Creative Spirit

Osprey With Fish (Original)

Joseph Campbell is the patron saint of seekers, of creative outsiders, of those who embark on the journey of manifesting their inner song. He wrote of the first steps of the journey.

I have found that you do have only to take that one step toward the gods and they will then take ten steps toward you.  That step, the heroic first step of the journey, is out of, or over the edge of, your boundaries, and it often must be taken before you know that you will be supported.  The hero's journey has been compared to a birth; it starts out warm and snug in a safe place; then comes a signal, growing more insistent, that it is time to leave.  To stay beyond your time is to putrefy.  Without the blood and tearing and pain, there is no new life.

-       A JOSEPH CAMPBELL COMPANION.  Selected and Edited by Diane K. Osbon

The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.  

Once having traversed the threshold, the hero moves in a dream landscape of curiously fluid, ambiguous forms, where he must survive a succession of trials. . . The goal of the journey is a transformation of consciousness through trials and illuminations. 

-       Joseph Campbell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces

The goal of life
is to make your heartbeat
match the beat of the universe,
to match your nature with Nature.
The goal of life is to be a vehicle
for something higher.

You enter the forest
at the darkest point,
where there is no path.

Where there is a way or path,
it is someone else's path.

Hiker At The Gate (Original)

Benedicto: May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome,
dangerous, leading to the most amazing view.
May your rivers flow without end,
meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells,
past temples and castles and poets' towers
into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl,
through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock.
blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone,
and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm
where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs,
where storms come and go
as lightning clangs upon the high crags,
where something strange and more beautiful
and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you –
beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.
     - Edward Abbey, from Desert Solitaire

Do what you fear. What do you fear most?  If I don't do what I fear, I feel like I am not living on my edge, not living in my spirit. My spirit wants to live in the unknown. If I get too comfortable, in a house, with the heat, I lose my self-reliance. I lose the courage to get myself where I want to be. I lose control of my life. It is over many, many experiences of pushing your boundaries that you build skills, expand your comfort zone. Build your ability to pursue dreams. The times when I have felt really alive have all been times when I have been a little cold, a little hungry.  

The real problems -- the doubts come out at night. I ask myself why I want to go out on the ocean for a month, alone, on fifty-five-degree water. What if I flip over?  In the daytime, I say, Well, you roll up.   In the daytime I say, You are not alone. You have your VHF radio.” In the daytime, you can justify everything. At night, all the demons come out. Luckily, I begin my journeys in the day. If I had to start them at night, I would turn around and walk home and go back to bed.
-   Jennifer Hahn, sea kayak guide, from Heron Dance interview.

In Lansing Michigan I interviewed and canoed for a few hours with Verlen Kruger and his wife Becky. He discovered canoeing in his early fifties, abandoned a successful plumbing business and over the next twenty years went on a number of multi-year expeditions, which included canoeing both up and down the Mississippi River, the entire length of the Pacific Coast, up the Grand Canyon, around each of the Great Lakes and up the Amazon River. The word "dream" came up, and I asked him about the significance of dreams in his life. This is what he said:  

"At a seminar once, a young man came up and handed me a slip of paper that read: "Happy are they that dream dreams, and have the courage to make them come true."  That has stuck with me ever since. You have got to have a dream, an idea, a concept. And then you have to do something about it. There is no big merit in just being a dreamer. But there is a lot of merit to dreams. If you are just willing to go with some of them, things happen. Some very outstanding things will happen to people who dare to dream and dare to do something about those dreams. You may think you know where you are going, but you can't know where a dream is going to take you. It takes you to places you never thought...

And then, later in the interview: "There is no simple answer to why I go on these trips. Some adventurers will tell you why they do it, but I don't think they know themselves. Some will say because it was there. Or the challenge. The excitement. The adventure. There is magic to some of that, but there is more to it.

"Why must the goose fly north?  Ask the arctic tern why he must go from the top to the bottom of the world every year. As for us humans, we must do the things that free us from our limitations. I am doing my own thing. My own way. My own time. I think that's legitimate. I am doing what I must do to be true to myself and my nature.

