Going Inside- The Hero Within

"One thing that comes out in myths is that at the bottom of the abyss comes the voice of salvation. The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light." Joseph Campbell, Power of Myth


How does mythology relate to the individual. The individual has a inner life and internal dynamic that must be aligned if they are to feel peaceful and powerful in their life. The power is not over someone else, but it pertains to being empowered as an individual existing in a social context. In our modern society shifting your attention to the inner life and what is happening within you seems to be for the eccentric and not the masses. The inner life sometimes scares people or they do not want to listen to their neurosis and or conflicting wants and desires. But as we ignore what appears to be negative parts of ourselves we also ignore our immense mystery and light. What mythology does is give you a road map to your inner energies because we have the positive and negative forces within us engaged in a battle. If we don't have symbols or mythology that act as our map then we are lost and thus we are always at the mercy of energies that do not have a name or value.
According to Joseph Campbell from his book Power of Myth, in India around the ninth century B.C the Upanishads explain that all gods are within you. Heaven and Hell are all manifestations that come from our inner battles. They are only metaphors for the opposite energies that are within every single human being on Earth from past to present. Gods represent energies from the ground of being. We have a source of life and it manifests as opposites in the world of time. This seems to devalue the god in religion but all it does is say that it is not literal devil or father god. This does not mean you can not raise your consciousness either. The experience of the mystery is still valuable and real. To transcend the world of opposites and find the eternal is possible and real. As you go deeper into some religions and analysis, many people have said that god cannot be described. To describe or name is to miss the point. Concepts and thought of humans cannot explain what is beyond thought, therefore the source or eternal cannot be named or explained. "The best things can't be told because they go beyond thought. Then the second mistake we make is to try to explain it and then it is all misunderstood. That is when we try to describe god we mess it up. The third thing we do is put it into story and use symbols which is also mythological images." Joseph Campbell.

The initiation into the mystery, your own inner mystery is you going deeper into the dynamic of your source. When you enter the forest-the dark parts of yourself- you meet your fears and face them. You find that you have qualities both male and female. You begin to understand that you are both, you have what it takes to empower and overcome the difficult things in your life. You understand that you are all things, you have everything to fight the battle of life. And you begin to feel fulfilled, whole because you start to identify with the world beyond opposites, you understand that beyond time there is eternity and you were born from this. The poet Blake says this "Eternity is in love with the productions of time!" Eternity poured into the field of time, of limitation, of opposites. Why? Our creation myths show us some possibilities. Here is one short one.

"Before all time, there was a deity who said, "I am." As soon as it said "I am," it was afraid. It was an entity now, in time. Then it thought, "What should I be afraid of, I'm the only thing that is." And soon as it said that, if felt lonesome, and wished that there were another, and so felt desire. It swelled, split in two, became male and female, and begot the world."

These elements are the elementary energies we must deal with in our everyday life. We must struggle with our fears, loneliness, desires and move in the field of time. All of our gods and devils are manifestations and symbols for these elements. To say one god is better than the other, or that one people are chosen over another is to miss the point of religion and its message. If we focused on our inner lives and understood the desires and fears then we would become more aware and learn how to be at peace. To understand what we are is to move past or transcend the world of opposites into the eternal. The world of radiance waits for all to see it. When you can look past the things in front of you, start to see the road map, the symbols that speak to you and transform your fear and desires, then you will have transformed your inner self into something more complete. Yes you will still be in Time but you will know and experience the eternal within Time.