Surya

Thank you for sharing. I am not going to make any claims of being iniated or enlightened, but I do know for an absolute fact that I have at the very least one (in all likelyhood way more) iniate who I have a personal relationship with who has been praying for me, and I feel confident that one here on daobums (you know who you are) have done a lot for me from a distance. I’d assume way more people, like family members for instance, has done so as well, but I was to blind/self centered to see it. I hope I can give them something in return as well as help people who are in a dark place. God bless

1.1.3 O expert and thoughtful men, relish Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, the mature fruit of the desire tree of Vedic literatures. It emanated from the lips of Śrī Śukadeva Gosvāmī. Therefore this fruit has become even more tasteful, although its nectarean juice was already relishable for all, including liberated souls.

Are they noble lions? 🦁

Do I understand you correctly in that you are saying that the physical and mental is one and the same?

How would you define spirit?

SB 1.1.2 Completely rejecting all religious activities which are materially motivated, this Bhāgavata Purāṇa propounds the highest truth, which is understandable by those devotees who are fully pure in heart. The highest truth is reality distinguished from illusion for the welfare of all. Such truth uproots the threefold miseries. This beautiful Bhāgavatam, compiled by the great sage Vyāsadeva [in his maturity], is sufficient in itself for God realization. What is the need of any other scripture? As soon as one attentively and submissively hears the message of Bhāgavatam, by this culture of knowledge the Supreme Lord is established within his heart. __________________________________ Thoughts: I agree that your ability to understand the deeper meanings of sacred texts depends on purity of heart. The second line is poetry to my ears. Well, yeah, not to much to add really, good stuff. I have always been a rebel, as Ive felt that ive been lied to by authorthies my whole life (the matrix, sort of). Now I think it is time to listen "attentivley and submissively" to the sacred texts by learned and pure devotees, but ofc, not throw all reasoning out the window. Rather, delay judgement: if it is something I dont understand or disagree with, ive decided to delay judgement,

Discussion on SB 1.1.1 Thanks for participating, Nungali. I follow you halfway, but there are parts I do not understand. I understand the "Illusiary yet simutalinously real" aspect (I think), but the numbers thing is still a little above my level of understanding. Id be happy to go further into it, if you are as well, but that would take some effort and time on my part, which I do not have the time to dwelve into at this very moment. And yeah, thank you for metioning the word purport. Never really thought about the meaning of it but... verb /pəˈpɔːt/ appear to be or do something, especially falsely. "she is not the person she purports to be" Why would they add that into the scripture? Creating a new post for verse 2, for the sake of order.

