Saturday, January 11, 2014

Joseph Campbell - The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1)

By entering and transforming the personal psyche, the surrounding culture, the life of the family, one's relational work, and other matters of life can be transformed too.

Since time out of mind, this has been understood as being best effected by journeying through the personal, cosmological, and equally vast spiritual realities.

By being challenged via the failings and fortunes one experiences there, one is marked as belonging to a force far greater, and one is changed ever after.

The idea to go forward, to seek wholeness without pausing to reconsider, debate, or procrastinate one more time - this is found too in the 20th century poet Louise Bogan's work. She writes in the same crisp vein about commencing the momentous journey. Her poem, entitled "The Daemon," refers to angel that each person on earth is believed to be born with, the one who guides the life and destiny of that child on earth. In the piece, she questions this greater soulful force about going forward in life. The daemon answers her quintessential question with the ancient answer:

It said, "Why not?"
It said, "Once more."


Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph. D., From the preface to the 2004 commemorative edition.

No comments: