Category: Aphorisms

Joseph Campbell on religious symbols

3-elohim-creating-adam-blake1

“The symbology of religion is, in many of its most essential elements, common to the whole of the human race; so that, no matter to what religion you may turn, you will––if you look long enough––find a precise and often illuminating counterpart to whatever motif of your own tradition you may wish to have explained. Consequently, the reference of these symbols must be to something that is antecedent to any historical events to which they may have become locally applied. Mythological symbols come from the psyche and speak to the psyche; they do not spring from or refer to historical events. They are not to be read as newspaper reports of things that, once upon a time, actually happened.”

Joseph Campbell, “The Interpretation of Symbolic Forms,” The Mythic Dimension, p. 198

Image: William Blake, Elohim creating Adam.

Meister Eckhart on seeing God in everything

autumn_glory_1080

“He who has God thus essentially, takes him divinely, and for him God shines forth in all things, for all things taste divinely to him, and God’s image appears to him from out of all things. God flashes forth in him always, in him there is detachment and turning away, and he bears the imprint of his beloved, present God.”

Thus says Meister Eckhart in Chapter Six of his Talks of Instruction delivered to Dominican novices early in his career when Prior of Erfurt. For Eckhart, even at this early stage, God is not to be found in special places or practices but in the divine splendour of the everyday. One does not need to retreat to the desert or even to the church to find God, one needs rather to discover the ‘inner desert’ and see the divine in whatever the present moment brings.  I present the text here in full and without commentary. Enjoy. Continue reading “Meister Eckhart on seeing God in everything” →

The Mystic Realisation

Muriwai - P. Bradley
Muriwai by Peter Bradley

Commenting on Joyce’s Ulysses, Joseph Campbell identifies what he calls ‘the mystic realisation’. It is the mystery of non-duality that runs so counter to our everyday perception but rings so true in the depths of the silent heart. Continue reading “The Mystic Realisation” →

The soul’s Copernican revolution

solar_system_large revised2 ‘Contemplation is the soul’s Copernican revolution. Copernicus did not invent a heliocentric universe. He simply discovered what had always been the case. The sun never did revolve around the earth. The revolution was the integrating glimpse of the truth of things that marked a change in how we see the world. To realise that we do not search for God the way we search for fame, fortune, and fulfilment – or for anything else that we are convinced we lack – is the “pearl of great price” (Mt 13:45-46), the realisation that the “Kingdom of God is within you” (Lk 17:21). Continue reading “The soul’s Copernican revolution” →

Do more…

Closeup of hands working on pottery wheel

Do more than belong: participate.

Do more than care: help.

Do more than believe: practice.

Do more than be fair: be kind.

Do more than forgive: forget.

Do more than dream: work.

William Arthur Ward

 

I was quite taken with this list when a friend showed it to me yesterday. The statement about believing and practicing is singularly powerful for me. Does one stand out for you?

Do thus and be good, or know this and be God?

Mosaic-of-Jesus-Christ-in-001[1]

Joseph Campbell’s lifelong study of the myths and stories of cultures all over the globe yielded some rich insights into what he believed was a universal quest for transcendence. He spoke of transcendence as the experience of the divine, or of ‘God’, within us and saw contemplation on the great heroic archetypes in our ancient stories as a powerful mode of access to the transcendent. In his seminal early work, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Campbell recognises two approaches we can take to the stories of our archetypal heroes and uses Jesus as an example. Continue reading “Do thus and be good, or know this and be God?” →

inspire-ideas-jc-hero

Joseph Campbell (1904 – 1987)

“The first step to the knowledge of the highest divine symbol of the wonder and mystery of life is in the recognition of the monstrous nature of life and its glory in that character: the realization that this is just how it is and that it cannot and will not be changed. Continue reading “On Life As It Is” →