When you follow your calling, when you listen to what your soul is telling you you are here for, when you follow that “Theseus” thin thread out of the Labyrinth to the T, then the whole universe opens up and comes to your aide, and a magical track opens up that automatically takes you where you need to be, and the things you need to fulfill your destiny come to you automatically. Life becomes effortless simply by making a decision to say ‘yes’ to your calling which is more often than not, not respected by the outside world, and that’s one of the first hurdles.
Tag: Joseph Campbell
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The Symbolic Meaning of the Belly of the Whale
Giving yourself over to something completely, letting yourself be ‘swallowed’ by it, as it were, (symbolically, psychologically) with the faith that you are not going to be annihilated (except maybe your ego and attachment to self-image) but rather transformed, ‘reborn’ into your true hero, adventurous self: That’s the sense of the ‘belly of the whale’ motif in mythology.
Stephen Pickering
For Country Music artists, such as Sierra Ferrell above, one form of the initiatory “belly of the whale” experience is busking in the streets of Nashville. Ordeals like this do two things: force you to become better 2) force you to ask yourself whether you love doing this (the “inside out” philosophy) internally, no matter what the outside circumstance. It acts as a test or trial, which is another important motif in mythology. The Beatles are metaphorical for the “belly of the whale” motif in mythology. I never realized it myself until I read “Anthology” and realized that they had spent almost 2.5 years in Hamburg playing 8 hours a day, 7 days a week. Now this isn’t literally true. They did have breaks. They definitely went home many times for breaks, but the most important aspect is that it is psychologically true. Apparently the clubs were physically below the street level, like walking down into a subway, and I do remember a compadre of theirs saying, “We’d go down there and wouldn’t come up for air for a week.” Now this obviously is not literally true. But one understands the psychological, metaphorical implication: giving yourself over to something completely. That’s the idea of the belly of the whale motif in mythology. Even the the locals of the Cavern Club in Liverpool seemed to be stunned by the transformation of the post Hamburg Beatles. That’s the central idea of the “Belly of the Whale” motif. It’s exactly analogous to the idea of the male initiatory experience: You go in one person and come out the other side with a completely transformed consciousness. All mythology, as Joseph Campbell said, is about the transformation of consciousness. Transformation of Consciousness is the goal of Mythology as well as Initiatory Experiences. They can happen involuntarily (You’re born into a certain group) or voluntarily (You have an intent to become someone new.) Regardless, the method is the same: extended periods of “submersion” in which there is “no way out.” Only under those circumstances does a crucial part of the brain “switch” and a true transformation take place.
Complete immersion is the key for tripping some kind of metaphorical “wire” in the brain whose effect is transformation of consciousness. You see this in initiatory experiences all through history all over the world. This is at least one of the metaphorical meanings of the “Belly of the Whale” motif in mythology. You’re in it all the way. You’re committed. You’ve made a decision. This is when things start to happen, and your life becomes like an adventure. This is one way of applying the metaphorical messages of myth to your real life.”
Stephen PickeringI’d say there are two main aspects to the Belly of the Whale symbolism and they are psychologically connected although in the world express themselves in two different ways: 1) As noted above with the Beatles is the aspect of a career. The way to get to the top is complete emersion, giving yourself over to it completely, allowing yourself to be “swallowed up.” This is the appropriate attitude for a young person, say 20-30, deciding on their career. They have to know the irony that this immersion, once a decision has been made, will free them, not confine them, as long as it’s their true calling, not someone else’s.
2) Is more metaphysical in the sense primarily of acceptance. The trash compactor scene from Star Wars comes to mind. If you just take the literal, mechanical view of nature, then its all about a group of adventurers who are most certainly going to die in a horrible way. At best their chances are 50/50. But what in the deepest sense does this scene really mean? Complete and utter acceptance of the here and now, even when it is life’s most horrendous aspects, yet still trying from the ultimate depths of your soul to do what you can, even if from the outside it might seem laughable (Them trying to put up metal pole braces against an insurmountable power). But when it’s your adventure, the one you were put into this universe to go on, to go toward, to achieve, magical aide arrives. Put down Instagram and Twitter for a few days and ask the depths of your soul what it is here for.
