The Hero's Adventure -

I may being looking to much into this, but I seem to want to dissect every little detail of something. In this case I was fine until I got to the point in the audio lesson where consciousnesses and unconsciousness were discussed.

Here is some of the data I collected on this topic and as you may find, he seems to contradict himself:

Unconsciousness-> (Jonah and the Whale example) has to be controlled by consciousness.

Consciousness-> (Vader Example) Should remain a secondary organ; must not put it self in control.

*It seems as if unconsciousness must be controlled with the consciousness, but consciousness must not put it self in total control.

Is he getting at the fact that there should be a balance between the two? Is that the lesson to take from that?

Yea, you are reading too much into it....

The lesson is called, "Hero's Adventure"...

What does it say about the hero?

Who is a hero, who can be?

What makes a hero?

Pretend I have never heard of Joe Campbell...

How would you explain this to me, so that i would understand, and not be bored...?

Fair enough, I was taking notes and that part caused me to get a bit hung up. I see the relevant points though.

Yea, life is full of balance...

Sometimes, its one way, sometimes the other....

Contradiction is definitely a big part of life...

Jestor, It has been a long while since I last read this material and since I have spoken with a few of you, but I have definitely learned a lot in the real world. I decided to pursue a double major in Math and Physics. Unfortunately, I still rely heavily on auto correct , but I am quite surprised at how I previously diagnosed this one particular audio track. I am even more surprised that my mind is capable of fully remembering the experience as I read through my old post.

In retrospect, I don't think I over examined this... I get the message the man was attempting to send, but he clearly did not do an amazing job at sending that message. It is mixed. It is unclear. It is not something I would want to live my life based on. There are great points... but if the man continued on his speech and lost himself enough to actually contradict his own speech...

My intention is not to undermine this, but rather to show that there should not be one perfect viewpoint on life perspectives. I have learned quite a lot while being away and I am sure I can learn even more by coming back.. but you better believe I am going to sift through these 'words of the wise' with great focus and fully dissect the true meaning.

That is all. I hope you all are all well

Cheers,
Tim

Yes, actually he did do a pretty amazing job of talking about that -- to a journalist (who was also highly educated in Religious Studies) and in the time and context they had to talk about it. It is not that profound, "The Power of Myth" ... But the profundity is there : one just has to have the interest and inclination research it for oneself, not only in books, but in your own Souls.

This IS the real world, and one would be surprised at just how little the world we take for real is the real one. One trivial thing that stood out was : why would it surprise you that you rely on auto-correct if you did Maths/Physics at uni ? We tend to consider maths/physics to be the crown of intelligence whereas it is not. Not even all philosophers are great writers ; many of them were not. Do not confuse the benefits of diverse disciplines ...

Now, back to Myth : Not only is there much contradiction in Life, but the whole of it is wildly paradoxical. "It is mixed. It is unclear." Well, actually, no -- it isn't. Life itself is mixed and unclear. If one seeks homogeneity and clarity, one ends up even more 'mixed and unclear'. We cannot impose a lasting order, regardless of the promises of Science. Science (the conscious mind) is a servant, not a governor ... It is not a 'Saviour' either.

Your intention is sound : there is not one perfect viewpoint. What are you trying to look at ? We often say to people, "there are no wrong answers" when what we should be saying as well is that there are "no right ones" too. This is no one's fault and I'm not just bitching about what you've exchanged here -- but there is an essential understanding that no one has seemed to grasp for a few hundred years : symbols are not signs. We are never going to be able - neither in word nor deed - to present perfectly (so that the viewpoint is focussed) - that which a symbol re-presents to the unconscious. We will never be able to control the unconscious consciously. We can only feel it, and that is when we stop yearning for clarity of understanding with our the conscious mental faculties ...

Please, don't stop at Campbell here. Continue by Carl Jung, Mircea Eliade, Gilbert Durand, Rabindranath Tagore, Iain McGilchrist, Martha Nussbaum .... (this list could go on for a while) and they didn't get everything right either. 'Truth' is not in any book, or at the end of any 'path'. They are - or have been - just very good at exploring other viewpoints. For insomuch as one can actually 'look at' this stuff. Read poetry AND scientific journals. Hell, read scientific journals AS poetry ... Stop trying to understand the unconscious ; it would be like trying to get to Ganymede on a bicycle. Imagine it, feel it (two attributes of Man that we consider superfluous in this politico-economic scientistic wasteland we live in) and even analyse your relationship to it, but one can never adequately analyse the unconscious. Though we don't accept it, we live mostly there too ...

