Jaime,
I appreciate the thoughtful reply. It is good to know you found a counselor who was able to help you work through your inner conflicts. Her Buddhist orientation undoubtedly provides her with insights that most Western oriented counselors are not privy to. Both Jung and Campbell stressed the importance of knowing Eastern traditions and philosophy. As I have said often Buddhism is not a religion, it is a psychology.

Your experience in the woods. Like you I believe in an objective view of life and dismiss most observations about mysterious events as illusions {UFOs, ghosts, that sort of thing}. But I do believe nature has a way of providing moments of mystical experiences that fit with a person's life. Jung called these occurrences Sychronicities. They have or add meaning to the person's life and come about at a time when they are most needed. Such an experience happened to me, an experience that led me to discover Joseph Campbell and put me on a path that I have followed for the past 19 years. Your experience may have fit with the need to refocus your inner guide, a white wolf being such a symbol for inner strength. Your dream would be a continuation of that inner dialog.

Your speech in your reply makes me believe you are taking a correct path to finding balance and harmony in your life. Being alone does not mean loneliness. It can be difficult at first not to have the 'other' to share life but as I stated in my post there are other things that be substitutes. Campbell's declaration to 'follow your bliss' is often a call to the individual to look to the muses for companionship. We all possess a talent and when that 'art' is discovered and utilized there is meaning in life. Here is the dialog between Campbell and Bill Moyers from The Power of Myth on the meaning of life:

Bill Moyers: I came to understand from reading your books - The Masks of God or The Hero With A Thousand Faces, for example - that what human beings have in common is revealed in myths. Myths are the stories of our search through the ages for truth, for meaning, for significance. We all need to tell our story and to understand our story. We all need to understand death and to cope with death, and we all need help in our passages from birth to life and then to death. We need life to signify, to touch the eternal, to understand the mysterious, to find out who we are.



Joseph Campbell: People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. That's what it's all finally about, and that's what these clues help us to find within ourselves.



Bill Moyers: Myths are clues?




Joseph Campbell: Myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life.



Bill Moyers: What we are capable of knowing and experiencing within?



Joseph Campbell: Yes.



Bill Moyers: You changed the definition of a myth from the search for meaning to the experience of meaning.



Joseph Campbell: Experience of life. The mind has to do with meaning. What's the meaning of a flower. There's the Zen story about a sermon of the Buddha in which he simply lifeted a flower. There was only one man who gave him a sign with his eyes that he understood what was said. Now, the Buddha himself is called "the one thus come". There's no meaning. What's the meaning of the universe? What's the meaning of a flea? It's just there. We're so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it's all about.

You can see from the above why Campbell is so instrumental in helping so many find the inner path to understanding. Finding your bliss, if you not already done so, may be the next great step in your life. I am of the opinion that many who happen upon my website are led by those natural forces such as Sychronicities. When a person discovers the inner life and begins the rehabilitation from the outer ego self they put themselves on a higher plane of understanding and knowledge. I sense you already have an understanding of the 'clues' in life that help bring about a harmonious existence. Staying the course, discipline, is how we finally discover the bliss we seek in life. I sense you are not far from that achievement.
Jerry

Myths-Dreams-Symbols is Sponsored by:
Gifford Fence-Middle Tennessee

---

Nashville/Murfreesboro/Brentwood/ Franklin/ Lebanon/Hendersonville/Mt. Juliet/Springhill

---

Gifford Fence Orlando/Gifford Fence Melbourne
Melbourne Dreams & Metaphysics/Dream Interpretation Space Coast

Age & Gender & Location {Required}: 62 Murfreesboro , Tn

Have You Posted Before? Date of Last Post {Use Search and Your Post Name to Help Find Last Post} Male

How Did You Find the Dream Forum? Yes

Email  

Jun 17th, 2012 - 5:36 AM