On a lighter level, I can’t tell you how many times when I’ve lost something, that it suddenly appears the moment I truly accept that its gone. It really does feel like magic. I really wish I had documented all the times. My only problem with acceptance is that I can’t seem to willfully bring it on. Many times even when I believe I’ve accepted something it’ll still be “gnawing” or nagging me in the back of my mind. Intent does help, but seems some other thing in my mind has to happen in order for true acceptance to really be the state I’m in.
Update 6/13/20: I realized as I was watching a lot of music production videos on Youtube, and as their algorithm keeps bringing you more, I realized that the amount of content I could watch on this subject is nearly endless. And then I realized, that’s it! You keep at something non-stop until you break through to another level. The irony is its your laser-like focus on one subject that opens up the entire world to you.
Now, I would say there is at least one caveat: whatever that subject is, I think it needs to be your true soul’s calling. In other words, if your only reason for doing it is to get rich and famous, it still might work, but there’s something lost in translation. And the whole process will not be fun. If it is your true soul’s calling, then it will be feeding you the whole way in terms of inspiration, joy, and fulfillment, even in this so-called “Belly of the Whale” period in which you are not getting outside attention or rewards. I’d say that’s the test for your true calling: If you feel emotional reward from the act itself, then that’s it. Stephen King and writing is the first thing that comes to mind when I think of this analogy. Especially if you want to be a writer, go watch some of his speeches and interviews on Youtube. He mentions this aspect as being primary.
Update 6/13/21 —— Here’s a thought I had this evening about the matter: “The more you get into something (into the “belly” so to speak), the more your world expands.”
One reason for this is because there is a huge market for uniqueness. People don’t tune into the Olympics for average performances, nor do they to movies, books, music, and even business itself. They are looking for the “hero” in these things for a lot of different reasons, but among them it inspires them to awaken their own dormant desire to break out themselves. And everyone has the capability to do it.
It’s paradoxical, like the line from the Peter Gabriel song, “You gotta get in to get out.” It may not seem like it if you are swimming in circles and or places of what I’d call “striving for mediocrity” or “striving to fit into the local group” because those folks there are programmed in a certain way. And if you are a young person thinking in terms of a career by “getting into” you’ve got to move to a place where they produce uniqueness (LA, NY, Nashville, London) instead of merely consume it (most other cities you can think of.)
Update 8/15/21 — It’s just occurred to me why this metaphor, if it can be interpreted and practically applied to one’s particular situation, works in real life: Our brains are built for resistance first and foremost especially to foreign or unknown stimuli. That old saying “Shoot first and ask questions later” comes to mind.
Last night after a rain storm I was walking down the steps of my deck and, scaring me, out ran an opossum who had been sheltering under there, streaking into the forest. He wasn’t asking questions first. That instinct was hard wired into him, just as my startled emotion and tense reaction to the occurrence was. This is just the way of nature. This behavior was “selected for” simply by fact that the creatures who inherited it tended to live as opposed to the ones who were wired to be inquisitive and congenial right out of the gate.
I remember Shad Helmstetter said about “Self-Talk, “Repetition is a powerful argument” when he was explaining how the practice would eventually effect and change your emotions and behavior. I also remember reading Ogilvy on Advertising when I was running a small store in the nineties, and he wrote something to the effect of “The first time you see an ad it angers you. The tenth time you see it you’re pulling your check book out to buy it.”
This may be a negative way of putting it, but the brain is also hard wired for submission in the face of what it perceives as an insurmountable power, (again, this behavior was selected for at some point along the line) and repetition is perceived as an insurmountable power that one either submits to or is crushed by.
I think of those folks who learn a new language by living in the origin country for instance or even how we learn our first language. There’s no thinking or ‘work’ involved (at least as far as I can remember) and yet there it is, seemingly by magic one day you are effortlessly doing a very complicated and hard thing, fluently speaking a language.
