Joseph Campbell was a professor of mythology, speaker and prolific writer, whose influence was so far-reaching that Newsweek, upon his death in 1987, called him “one of the rarest of intellectuals in American life: a serious thinker who has been embraced by the popular culture.”
Campbell applied Jungian theory to his study of mythology and added his own perspective in the realm of spirituality and human potential.
He believed that all religions, at their core, sought the same elemental life force from which everything came, within which everything currently exists, and into which everything will return. Although this cannot be expressed in words, spiritual rituals and stories refer to the force through the use of “metaphors”—these metaphors being the various stories, deities, and objects of spirituality we see in the world. For example, the Genesis myth in the Bible ought not be taken as a literal description of actual events, but rather its poetic, metaphorical meaning should be examined for clues concerning the fundamental truths of the world and our existence.
Accordingly, Campbell believed the religions of the world to be the various, culturally influenced “masks” of the same fundamental, transcendent truths.
In his own words: “People feel panicky at the thought that we might all have something in common, that they are giving up some exclusive hold on the truth. It is something like discovering that you are a Frenchman and a human being at the same time. That is exactly the challenge that the great religions face in the Space Age.”
Campbell was fascinated with what he viewed as basic, universal truths, expressed in different manifestations across different cultures. For example, in the preface to his book: “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, he said a goal of his was to demonstrate similarities between Eastern and Western religions. In his four-volume series of books “The Masks of God”, Campbell tried to summarize the main spiritual threads common throughout the world while examining their local manifestations.
Note – excerpts above taken from The Joseph Campbell Foundation site and Wikipedia
From “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” by Joseph Campbell:
“We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us — the labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.”
My novel, “Vision Speak“, has just been named a Category Finalist in the Eric Hoffer Awards for Independent Book Publishing.
Because “Vision Speak” was originally published in 2010 and this is the first time I have submitted to these awards, I had to enter in the Legacy Fiction category as many of the books up for awards would have been published in the previous year.
From the Eric Hoffer Awards Site: “After our rigorous first round of judging, less than 10% of the titles become category finalists. We consider this a distinction of its own merit and, in 2008, began officially listing these titles on-line. Finalists are selected by category scoring. There are typically 1-6 books per category selected as a finalist. Finalists fall into approximately the upper 10% of all books that entered the contest.”
A TV Bible and Pilot Script have been developed for Vision Speak. The pilot script was submitted to the Screencraft Pilot Launch Script competition.
The quarter-finalists have been announced and “Vision Speak, the Series” made the first round! For more about the novel or the series script, check out the vision-speak.com site.
Logline
A young woman’s emerging abilities propel her from shy art student to a catalyst for humanity’s transformation – or destruction – in a dangerous post-apocalyptic world.
Theme
Vision Speak is about exploring the balance between the brilliance of humanity and our destructive, dangerous tendencies and how we might rise above them. Concepts involving the connectedness of all living beings and our untapped potential, especially with our “unconscious mind” and spiritual natures are explored.
I’ve always been fascinated by that time in our distant past when we shared this planet with another sentient species – the Neanderthals. No doubt my initial interest was fueled by Jean M Auel’s incredible books, starting with the “The Clan of the Cave Bears”.
When I was working on my novel, “Vision Speak”, I spent some time researching the evolution of man and the crossroads that our collective species faced at this time 40,000 years ago and what drove us to become an advanced species with mastery over the planet. Early steps toward this seemed to be formed during that crucial period of time in Europe leading into the last ice age. Jared Diamond’s book “Guns, Germs, and Steel” had some interesting information about the evolution of humans, in particular analyzing why some areas of the world progressed at a rapid technological pace while others remained relatively primitive.
Recently, I came across a fascinating BBC series, called “The Human Journey” on this very topic, which I highly recommend. This is available on youtube with the particular episode about humans and Neandertals in Europe at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfIv76FrHDUHomo neanderthalensis, or the Neanderthals, are a distant cousin on the evolution chain to our species, Homo Sapiens. There is evidence that they arrived in Europe around 800,000 years ago. The earliest Homo Sapiens appeared on the scene in Africa around 160,000 to 200,000 years ago.
