.
Then, there was the earth mother, source of life itself.
Next, the cosmic father, above and beyond all.
Later, the only son who sacrificed his life for the salvation of those who believe in his power to bring us to the throne of the father.

The animal and the mother represented matter, physicality, nature. They were conquered and overcome.

The new religious sense recognizes another archetypal individual. The daughter. She is not sacrificed. She is not the source-womb. She, like her brother, has no children. She does not suffer the sacrifice she makes. She learns from it. She does not bring us to a throne of a Mother Goddess or Father God. She points not to the spirit, not to the earth, not to the cosmos, not to the afterlife......no, she points to relationship.

It doesn't matter whether you are atheist or deist or agnostic or theistic. You must survive in relation to the experience you have of the world within and about you. In that relationship, you will find the path that will provide you with sustenance and strength and power and the resources you need for body, mind and soul.

The archetype is the childless woman who thrives on the challenges of life. She does not obey the father. She is not her mother's servant. She asks nothing of her brother. She looks for clues in the world she experiences within herself and in the environment. She knows what she feels and she believes in her ability to both overcome future obstacles and create something of real value for both herself and everyone else.

The daughter is happy. Her power is quiet and benevolent. She knows how to relate to others without having to express power over anyone. She is not afraid to be known, warts and all. She has dignity and lacks the neediness of the god who must be worshipped and glorified and always be the center of attention. In her world, human beings are her equals. Each has as much inherent access to the divine spirit as she has. The daughter can distinguish between violent emotion and violent action. She can say words like "hate" without hurting anyone. She can feel rage without recourse to institutions that kill and kill and kill. She is whole.

The new metaphor, the new archetype is part of the information age, where women can choose to be sexual without becoming slaves to motherhood, where women can perform work that offers more value than the money she receives in return for her best efforts, where women receive attention without requiring a person to stop and build a cathedral or a temple to remember how to pray and meditate to an insecure and forgetful god. She is a symbol of the power of the mind in relation to consciousness. She represents the collective unconscious that may yet rescue the planet and lead us to the stars. She represents the way we find our own way. We don't need saving. We don't need to be protected by the war god. We don't need to serve the earth or worship nature.

The daughter-archetype is free to be someone we trust with our whole spiritual and physical self. She is present as a symbol of our own life only when we need her and she disappears with her mother, father and brother when we understand why they were all needed in the first place.

~
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

Locked