That’s because, metaphorical of the “Belly of the Whale” motif, you were inundated by it with no relief, with “no way out” so to speak, and so the adaptation instincts were triggered which turned off the resistance and the shields came down. Biologically speaking (I know it takes the romance out of it!) positive hormones were released rewarding the new behavior of acceptance and assimilation.“The Quality of God is that he doesn’t know what he is doing. He’s just sheer will.”
Joseph Campbell/Meister EckhartHere’s another way of looking at it. At first blush you might think, “God doesn’t know what he’s doing? WTF? That’s an insult! That’s blasphemous! But here, “God” is symbolic of of your soul’s or your consciousness’s true adventure. What it’s really saying is that “God” has submersed himself (“Belly of the Whale” / Symbolic meaning of “Baptism”) completely into his will, into what he wants to do, into what he wants to achieve. His will becomes his whole consciousness. He is completely submerged 100%, 24 x 7 into what he wants to do, not because it will gain him money, prestige, power, or fame, but because it is what he wants to do in and of itself. And the bouquet of that is the actual consciousness of “Knowing what you are doing.” There is no consciousness or “knowingness” without “being” first. As in the famous Sanskrit “Sat, Chith, Ananda” “Being, Consciousness, Bliss.”
People are conflicted. The soul is not conflicted. But peoples’ personalities are because the outside world is saying one thing and their inside world is saying another. The irony is when you follow your soul, it may not be immediate, there probably will be a lot of resistance in the form or trials and maybe even a long form of subjective suffering (being in the belly of a whale) but that is only an “initiatory experience” to see whether your soul is worthy (It may not be. You may need to go through a few more incarnations.)
But if it is, you can simultaneously absorb the infinite sorrow of the world and its infinite bliss. You become an arrow that pierces the heart simultaneously with sorrow and bliss, simultaneously with death and ‘Vita Nuova.’
10/06/24 Update:
When I re-read this post today, a couple things occurred to me. The first:
1) This is why persistence works!
The body physically adapts to outside stressors, building muscle as you workout, for instance, or even at the cellular level in response to some drug, especially chronic usage, one can actually see through a microscope, the number of receptors on the cell’s surface change (tolerance in medical terms), to adapt and keep the cell regulated. Of course this is all automatic, involuntary. And the same goes for the brain and or “the mind.”2) The metaphor of “magical aid” that comes up time and time again in Myth and Fairy Tale is metaphorical of the body’s (and by extension, nature, “the universe” if you will) physical adaptation, that happens automatically, that is like your “other self,” coming to your aide giving you powers you never knew existed until they are there.
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The Essential Function of Mythology and Religion
It’s to put the psyche in accord with nature. Once a hero begins an adventure he quickly learns he has to let go of his ego thinking and let the quest itself be his guide. In some adventures the hero is humbled (Odysseus, Parsifal, Job, Indra). In others he is completely eaten up or otherwise destroyed (Jonah, Jason). In all of these cases some kind of submission is required to an unintelligible, invisible force. That submission has to be utter (Actual death in the Christ story, and a complete willingness to die in the Buddha—at which moment his fulfillment is activated, and he achieves Nirvana). Yet all the while he is still striving for his goal. Though chaos may blow him all over the place for reasons that don’t seem fair, he somehow maintains his inner acceptance even in the face of the ultimate. And continues to try to move forward. The schizophrenic is the person who does the opposite: He won’t let fate wash over him, won’t let his consciousness transform, and keeps insisting on his ego’s program of control. He can’t accept the cards he is dealt and when the world around him won’t conform to his ego’s desire (which in truth like Jay Gatsby’s can never be fulfilled) he finally refuses to play the game. But that leaves him in a frozen state in which the intensity of suffering only increases until he feels he utterly cannot escape it and finally is left wailing on the ground.
So the hero is representative of a psyche that has learned to accept, submit to, and otherwise come into accord with nature, which is also analogous to his subconscious and as Jung put it, his “undiscovered self.”