The 40,000 year old mystery that anthropologists have been investigating involves the survival of the human race during this time in our history when we co-habited Europe with the other sentient species. When our homo sapien ancestors immigrated to Europe out of Africa, the Neanderthals were already well established there. There is no evidence of warfare between our two species and yet the Neanderthals, who rivaled humans in the areas of brain power and physical strength, eventually became extinct while humanity evolved and prospered. Why? Experts have speculated that a key factor was our wider social networks, as evidenced by spiritual practices and gatherings, icons and artwork, as opposed to the more isolated grouping of Neanderthal populations.
So, our species’ ability to share ideas and connect beyond our immediate social group may have been what allowed us to evolve and thrive even in the face of scarce resources during an ice age.
Yet many have questioned the viability of our species in the centuries to come. Certainly, we’ve all feared where we may be going when we consider the effects of war and oppression, after viewing evidence of human carnage, cruelty, and torture, when we come to understand our growing populations and the effect of our progress on our planet’s diminishing resources.
Perhaps our growing world community enabled by social networking can provide a key to our survival from these dangers.
This coming Friday, December 2nd, come to the Book Launch and Book Fair at the York Simcoe Literacy Council in Newmarket. For more information, visit author Heather Lambert’s site at http://cassiusvampire.com/news-and-events
I will be onsite to sell my novel, “Vision Speak” (www.vision-speak.com), along with other local authors. As this is Heather’s book launch, she will do a reading from Cassius Blood Rights, her new vampire novel, at 6pm
The Blue Mountain Foundation for the Arts (www.bmfa.on.ca) in Collingwood is a juried show featuring creative work by local artists and artisans. “Vision Speak” is available for sale at this show during November and December of 2011.
WINTERS GIFT
November 3 to December 31st – The Arts Centre
The Blue Mountain Foundation for the Arts presents Winters Gift, a fine art and craft show and sale. Opening on November 3 and running until December 31, 2011 the show includes the work of over 30 of the regions talented artists and artisans. Pottery, jewellery, woodworking, glass, painting and more will be beautifully presented in the historic Arts Centre building adjacent to the Gayety Theatre. Support local arts while taking home an exquisite one of a kind gift.
The Arts Centre will be open Wednesday through Saturday, 11 – 5 pm and Sundays 1- 4 pm.
In previous posts, I’ve shared a little bit about the ups and downs over the past year of first releasing my novel, “Vision Speak”, with a publisher that didn’t work out and ultimately making the decision that I needed to move on. Since then, I got my rights back and last month, re-released “Vision Speak” via “Future Day Publications” (my company), printed by Ardith. The beautiful new cover for the book was designed by my sister, Rebecca Marsden.
As I am very busy with my job in the software industry and have slowed down promotional activities for the moment, I’ve been experimenting with a new medium for sharing my work – Youtube, I’ve created a Youtube channel called “Future Day Productions” which will have a mix of personal videos, “Vision Speak” related videos and video-blogs (vlogs). I’ve included a couple of the first videos I’ve recently produced below. These are a novice effort but fun to do and I’m excited by the possibilities. Perhaps I’m having too much fun mixing in a variety of pictures and video clips. You’ll have to let me know if you have some suggestions..
Could we become “superconscious” beings if we were able to master both our conscious and unconscious psyches? If we are, in fact, connected to everything in the universe over a quantum field of energy, what could man become with awareness and control of our superconscious beings?
Most of us are intimately acquainted with our conscious mind – the endless thoughts and emotions, judgements and reactions, the logic and reasoning abilities we use in our day to day life. One of our greatest challenges is how to quiet our mind, master these thoughts, and keep ourselves present (instead of flying off into the past to relive encounters or in the future to imagine what we might say or do).
If we can gain mastery over our conscious mind, we have the potential to be powerful beings, present in our daily lives, loving and grateful, sending positive affirmations to our inner selves and to others. If all of humanity were able to achieve this, we would already be evolving to a higher state as a species.
But what more is possible, if we could gain mastery and awareness of both conscious and unconscious? What would that mean? How would we be different?
Carl Jung identified the unconscious mind as having two distinct areas: the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. The personal unconscious contains our lost memories, painful experiences that are repressed, subliminal perceptions (that we may not have consciously observed), and other contents and abilities that are not yet ready for consciousness (representing our potential).