The belly of the whale is allegorical for only the first steps on the Hero's Adventure : the time spent in the 'water' (the unconscious) is a 'w*t*f do I do now' period where one knows that there is no going back. All the familiarity of the World (the conscious perception : what we 'know' about what we 'know') is of absolutely no use. It is here where the conscious meets the unconscious, is somewhat informed by it -- it is not 'understanding'.

"The small wisdom is like water in a glass -- clear, transparent, pure ...

... the great wisdom is like the water in the sea -- dark, mysterious, impenetrable ..."

~ Rabindranath Tagore

Jestor wrote: Yea, you are reading too much into it....

The lesson is called, "Hero's Adventure"...

What does it say about the hero?

Who is a hero, who can be?

What makes a hero?

Pretend I have never heard of Joe Campbell...


How would you explain this to me, so that i would understand, and not be bored...?

Two points that make a hero:

• The circumstances they find themselves in
• How they react to these circumstances (i.e. the characteristics of the person involved)

The Adventure of the hero is a path that gives you a way to share your experience with other people, and a path that creates room for you to play with it. :side:

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Strats wrote: *It seems as if unconsciousness must be controlled with the consciousness, but consciousness must not put it self in total control.

Is he getting at the fact that there should be a balance between the two? Is that the lesson to take from that?

Mm.. Unconsciousness and consciousness are both part of the same system, the ''difference'' between the two are the levels of access. Consciousness and unconsciousness switch all the time, when you do not need conscious information, it will be stored in you unconscious part.

The unconsciousness lays behind the consciousness, if you are able to create a abrupt and sudden stopping of everyday activity such as shaking a hand, you can penetrate directly intro the unconsciousness. ( seen in hypnosis)


Consciousness protects your body from unconsciousness, because your body can not deal with much information at ones.
But neither one does have control, maybe they both are separated from you body, by some kind of not understandable barrier, but not sure about that. The control of the mind is not the same as the mind controlling the mind :blink: My question would be what does create the difference between consciousness and unconsciousness. Anyway just a minding..

"We tend to consider maths/physics to be the crown of intelligence whereas it is not" - You could not have made a more ignorant claim. Math and science do indeed make everything work. Many of your sentences are meaningless tautologies. Creative people are certainly necessary in the progression of life, but let us be clear. Creativity does not mean someone is smart. If you wish to dispute that fact, I urge you to take a look at some intro psych textbooks and that issue should be made quite clear within the books. You said a lot of incorrect things and a lot of straight jibberish and non-sense. I advise you to seek out some physics, chemistry, or biology books before you make more ignorant claims.

My original point was that the man in the lecture contradicts himself a lot. Why would you want to follow someone who can't even correctly portray a specific viewpoint and stick to it? Logic and reason should be the foundation of all great thought. Stop this madness.

"Mm.. Unconsciousness and consciousness are both part of the same system, the ''difference'' between the two are the levels of access. Consciousness and unconsciousness switch all the time, when you do not need conscious information, it will be stored in you unconscious part."

-It appears that you have completed a doctoral program in the field of neuro-psychology. Well now, glad you solved a significantly complex problem in 2 sentences. This is straight jibberish. I realize you may think I am taking this too seriously or looking too deep into the matter, but what is the point of debating these topics if you all want to simply 'boil-them-down-to-basics'? What you are talking about, unconsciousness and consciousness, is just plain incorrect. "when you do not need conscious information, it will be stored in you unconscious part" - No. This is the worst part of the whole thing.. I honestly don't know how to respond to that claim.


These post are some of the most ignorant and flatly incorrect things I have ever heard people mention. Perhaps I am being a bit dramatic, but please don't assume you know what you are talking about and spew garbage, because that garbage will eventually be believed by other people that read this and lead to a group of people that are incorrectly educated on these issues.

