Our Lost Atlantis
Our Lost Atlantis
"Come without a map. Explore and draw your own map." --Stephen King
One of the most important things I've learned in life is the philosophy
of interconnectedness--everything is connected to everything else. Our
lives are complex systems that overlap and affect each other in strange
ways. Isolating any one of them for explanation or understanding
can only backfire because its sub-systems will respond in unanticipated
ways. This isn't to say that we aren't responsible for our own choices
and the consequences of those choices, but we have to truly step back
and see the forest for the trees.
Understanding interconnectedness allows us to fully embrace our questions of self, purpose, and meaning. Cultural anthropologist, Joseph Campbell, reminded us that bliss is a deep sense of knowing where the body and soul want to go---to follow it---and not let anyone throw you off. "Doors will open," he said, "where you never thought there would be doors and where there wouldn't be doors for anyone else."
In contemplating our questions of self which form the backbone of our creative journeys as heroes, Richard Taylor offered, "Sometimes the simplest and most obvious distinctions give rise to the most profound intellectual difficulties, and things most commonplace in our daily experience drive home to us the depth of our ignorance." In other words, we justify the phenomenon of many things distant or external to us, yet a phenomenon inside---such as the psyche and human spirit---can present a daunting mystery.
Who are you? The answer lies with you (and only you) as you step out into the rain and open your umbrella for others to take shelter. It requires you to embrace a responsibility to seek out answers--to suffering and injustice---and to do so within a complex arena of morals, values, laws, and socio-cultural politics. You will be uncomfortable because you must look inward, be vulnerable, and question your own beliefs in answering a seemingly basic question. This kind of self-awareness will bring with it a certain loneliness and anxiety over a lost sense of direction, but you will also experience a certain freedom in letting go and the answer will soon follow.
In his most famous book, Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell left us with a strong message that affirms our responsibility as modern heroes. Written in 1949 as a seminal work of comparative mythology, it remains a transcendent and relative comment on our need to be artists for salvation:
"Inventions and the scientific method of research have so transformed human life that the long inherited, timeless universe of symbols has collapsed. It is not only that there is no hiding place for the gods from the searching telescope and microscope but there is no such society as the gods once supported. Ideals of the social unit are not those of the hier-atic pantomime, making visible on earth the forms of heaven, but of the secular state, in hard and unremitting competition for material supremacy and resources. And within the progressive societies themselves, every last vestige of the ancient human heritage of ritual, morality, and art is in full decay.
The modern hero, the modern individual who dares to heed the call and seek the mansion of that presence with whom it is our whole destiny to be atoned, cannot---indeed must not---wait for his community to cast off its slough of pride, fear, and rationalized avarice and sanctified misunderstanding."
Understanding interconnectedness allows us to fully embrace our questions of self, purpose, and meaning. Cultural anthropologist, Joseph Campbell, reminded us that bliss is a deep sense of knowing where the body and soul want to go---to follow it---and not let anyone throw you off. "Doors will open," he said, "where you never thought there would be doors and where there wouldn't be doors for anyone else."
In contemplating our questions of self which form the backbone of our creative journeys as heroes, Richard Taylor offered, "Sometimes the simplest and most obvious distinctions give rise to the most profound intellectual difficulties, and things most commonplace in our daily experience drive home to us the depth of our ignorance." In other words, we justify the phenomenon of many things distant or external to us, yet a phenomenon inside---such as the psyche and human spirit---can present a daunting mystery.
Who are you? The answer lies with you (and only you) as you step out into the rain and open your umbrella for others to take shelter. It requires you to embrace a responsibility to seek out answers--to suffering and injustice---and to do so within a complex arena of morals, values, laws, and socio-cultural politics. You will be uncomfortable because you must look inward, be vulnerable, and question your own beliefs in answering a seemingly basic question. This kind of self-awareness will bring with it a certain loneliness and anxiety over a lost sense of direction, but you will also experience a certain freedom in letting go and the answer will soon follow.
In his most famous book, Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell left us with a strong message that affirms our responsibility as modern heroes. Written in 1949 as a seminal work of comparative mythology, it remains a transcendent and relative comment on our need to be artists for salvation:
"Inventions and the scientific method of research have so transformed human life that the long inherited, timeless universe of symbols has collapsed. It is not only that there is no hiding place for the gods from the searching telescope and microscope but there is no such society as the gods once supported. Ideals of the social unit are not those of the hier-atic pantomime, making visible on earth the forms of heaven, but of the secular state, in hard and unremitting competition for material supremacy and resources. And within the progressive societies themselves, every last vestige of the ancient human heritage of ritual, morality, and art is in full decay.
The modern hero, the modern individual who dares to heed the call and seek the mansion of that presence with whom it is our whole destiny to be atoned, cannot---indeed must not---wait for his community to cast off its slough of pride, fear, and rationalized avarice and sanctified misunderstanding."