Some heroes start out too proud and have to be humbled. Others start out too humble (Al-addin, many peasant types in the Grimm tales, Jack, etc.) And their adventure consists of realizing the diamond glowing inside. The lowly peasant boy, usually the third and youngest child, whom no one else respects either, turns out to be the only one in the kingdom with the courage to defeat the dragon and win the princess. Somehow his willingness to get in the game with the same type of straightforward intent, yet without expectation, and even more crucially without desperation, just like the Buddha’s acceptance under the Bo tree, and the Christ’s acceptance hanging ostensibly, metaphorically from that same tree, activated his superpowers, transformed his consciousness and that of the whole world around him.
Religion is simply when the act of being with these stories, symbols, and rituals, has the same effect on your psyche. The labyrinth is your socially conditioned mind and body. What’s trapped inside is your undiscovered self, your soul. Adriane’s flax thread is symbolic of religion and mythology itself, the song of the soul’s calling. One only has to follow it. The Great Way, as the koan says, has no gate.Refusal of the call converts the adventure into its negative.
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What Joseph Campbell Meant by Following Your Bliss
Only work at something, only devote your career/life to something that gives you pleasure in and of itself [even the nitty gritty of the process lights you up] absent money or fame.
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How to Find Your Calling and Follow Your Bliss
“It has to be something you can’t not do.” — Jerry Seinfeld.
“In Tonio Kröger, the young artist moved out of the world of what had to be done. In the Magic Mountain, Hans Castorp stepped away from the world of what had to be done and followed the fascination of his nature. That is the adventure. “
– Joseph Campbell, Collected Works, II.1.7, “Thomas Mann and James Joyce”, ‘Absorbing the Monstrous’, 5:23 mark in the audio lecture.The key here is to discern what is the fascination of your nature. When you have found that, the “World of What Has to Be Done” simply has to take a back seat. It’s a psychological shift. Doesn’t mean you don’t pay your bills. Doesn’t mean you don’t run your errands or attend social functions, but it does mean those things are no longer your priority. You’re priority is your fascination. You follow that as long and as hard as your inner nature tells you to. And then when the inevitable need to take a break comes, you do your secondary items.
Stephen Cope has a nice phrase: “What lights you up?” I think Bob Proctor says something like “What winds your stem, what gets you jazzed?” And then really it becomes a psychological problem rather than a practical one because when you change your psychology, your consciousness, into one of making your fascination the centerpiece, the most important thing in your life, you initiate your subconscious, the doorway to eternity, and this infinite resource goes to work for you 100% of the time, even when you are running errands, paying bills, or attending social functions. And then everything starts to happen. You’re riding a wave. Your wave.Update July 5th, 2019:
“I have to admit something about this is calling me.”
I was watching a video about a certain experience in a certain place that someone was having, and I found myself spontaneously saying that out loud. Begin to notice the things that turn you on, that get you jazzed, that wind your stem. Put them in a diary and notice if there’s a commonality there. There is no right answer. It’s whatever your heart is pulling you toward. The secret, and the treasure, and the adventure is tied up in that.
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The Cure for Fear is Following Your Bliss
“I’ve said in the ‘Hero with a Thousand Faces’ that if you go on your own proper voyage, there will be protection, magical aid to come to protect you. If it’s not your proper voyage, that will be missing, and you’ll be in trouble. But if it’s the voyage of your own spirit and soul and destiny, don’t be afraid. There will come assistance.”
– Joseph Campbell, Collected Works, Audio Series II, Volume II – Perspectives on Creative Mythology, II.2.2 ‘Hermes, Alchemy, and The Voyage of Ulysses,’ The Adventure of Circe (1:43)
“I’ve said in the ‘Hero with a Thousand Faces’ that if you go on your own proper voyage, there will be protection, magical aid to come to protect you. If it’s not your proper voyage, that will be missing, and you’ll be in trouble. But if it’s the voyage of your own spirit and soul and destiny, don’t be afraid. There will come assistance.”
Joseph Campbell
