The dark night of the soul comes just before revelation.
I think of compassion as the fundamental religious experience and, unless that is there, you have nothing.
Follow your bliss. The heroic life is living the individual adventure. There is no security in following the call to adventure. Nothing is exciting if you know what the outcome is going to be.
The goal of life is rapture. Art is the way we experience it.
Read myths. They teach you that you can turn inward, and you begin to get the message of the symbols. Read other people's myths, not those of your own religion, because you tend to interpret your own religion in terms of facts -- but if you read the other ones, you begin to get the message.
Writer’s block results from too much head. Cut off your head. Pegasus, poetry, was born of Medusa when her head was cut off. You have to be reckless when writing. Be as crazy as your conscience allows.
Myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human manifestation.
If you have the guts to follow the risk...if one follows what I call one's "bliss" - the thing that really gets you deep in the gut and that you feel is your life - doors will open up...if you follow your bliss, you'll have your bliss, whether you have money or not.
We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come. -
The best things cannot be told because they transcend thought. The second best are misunderstood because they are the thoughts that are supposed to refer to that which cannot be thought about. The third best are what we talk about.
The world is full of people who have stopped listening to themselves.
Our life evokes our character. You find out more about yourself as you go on. That's why it's good to put yourself in situations that will evoke your higher nature rather than your lower.
I think of mythology as the homeland of the muses, the inspirers of art, the inspirers of poetry. To see life as a poem and yourself participating in a poem is what the myth does for you.
There is no greater privilege in life than being yourself.
Respect your curses, for they are the instruments of your destiny.
There is an Indian fable of three beings who drank from a river: one was a god, and he drank ambrosia; one was a man, and he drank water; and one was a demon, and he drank filth. What you get is a function of your own consciousness.
Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning.
The call to adventure is the point in a person’s life when they are first given notice that everything is going to change, whether they know it or not.
Everything starts with a story.
Regrets are illuminations come too late.
There is perhaps nothing worse than reaching the top of the ladder and discovering that you’re on the wrong wall.
Sometimes the serpent is represented as a circle eating its own tail. That’s an image of life. Life sheds one generation after another, to be born again. The serpent represents immortal energy and consciousness engaged in the field of time, constantly throwing off death and being born again. There is something tremendously terrifying about life when you look at it that way. And so the serpent carries in itself the sense of both the fascination and the terror of life.
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.
Successful marriage is leading innovative lives together, being open, non-programmed. It’s a free fall: how you handle each new thing as it comes along. As a drop of oil on the sea, you must float, using intellect and compassion to ride the waves.
I don’t think there is any such thing as an ordinary mortal. Everybody has his own possibility of rapture in the experience of life. All he has to do is recognize it and then cultivate it and get going with it. I always feel uncomfortable when people speak about ordinary mortals because I’ve never met an ordinary man, woman, or child.
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