Intro: Epiphany
Aug. 12th, 2016 12:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dedalus_1947“Whether the hero be ridiculous or sublime,
Greek or barbarian, gentile or Jew,
His journey varies little in essential plan.
Popular tales represent the heroic action as physical;
The higher religions show the deed to be moral;
Nevertheless, there will be found astonishingly little variation
In the morphology of the adventure, the character involved,
Or the victories gained.”
(Joseph Campbell: The Hero with a Thousand Faces – 1949)
As I mentioned back in September, I finally decided to lose some weight and get into shape by joining Weightwatchers and 24 Hour Fitness. When I hit the big fitness roadblock of keeping ones mind engaged during mind-numbing, repetitive exercises (rowing machine, treadmill, and stationary bike), Kathy suggested I try Audible. Audible is an Amazon company that specializes in downloadable, spoken audio books. Originally, our son Tony had enrolled Kathy as an Audible member and purchased some audio books for her as a gift. It proved successful enough for her to recommend it to me as a listening distraction during exercise. So, I started by listening to audio books that were already in her library, and then purchasing more. I HEARD The Boys in the Boat by Daniel Day Brown, The Longest Way Home by Andrew McCarthy, Transatlantic by Colum McCann, The Martian by Andy Weir, The Last Lion: Winston Churchill, Volume I by William Manchester, and Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow. To my surprise I found that non-fiction audio books were much more engaging than fiction, and that listening to books I had read in the past allowed me to rediscover their fascination and, sometimes, understand them better. This listening strategy resolved two problems: keeping my mind engaged in the middle of endless physical repetition, and revisiting books I loved reading many years before. It worked so well with William Shirer’s massive tome, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, that I decided to try it on Joseph Campbell’s 1949 book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
I originally read Campbell’s seminal work of comparative mythology a year or two after watching the PBS television series with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth, in 1988. The series enchanted me during a time of personal spiritual searching and I was compelled to search out more of Campbell’s works over the years. Sadly, as often happens with inspiring books one reads a long time ago, the details of Campbell’s work grew hazy and blurry over the years, and I could only recall a few general themes and ideas. So I leapt at the opportunity of experiencing his book once again through a different medium.
As Campbell’s words and ideas began flowing through me on the rowing machine and treadmills, my mind started drifting as it once did when I jogged long distances. This “mental drift” was a pleasure I had thought lost. It is a timeless space when your Unconscious peeks out and erupts while your Conscious Mind is sedated by the rhythmic and repetitive action of physical movement. Joggers compare it to the endorphin high they get while running, but mental drift is different. It is an unconscious cloud of seemingly unconnected thoughts and ideas that sometimes explode in a pulse-racing, lighting strike of an epiphany. An endorphin high makes you feel great, but an epiphany is a mystical experience of enlightenment – it’s the “Ah-hah!” moment when you “get it”.
My mind was drifting during Campbell’s retelling of myths, fables, and stories – especially dreams. His reliance on dream analysis by noted psychotherapists as a window to the human unconscious troubled me. I found myself doubting his thesis because I rarely indulged in recalled dreams and almost never wrote them down. I certainly never remembered them in the detailed fashion recorded by psychoanalysts. I felt I was missing a personal connection to Campbell’s ideas. Then one day at the gym, as my mind again drifted to Campbell’s illustrations of how dreams, folk tales, and legends incorporated many of the same unconscious motifs and metaphors of classic mythology and religious cosmologies, my brain exploded.
“Wait!” I exclaimed to myself. “I don’t recall personal dreams with mythical motifs and metaphors, but I have told stories that used them.”
That’s when my mind flashed on a blog story I wrote in 2007 called Tres Mujeres.
To be continued…
Greek or barbarian, gentile or Jew,
His journey varies little in essential plan.
Popular tales represent the heroic action as physical;
The higher religions show the deed to be moral;
Nevertheless, there will be found astonishingly little variation
In the morphology of the adventure, the character involved,
Or the victories gained.”
(Joseph Campbell: The Hero with a Thousand Faces – 1949)
As I mentioned back in September, I finally decided to lose some weight and get into shape by joining Weightwatchers and 24 Hour Fitness. When I hit the big fitness roadblock of keeping ones mind engaged during mind-numbing, repetitive exercises (rowing machine, treadmill, and stationary bike), Kathy suggested I try Audible. Audible is an Amazon company that specializes in downloadable, spoken audio books. Originally, our son Tony had enrolled Kathy as an Audible member and purchased some audio books for her as a gift. It proved successful enough for her to recommend it to me as a listening distraction during exercise. So, I started by listening to audio books that were already in her library, and then purchasing more. I HEARD The Boys in the Boat by Daniel Day Brown, The Longest Way Home by Andrew McCarthy, Transatlantic by Colum McCann, The Martian by Andy Weir, The Last Lion: Winston Churchill, Volume I by William Manchester, and Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow. To my surprise I found that non-fiction audio books were much more engaging than fiction, and that listening to books I had read in the past allowed me to rediscover their fascination and, sometimes, understand them better. This listening strategy resolved two problems: keeping my mind engaged in the middle of endless physical repetition, and revisiting books I loved reading many years before. It worked so well with William Shirer’s massive tome, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, that I decided to try it on Joseph Campbell’s 1949 book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
I originally read Campbell’s seminal work of comparative mythology a year or two after watching the PBS television series with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth, in 1988. The series enchanted me during a time of personal spiritual searching and I was compelled to search out more of Campbell’s works over the years. Sadly, as often happens with inspiring books one reads a long time ago, the details of Campbell’s work grew hazy and blurry over the years, and I could only recall a few general themes and ideas. So I leapt at the opportunity of experiencing his book once again through a different medium.
As Campbell’s words and ideas began flowing through me on the rowing machine and treadmills, my mind started drifting as it once did when I jogged long distances. This “mental drift” was a pleasure I had thought lost. It is a timeless space when your Unconscious peeks out and erupts while your Conscious Mind is sedated by the rhythmic and repetitive action of physical movement. Joggers compare it to the endorphin high they get while running, but mental drift is different. It is an unconscious cloud of seemingly unconnected thoughts and ideas that sometimes explode in a pulse-racing, lighting strike of an epiphany. An endorphin high makes you feel great, but an epiphany is a mystical experience of enlightenment – it’s the “Ah-hah!” moment when you “get it”.
My mind was drifting during Campbell’s retelling of myths, fables, and stories – especially dreams. His reliance on dream analysis by noted psychotherapists as a window to the human unconscious troubled me. I found myself doubting his thesis because I rarely indulged in recalled dreams and almost never wrote them down. I certainly never remembered them in the detailed fashion recorded by psychoanalysts. I felt I was missing a personal connection to Campbell’s ideas. Then one day at the gym, as my mind again drifted to Campbell’s illustrations of how dreams, folk tales, and legends incorporated many of the same unconscious motifs and metaphors of classic mythology and religious cosmologies, my brain exploded.
“Wait!” I exclaimed to myself. “I don’t recall personal dreams with mythical motifs and metaphors, but I have told stories that used them.”
That’s when my mind flashed on a blog story I wrote in 2007 called Tres Mujeres.
To be continued…
Looking forward to next installment
Date: 2016-08-12 10:20 pm (UTC)