So currently i have been reading joseph campbells the Hero with a thousand faces.
Last night upon reading i stumbled upon an interesting little segment that i thought was worth sharing.
the chapter is The Crossing of the Return Threshold.
The two worlds, the divine and the human, can be pictured only as distinct from each other-different as life and death, as day and night. The hero adventures out of the land we know into darkness; there he accomplishes his adventure, or agian is simply lost to us, imprisioned, or in danger; and his return is described as a coming back out of that yonder zone. Nevertheless-and here is a great key to the understanding of myth and symbol-the two kingdoms are actualy one. The realm of the gods is a forgotten dimension, either willingly or unwillingly, is the whole sense of the deed of the hero. The values and distinctions that in normal life seem important disapear with the terrifying assimulation of the self into what formerly was only otherness. As in stories of the cannibal ogresses, the fearfulness of this loss of personal individuation can be the whole burden of the trancendetal experience for unqualified souls. But the hero-soul goes boldly in- and discovers the hags converted into goddesses and the dragons into the watchdogs of the gods.
There must consciousness, a certain baffling inconsistency between the brought forth from the deep, and the prudence usually found to be effective in the light world. Hence the common divorce of opportunism from virtue and the resultant degeneration of human existence. Martyrdom is for saints, but the common people have their institutions, and these cannot be left to grow like lilies of the field; Peter keeps drawing his sword, as in the garden, to defend the creator and sustain er of the world. The boon brought from the transcendent deep becomes quickly rationalized into nonentity, and the need becomes great for another hero to refresh the word.
How teach again, however, what has been taught correctly and incorrectly learned a thousand times,throughout the millenniums of mankind's prudent folly? That is the hero's ultimate difficult task. How render back into light-world language the speech-defying pronouncements of the dark? How represent on a two-dimensional surface a three-dimensional form, or in a three-dimensional image a multi-dimensional meaning? How translate into terms of "yes" and "no" revelations that shatter into meaninglessness every attempt to define the pairs of opposites? How communicate to people who insist on the exclusive evidence of their senses the message of the all-generating void?
Many failures arrest to the difficulties of this life-affirmative threshold. The first problem of the returning hero is to accept as real, after an experience of the soul-satisfying vision of fulfillment, the passing joys and sorrows, banalities and noisy obscenities of life. Why re-enter such a world? Why attempt to make plausible, or even interesting, to men and women consumed with passion, the experience of transcendental bliss? As dreams that were momentous by night may seem simply silly in the light of day, so the poet and the prophet can discover themselves playing the idiot before a jury of sober eyes. The easy thing is to commit the whole community of the devil and retire again into the heavenly rock-dwelling, close the door, and make it fast. But if some spiritual obstetrician has meanwhile drawn the Shimenawa across the retreat, then the work of representing eternity in time, and perceiving in time eternity, cannot be avoided.
"You are an explorer, and you represent our species, and the greatest good you can do is to bring back a new idea, because our world is endangered by the absence of good ideas. Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness."
— Terence McKenna
"They Say It helps when you close yours eyes cowboy"