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Experiencing Joseph Campbell and the Story of Your Life
Here are just some of the experiences and resources available when you attend a Joseph Campbell and the Story of Your Life workshop:
Entering Sacred Space
Each session of the “Joseph Campbell and the Story of Your Life” workshop begins with the simple experience of entering into the twilight atmosphere that leads into what Joseph Campbell called “sacred space,” ... a place to “rediscover the moving power of your life.’
Professor Campbell on Sacred Space ...
“The place to find is within yourself. I learned a little about this in athletics. The athlete who is in top form has a quiet place within himself. and it’s around this, somehow, that his action occurs. If he’s all out there in the action field, he will not be performing properly. My wife is a dancer, and she tells me that this is true in dance as well. There’s a center of quietness within, which has to be known and held. If you lose that center you are in tension and begin to fall apart.
The Twilight Atmosphere
Stepping into “sacred space” is a simple and intentional process of temporarily changing the way you see the world. Smoothly, and gradually, your mindset shifts ... from a hard-focused, concentrated outlook ... to a soft-focused, diffused insight ... intuition awakens ... creativity emerges ... and possibilites and goals that you may have given up on—or thought improbable—move closer to you.
Throughout the Joseph Campbell and the Story of Your Life workshop we move back and forth between diffused twilight awareness and concentrated, directed thinking. These two ways of looking at the content of your life—insight and outlook—combine forces, like a rope and pulley, enabling you to draw sustenance and refreshment from your creative well-spring.
The Twilight Atmosphere Tool Kit
Everyone needs and wants a strong mind; though, just like too much weightlifting can make you “muscle-bound,” too much thinking can make you “mental-bound”: a condition where thoughts come incessantly, diverting your mental energy into predominantly unproductive thinking.
So, to be able to enter into sacred space and enjoy the learning and “bliss” that’s available there, it’s necessary to know how to break free of the gravitational pull of unintentional thinking and float into the twilight level of awareness. To help you do so, the Joseph Campbell and the Story of Your Life workshop includes the tools you need, and gives you experience working with them.
The Tools
Try This: Uncontrolling Thoughts
A uniquely beneficial state of awareness occurs when you’re not trying to control your thoughts, and they’re not trying to control you. But easier said than done.
To get a clear sense of the momentum of your mind, and how challenging it is to control it, tell yourself to stop thinking, and then observe what happens.
If your mind responds to your request, congratulations! You are one of the few, and are ready to journey deeper into your inner places. But if you find you have an unruly fellow living inside your head—the Joseph Campbell and the Story of Your Life workshop is for you.
Chi Kung
Your body is the primary connection between your personal life and the fullness of the physical world you live in. We use Chi Kung to cultivate and maintain our “felt sense,” so that we can be sensitive to, and understand, what the body is communicating about its relationships to life. Two important effects of Chi Kung are its ability to calm the mind, and to relax the body—two key conditions for opening the door into the twilight atmosphere of sacred space.
Twilight Gazing
Insight happens when you intentionally gaze inward, to look at things that aren’t readily apparent when your focus is concentrated and directed toward your outer activites.
There are several ways to look inward, and many cultural traditions that teach them. At a Joseph Campbell and the Story of Your Life workshop we learn and practice a few of these ways of developing insight. One of them is “The Magic Eye.” Looking through the Magic Eye is a fun way for cultivating the feeling of inward gazing.
Try This: Looking Through the Magic Eye
Go to www.magiceye.com to get a sense of how developing your insight can improve your outlook.
Insight Journaling
While insight is a momentary experience, your life is made up of many, many moments, and the more of these moments that can be insightful, the better. To facilitate and support an ongoing flow of insightful moments in your life we learn and practice Insight Journaling. Derived from the Intensive Journal Method created by Dr. Ira Progoff, Ph.D, this insightful approach enables you to establish a current and continuing relationship with what’s going on in your life from a “twilight atmosphere” perspective.
– Dr. Ira Progoff, Ph.D.
– Joseph Campbell
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