Intro by me, Surya (not a part of the substack) So, in the winter months, I had a chat online with this wonderfull fellow, about Jung and myth. He invited me to his substack, where he once in a blue moon shares his writings. I have decided to share this with you for several reasons: - to spread his writings - in the hope it is of interrest to you as well - perhsaps start a discussion here Cheers! Follow Your Bliss: Joseph Campbell’s Path to the Transcendent Liam James Jul 10 READ IN APP For Joseph Campbell, following your own personal myth provides a framework for personal growth and helps us live lives in tune with our nature. You find your myth by following your bliss. Discover Campbell’s teachings on following your bliss to reach the transcendent below, with help from Brazilian football and Oasis. All the Campbell quotes below are taken from Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation. Pledge your support Mythic figures as guides Mythic figures can serve as role models in a given area. Campbell explains: ‘…the gods represent the patron powers that support you in your field of action. And by contemplating the deities, you’re given a kind of steadying force that puts you in the role, as it were, that is represented by that particular deity.’ Myths represent a society’s values and provide directions and frameworks for living well, something Campbell held valuable. ‘I don’t know how it is now, right this minute, when so many new possibilities have opened up for life. But in my experience it has always been the model that gives you the idea of the direction in which to go, and the way in which to handle the problems and opportunities that come up.’ But even then, in the mid-to-late 20th century, he hints at a lack of myths to represent the diversity of human experience. The ‘new possibilities’ Campbell refers to in the last century are dwarfed by contemporary risks and opportunities ushered in by technological advancements and AI, rendering the myths of old even less applicable and new myths harder to imagine. He makes the same point later in the text: ‘Life has changed in form so rapidly that even the forms that were normal to think about in the time of my boyhood are no longer around, and there’s another set, and everything is moving very, very fast. Today we don’t have the stasis that is required for the formation of a mythic tradition.’ So while the myths of old may offer some guidance, we need some new way of relating ourselves to the transcendent through myth. Read the article I wrote on Campbell below to learn more about the transcendent: Becoming Transparent to the Transcendent: Joseph Campbell on Realising Your True Nature Relating yourself to transcendence Campbell distinguishes myth from Eastern traditions as a way of relating yourself to transcendence: ‘Of course, in trying to relate yourself to transcendence, you don’t have to have images. You can go the Zen way and forget the myths altogether. But I’m talking about the mythic way. And what the myth does is to provide a field in which you can locate yourself. That’s the sense of the mandala, the sacred circle, whether you are a Tibetan monk or the patient of a Jungian analyst. The symbols are laid out around the circle, and you are to locate yourself in the center. A labyrinth, of course, is a scrambled mandala, in which you don’t know where you are. That’s the way the world is for people who don’t have a mythology. It’s a labyrinth. They are battling their way through as if no one had ever been there before.’ So myth gives you direction, unscrambling the labyrinth. But if the old models don’t fit, what can we do? Share Bliss as a model for life Campbell suggests following bliss is a reliable model for reaching the transcendent: ‘In this way, your bliss becomes your life. There’s a saying in Sanskrit: the three aspects that point furthest toward the border of the abyss are sat, cit, and ananda: being, consciousness, and bliss. You can call transcendence a hole or the whole, either one, because it is beyond all words. All that we can talk about is what is on this side of transcendence. And the problem is to open the words, to open the images so that they point past themselves. They will tend to shut off the experience through their own opacity. But these three concepts are those that will bring you closest to that void: sat-cit-ananda. Being, consciousness, and bliss.’ He continues: ‘Now, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve been thinking a lot about these things. And I don’t know what being is. And I don’t know what consciousness is. But I do know what bliss is: that deep sense of being present, of doing what you absolutely must do to be yourself. If you can hang on to that, you are on the edge of the transcendent already.’ Campbell studied in Germany and Paris, and returned to America just three weeks before the 1929 Wall Street crash. But this apparent disaster proved auspicious, as it allowed him time to pursue his bliss: ‘…I didn’t have a job for five years. And, fortunately for me, there was no welfare. I had nothing to do but sit in Woodstock and read and figure out where my bliss lay. There I was, on the edge of excitement all the time.’ The edge of excitement is a great place to spend your life, and Campbell’s experiences there inform his philosophy for life: ‘So, what I’ve told my students is this: follow your bliss. You’ll have moments when you’ll experience bliss. And when that goes away, what happens to it? Just stay with us, and there’s more security in that than in finding out where the money is going to come from next year’. I recently started rereading Jonathan Wilson’s Inverting the Pyramid, and found this to resonate with the teachings of Campbell and Jung: ‘That tension – between beauty and cynicism, between what Brazilians call futebol d’arte and futebol de resultados – is a constant, perhaps because it is so fundamental, not merely to sport but also to life: to win, or to play the game well? It is hard to think of any significant actions that are not in some way a negotiation between the two extremes of pragmatism and idealism.’ Campbell’s clearly on the ‘play the game well’ side, but his point is that this idealistic philosophy is the most practical too; more ‘secure’, to quote him. The blissful ideal itself becomes the practical guide. Discovering your myth through bliss For Campbell, bliss is a guide that will help you discover your myth: ‘Your bliss can guide you to that transcendent mystery, because bliss is the welling up of the energy of the transcendent wisdom within you. So when the bliss cuts off, you know that you’ve cut off the welling up; try to find it again, and that will be your Hermes guide, the dog that can follow the invisible trail for you. And that’s the way it is. One works out one’s own myth that way.’ The idea that it is one’s own myth is key for Campbell; earlier traditions can give clues, but they are only clues: ‘As many a wise man has said, “You can’t wear another person’s hat.”… You’ve got to find the wisdom, not the clothing of it. Through those trappings, the myths of other cultures, you can come to a wisdom that you’ve then got to translate into your own. The whole problem is to turn these mythologies into your own.’ The Holy Grail Campbell references an Arthurian myth, where the Holy Grail partially reveals itself to the knights assembled in the banquet hall. It doesn’t appear in its full glory, and is covered with a radiant cloth, before it withdraws, leaving the knights in awe. Gawain, Arthur’s nephew, proposes that the knights go in quest of the Grail to behold it unveiled. Below is Campbell’s response: ‘Now we come to the text that interested me. The text reads, “They thought it would be a disgrace to go forth in a group. Each entered the Forest Adventurous at that point which he himself had chosen, where it was darkest and there was no way or path.” You enter the forest at the darkest point, where there is no way or path. Where there’s a way or path, it is somebody else’s path; each human being is a unique phenomenon. The idea is to find your own pathway to bliss’. Leave a comment What if you don’t know what your bliss is? ‘I don’t know what it is that makes me feel alive I don’t know how to wake the things that sleep inside I only wanna see the light that shines behind your eyes’ Acquiesce – Oasis I’m realising my teenage dream tomorrow and seeing Oasis live – a band that millions of us worldwide love for the way they awaken that very feeling of blissful transcendence and liveliness within us. And while it’s probably optimistic to try and discern too many deep truths about the human condition from Oasis lyrics, particularly those related to the psychological teachings of Campbell and Jung, there is a light-hearted connection to make between the opening lines of Acquiesce and the points I’ve made earlier in this article. The point is, we may not know our bliss – what makes us ‘feel alive’ – but there’s often some hint: some fleeting moments of curiosity or sparks amid the dull listlessness of life that can orient us towards the transcendent. Campbell would advise looking out for these. In Jungian discourse, uncertainty is often just a lack of self-knowledge, and can be approached with inner work that deals with the unconscious Jung would probably go a step further than Campbell and advise using active imagination and dialoguing with both emotional sides – the general feelings of ennui and the transient moments of interest or joy – to explore them more, gain self-knowledge, and expand the personality. Summary For Campbell, bliss – that ‘deep sense of being present, of doing what you absolutely must do to be yourself’ – is a pathway to the transcendent. Following bliss puts you on a mythic path, offering an alternative model to that of Eastern traditions. And if you don’t know your bliss, you can look to Jung’s teachings on working with the unconscious to unlock the energy stored there. Thanks for reading The Creative Awakening Playbook! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Pledge your support The Creative Awakening Playbook is free today. 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Great, thank you. How about you? I wonder, in terms of choosing a career, do you have any thoughts on what would suit me based on the chart? I have applied for Teacher training program (is that really what you call the education to become a qualified teacher in English?) this autumn, as I think it would be way more rewarding compared to the bachelor degree I have from before (economics, a little too soulless for my taste).

