I love this bit from the Bill Moyers/Joseph Campbell talks. Anyone who hasn’t seen the POWER OF MYTH interviews–I think you can watch them gratis on Netflix, or at least rent them–needs to watch this today, or your life will continue to make no sense and confound you at every turn.
MOYERS: But aren’t many visionaries and even leaders and heroes close to the edge of neuroticism?
CAMPBELL: Yes, they are.
MOYERS: How do you explain that?
CAMPBELL: They’ve moved out of the society that would have protected them, and into the dark forest, into the world of fire, of original experience. Original experience has not been interpreted for you, and so you’ve got to work out your life for yourself. Either you can take it or you can’t. You don’t have to go far off the interpreted path to find yourself in very difficult situations. The courage to face the trials and to bring a whole new body of possibilities into the field of interpreted experience for other people to experience – that is the hero’s deed.
(picture by me of Armstrong woods.)
The Abbott Gran Medicine Show 