Strats wrote: Perhaps I am being a bit dramatic

Yea, please don't be so 'dramatic'. This is a place of learning and 'spirit' remember

Anway... I actually prefer the term subconscious over unconscious, to reflect that relationship between the two. It's not a neuroscience perspective but rather a human experience perspective. They inform each other, its just one is the science of it and the other the living of it. In terms of processing I agree we can have different levels of awareness of the stuff the subconscious operates so the relationship can be viewed in this way. I think it's laid down during early youth and then carried along as a default worldview, but it can be modified. The brain prunes itself a heap during the first 20-25 years, reducing its number of neurons by a huge amount and to me that probably represents the entrenchment of that perspective which serves to delineate the relationship between the conscious and subconscious - and its that boundary layer which we most commonly understand as feelings, intuition etc. IMO
:blink:

Strats wrote: Math and science do indeed make everything work.

I'm no physicist, but I was under the impression that math and science is the physical and theoretical study and measurement of what makes everything work?

In any case, I thought this thread was about the hero's adventure?

What happens when we pick apart details and hang weight on a lack of understanding of how they work together?

Is there no way you can think to make those details come together to form a larger point, Strats?

Strats wrote: Unconsciousness-> (Jonah and the Whale example) has to be controlled by consciousness.

Consciousness-> (Vader Example) Should remain a secondary organ; must not put it self in control.

My sense was not that the unconscious mind should be controlled, but that we should be aware of its working, that we should bring the unconscious into consciousness. This is less an act of control than of awareness. The conscious mind subordinates itself to the larger thing in the story (God, the Tao, the Force, etc.). The hero is not meant to exert his will over the universe, but to answer the call of the universe in a heroic fashion. But he is not meant to wander around at the behest of motivations he does not understand.

This larger thing, the whale belly, and such are metaphors. They are not meant to be parced out as literal forces. THat said, the individual bringing his or her true motivations into clear view is necessary. But, again, the unconscious is not meant to be controlled. Only peered into and understood. From there, the conscious mind can make an actual choice.

It isn't an all or nothing scenario. Nor is it a literal roadmap. I think of it as one seeing the landscape (internal or external) to negotiate it most skillfully.

Hi Strats - its an integral element of the Hero's Journey to initially reject the call, so don't fight that response if that's what you feel. It is key to your unfolding Hero's Adventure.

Strats wrote: Logic and reason should be the foundation of all great thought. Stop this madness.

As you know - often the best way to understand something is to try and definitively prove it to be true (or even better, false). Take it to its logical extreme and see where you end up with it. Play with it - just for fun.

That's exactly what Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead inadvertently did when they wrote Principia Mathematica! Then Kurt Godel came along and showed that pure logic and reason lead to inconsistency. As far as I'm aware this is yet to be successfully refuted:
PM, as it is often abbreviated, was an attempt to describe a set of axioms and inference rules in symbolic logic from which all mathematical truths could in principle be proven. As such, this ambitious project is of great importance in the history of mathematics and philosophy, being one of the foremost products of the belief that such an undertaking may be achievable. However, in 1931, Gödel's incompleteness theorem proved definitively that PM, and in fact any other attempt, could never achieve this lofty goal; that is, for any set of axioms and inference rules proposed to encapsulate mathematics, either the system must be inconsistent, or there must in fact be some truths of mathematics which could not be deduced from them.

Apologies if you're already intimately familiar with these ideas but if you are I would encourage you to think about the implications of them beyond mathematics.

Given your studies I would recommend trying to approach your journey from the standpoint of other Mathematicians and Physicists. Some reading ideas that might appeal to your sensibilities, and build a bridge to what others have discussed in this thread:
Bertrand Russell's essay "Mysticism and Logic": http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25447/25447-h/25447-h.htm
Then try Ken Wilbur's "Quantum Questions: Mystical writings of the World's great physicists".
For the last part of the 'bridge' try Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter - that ties it together, and may give you some further insights into why poetry, music, art, inconsistency and paradox have as much to say on these matters as science does (albeit in completely different language)

If you do decide to read these don't automatically conflate that with accepting the call to Adventure. Just read them because they're interesting!

Lastly I wouldn't get too concerned about conscious vs unconscious. Nobody seems to understand these in a way that is not paradoxical. As you will know, this is the core of the 'hard problem' and I would argue its an illogical place to look for solutions if you approach your journey with a 'pure science' hat on.