"I think it was Kipling who said:  `Something is hidden. Go and find it. Go beyond the ranges.'  There is something you are reaching for beyond the horizon, something maybe you can't see. Maybe something beyond your ability, but still it’s worth reaching for. Many people might tell you that what you want to do is impossible. People who haven't tried. Haven't been inclined to push in those directions. Even the fact that we exist should tell us that we are created for something. We exist for a reason."

"There's no sense in going further --
it's the edge of cultivation,"
So they said, and I believed it --
broke my land and sowed my crop --
Built my barns and strung my fences
in the little border station
Tucked away below the foothills
where the trails run out and stop.

Till a voice, as bad as Conscience,
rang interminable changes
In one everlasting Whisper
day and night repeated -- so:
"Something hidden. Go and find it.

Go and look behind the Ranges --
Something lost behind the Ranges.
Lost and waiting for you. Go!"

-   From the poem “The Explorer” by Rudyard Kipling.

I start this trip with a dream
A new dream of an old dream
A dream abandoned.
It got too tough, went in directions that didn’t work
Lost in confusion, complexity.

Now, a new beginning.

Yet another beginning.
This time alone, focused.
Alone.

A dream of linking up my inner world
With how I am in the outer world.
Trying to connect who I could be
With who I am.

Trying is important, but not enough.

But still, time to try again.

Doug Peacock, author of a number of books including the recent Was It Worth It?,

wilderness protection activist, and the real life person on which Ed Abbey’s character

Hayduke (The Monkey Wrench Gang, Hayduke Lives!) is based, said to me during our first

interview:

The notion of following your passion is a cheap instinct and a good instinct and it's

worth indulging. Your passion is your source of power. In order to have power, you

have to live a life of passion. You have to live a really full life. You need to

follow those paths, no matter where they lead...in defiance of all things

conventional, perhaps. And, of course, it is at a price. It's going to cost. You have

to know that going in. But the price you pay, in my opinion, is not worth the time of

day to think about. It is so important not to kneepad around the world. You should

never bow down to anything but those you love and respect. Ever. For anything.  

Those who dream at night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find that it was vanity, but dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.
    - T.E. Lawrence of Arabia, Seven Pillars Of Wisdom.

Hawk Flight Original

I set off on my journey through a dream landscape
Shifting colors, glimpses of truth and half-truth
Glimpses of self-deception.
Winds that bite, winds that invite.
Full of excitement.
Much has gone wrong. That’s okay. I am on my journey.
Celebrating life, embracing risk.
To stay behind, living the life others have in mind for me
The safe life.
Is to refuse the gift of life, turn my back on it.
People want us to go on their trip.

Inside myself, the godhood, the sacred
My journey honors that
Celebrate that which is me, yet larger than me
Better than me. The creator’s mindset.
By having the courage of that, a belief in that.
I search for the thing that is searching for me.
The journey toward destinations bigger than I can imagine
Where, how it will end is unknown. Can’t be known. No guarantees.

Uncertainty inspires humility
The sacred journey starts with sacrifice
The sacrifice of security, of comfort, the abandonment of rules
Rules meant to insulate from risk, from the deep experience of
life and all that it has to offer.
The good and the bad.
Will the gods join me on my journey? Or forsake me?
I take a step towards them
The first step, the first risk, has to be mine.

But then kindred spirits join me, support me
And I support them.
Join each other’s energy field
Greater than the sum of its parts
Energy fields that create new energy
An energy field that can combine and unite with our

Interior energy field.
Energy, creative energy.
Discovering that, hooking into that
Creating out of that
The positive energy field of individuals honoring the gift of life.

Ultimately that’s what the journey’s about.
Trials and tribulations that transform
The failures that teach, that we need to pay attention to
The successes and joy that brighten your path, the path that is
Yours alone
Dark on both sides,
The path of a big life.