Quotes on Power Of Myth

Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.

The demon that you can swallow gives you it’s power, and the greater life’s pain, the greater life’s reply.

Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; and where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.

Find a place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.

We're not on our journey to save the world but to save ourselves. But in doing that you save the world. The influence of a vital person vitalizes.

The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.

We need myths that will identify the individual not with his local group but with the planet.

Myth is much more important and true than history. History is just journalism and you know how reliable that is.

Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth--penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words. Beyond images, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told.

For we have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heros of all time have gone before us.

Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends.

If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it's not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That's why it's your path.

Where you stumble and fall, there you will find gold.

Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again.

Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.

You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.

All the gods, all the heavens, all the hells, are within you.

Sit in a room and read--and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time.

What is a god? A god is a personification of a motivating power of a value system that functions in human life and in the universe.

I always feel uncomfortable when people speak about ordinary mortals because I've never met an ordinary man, woman or child.