Posted by aleX on February 25, 2004 at 17:27:13:
In Reply to: Joseph Campbell and Huston Smith posted by giveawayboy on February 17, 2004 at 22:59:34:
I have one comment, that you Bill, are one of my heroes.
As far as renewing the mind or the transformation of consciousness, I think that you have mentioned one of my all time favorites in Campbell. The hero always suffers, and is a part of myth because of the task we have given to our gods. I think it was Freud (I am definitely paraphrasing here)who said the task was threefold:
1. An excorsism of the terrors of nature
2. A reconciliation for men with the cruelty of fate, i.e. death
3. to compensate for the sufferer and those that give up (or willlingly deprive themselves of in order to be a part of what we call "civilization").
What do I think about Myth? I think it, like anything, is entirely dependent upon ones own trajectory, or approach, because most myths, or religious ideals, can be impish and seduce us to take meaning grubbily into our storehouses, meaning, ascribed from outside ourselves, telling us something we have not taken the pains to discover for ourselves. On the other hand, when ones trajectory is toward this discovery, that same person will find these grubs sitting at the top of the mountain of work, drinking tea, when they reach the top of the mountain, because they arrived there by accepting (their trajectory).
In particular, given the state of loss I am currently in, I find myself looking for a way out of it, a way to stop the suffering, to bring Jodie back to life, to escape the cruelty of fate. I want to cling to our memories, to keep her alive through my internalization of her, her ideals, her trajectory, but there is a risk that in taking this from her (without the personal work/pain of finding it for myself) I may lose a piece of me in the process. It is a delicate situation I find myself in and I don't pretend to have even to have grasped a thread of it.
The beauty of taking the path of creating our own meaning, is that there is an earthy passion one can obtain. I want the pain of Jodie's death to go away, I beg for a way to ease it, yet, as I said, I cling to it also, it is precious to me, it is almost Gollum-like, now, in my beginning.
The "transformation of consciousness" for me will be going up the side, rather than being beamed to the top. I believe that I must learn from those who have jumped to the top, where I might end up, but if I don't create the meaning, each day, as I go, then when I get there, it will be just what came out a few sentences ago "a tea party" when it could be the earthquake of passion I now long for.
Maybe that is a dicussion or just the ramblings of a sad clown, grieving the loss of his own future, either way, it is more than I have written sinced Jan 16th. You are still one of my heroes, and I love you for it.