Flowers never pick themself, Luke. I declare you enlightened.

Don’t worry, he is far to humble and enlightened to be offended by you failing to mention Him regardless.

You forgot liminal_luke

No I don’t have one really. My gut tells me «highest realization possible». I have had moment of insights of course, but it is very clear they have not been of the highest kind. Nor permanent. There is also this concept of the spirit/magical realm vs. the material, do you have anything to say on that? And what do you think enlightenment is?

@old3bob

Thanks @Nungali So, I am taking a little bit of a wild shot here, but in regards to Mercury/Hermes, the sun and the moon all being close to each other, my guess would be that it represents something along these lines: The sun represents the concious or higher self, while the moon the lower or subconcious, is that correct? Mercury is related to communications, and is, as you know, the messenger of the gods. So, I interpet this as higher and lower self being in tune with each other, and Hermes functioning as a connector between the two? A shot in the dark, but it is the best I could do. Actually, rereading your comment, I pretty much just repeated what you said. I couldnt really relate that much to any of the interpertations provided by the link. Second speech of Socrates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaedrus_(dialogue) I asked AI (Gemini to be exact ) what the sun, moon and mercury in the first house represents: Is this fair? I then turned to gemini once again, asking what the sun, moon and mercury being situated in cancer implies, and got the following response: I mean... I guess I can relate to a good degree. And yes, this is a tropical chart. So, to conclude, Id like to ask if you are happy with the interpertations done so far, and also what the significance of the "drake" shape is. Never change

Amount of likes on daobums, naturally. But on the real, vibes, basically. At times i meet people who clearly function at a much higher level on conciousness than I. What traits do they tend to have... presence, kindness, humility, a tremendious ability to know what to say and what not to say. A spark in the eye. Also, I get a strong sense that they are able to read my mind... They never judge. Seem to have strong life force/vitality. Yeah, something along these lines, I think. So Cobies response is quite good, I think: they "smile". Are gentle and kind. What more can you ask for, really. Would anyone like to attempt to define the term?

I was (and am) under the impression that the holy spirit is what enters you as you experience "second birth." Could you back up your claim, please?

... I seem, then, in just this little thing to be wiser than this man at any rate, that what I do not know I do not think I know either. [Henry Cary literal translation of 1897] Edit: forgot to add what text the above is a translation of aha, it is from Platos "apology," qouting Socrates

Yes, but germanic languages such as german and the scandinavian ones (dutch and icelandic I am not sure about), also has gesit/ånd meaning spirit, and latin has the terms animus as well as spiritus as well. So, I dont know. But as I see it, they are not the same: soul is present in every living being, while (IMO) spirit is not. Think about the holy ghost (spirit) in christianity for instance: that is not present in everyone, yet soul is.

Not lazy, "Simple living, high thinking." Welcome

For sure, but maybe we could explore some of these views, as well as our personal opinions. One place to begin, for instance, is that close to all european languages has a separate word (and therefor concept, I would assume) for soul and spirit, while french does not.

I’m sure. I’ve kinda thought of the soul as yes, the immortal part of you, but also as the mind and awareness in a way. Btw. I have also started a thread about soul and spirit recently in general discussion. I’d be happy to hear your thoughts.

So, three different teachers at «my» temple has started talking about how I am about to leave my body. It has also popped up, dear I say it, synchronsinistly, here and there. What does this mean and how can I go about it? They all made it clear I would remain in the material realm as an individual in this lifetime while doing so. Is it a reference to astral travel, or maybe becoming alive, increase vitality and silencing the thoughts and all the mental chatter? Kundalina awakening was also namedropped in a private lecture. The teacher asked me if I knew what it meant, I said I don’t, but I had watched a short video of Sadghuru where he talked about it as presence (or so I understood ). Well, thank you, that’s about what I have on my mind. Please enlighten me and enbrighten you 🙏