Shakespeare said that art is a mirror held up to nature. And that’s what it is. The nature is your nature, and all of these wonderful poetic images of mythology are referring to something in you. When your mind is trapped by the image out there so that you never make the reference to yourself, you have misread the image.The inner world is the world of your requirements and your energies and your structure and your possibilities that meets the outer world. And the outer world is the field of your incarnation. That’s where you are. You’ve got to keep both going. As Novalis said, 'The seat of the soul is there where the inner and outer worlds meet.

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About Joseph Campbell

Joseph Campbell was a 20th-century American mythologist, writer, and lecturer. Joseph John Campbell was an American writer and the husband of Jean Erdman. He was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. Read more on Wikipedia →

Themes

  • Dreams — Aspirations, visions, and the world of the subconscious
  • Soul — The inner self, consciousness, and spiritual essence

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