But beyond this personal, very individual level, Jung identified the collective unconscious which contains instinctive and other elements, a blueprint within our psyches, that have commonalities within tribes, races, nations, and even all of humanity. Evidence appears in dreams, mythology, creative works such as art and literature, throughout the ages and all over the world. Jung said the collective unconscious is “detached from anything personal and it is entirely universal and… its contents can be found everywhere...” This deep inner part of our being has also been defined as the spiritual side, where we are connected to all life, to the universal life force that flows through all of us. In “Vision Speak”, I imagined that we could consciously connect with others using this ‘vision source’.
Deepak Chopra has defined pure consciousness as the field of “all possibilities and infinite creativity“.
Taking these ideas to the another level…. for over two decades, scientists have been involved in discovery about the nature of consciousness (where is it? what is it??) Many have reached the conclusion that human consciousness can best be explored with quantum physics, hence the popular term – “Quantum Consciousness”. Although the early scientists espousing these theories may have been considered renegades, with more and more scientific research backing these claims, they are now leading experts in this emerging field.
If you haven’t seen the documentary movie called “What the Bleep do we Know?”, this is a good place to start. It’s available in it’s entirety (in 12 parts) on Youtube. Check out the trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QlZ5O8_bGk or the roster of scientists involved at http://whatthebleep.com/scientists/ . Lynn McTaggart’s bestselling books – “The Field” and “The Intention Experiment” and Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol” brought to public awareness the scientific breakthroughs in the areas of quantum physics and consciousness with progressive scientists such as those at the Institute for Noetic Science (http://noetic.org/). Stuart Hameroff and Deepak Chopra and others have written and broadcast continued findings and dialog on this subject.
The underlying discovery driving all of this excitement is that all living creatures are interconnected in a quantum field of energy. Our thoughts, our dreams, our beings are not just encased within our bodies or our brains but actually exist at a quantum level beyond what we had ever imagined in a field of all possibility.
The implications for this are fantastic. Our thoughts, our intentions, our consciousness create our reality.
And taking this to another place, I imagine that if we achieve a ‘superconscious’ state then we will be able to connect at a deeply spiritual and emotional level where words and misunderstanding will no longer be necessary. I imagine that we will find other life in the universe – perhaps we will connect to those that have left us to move to another dimension or perhaps we will find other life forms who we may never meet and could certainly never talk to but within our superconscious spirit, maybe there will be a common vision source which will allow us to communicate..
I will cover more on this in future posts, especially an indepth review of some of the ideas behind quantum consciousness.
The following is the presentation with three short readings from the “Vision Speak” Book Launch in February.
In “Vision Speak”, a powerful matriarch leaves an explosive legacy for her great granddaughter. Willow’s expanding consciousness threatens her society but may hold the key to humanity’s future.
People have asked where I came up with the ideas for this story and what was I thinking…
Vision Speak Book Launch – Reading
When I began this journey, I was plagued by questions.
Simple ones like: Why are we here? Why do some people die young? Why can’t we live in harmony? …and … Why is there so much senseless violence in the world?
These questions led me in a variety of directions and some of the research underlying the concepts in this book included:
– The history and evolution of man and civilization
– World Religions – the beauty, the wisdom and the sorrow, futility and failings
– New Age Philosophies and Spirituality
– Jung and Freud, particularly Jung’s theories on the collective unconscious
– Joseph Campbell and his ideas on mythology and religion and their metaphorical value
I know this sounds heavy but it’s not really, not at the level that I was searching. I’m no expert in any of these areas, just someone who craves answers to unanswerable questions.
Basically, I found glimmers of wisdom and imagined the rest.
This story takes place centuries after global wars and devastation have led to a new world order. The Republic now controls and restricts all spiritual practices, intent on preventing the mistakes of the past from ever happening again.
Willow has violated her Spiritual Contract, secretly trained in “Vision Speak” by her mentor, Elzabeth. In this first reading towards the end of Chapter 1, Willow and Elzabeth are connecting at a deep, inner place…
Starting at the bottom of page 9:
After that, time swept away. Despite her agitated morning, Willow reached the state quickly, effortlessly—with minimal guidance from her mentor. It seemed to go faster every time. Within minutes, she became immersed in a waking dream, a trance-like existence where she was still aware, still conscious of her surroundings and yet her inner being was animated and exposed as never before. The old matriarch and her young descendant interacted with visions and feelings, thought-pictures and senses. It was like an inner voice, a connection of directed, shared dreams. Great Bet called it Vision Speak. The two women were oblivious to the absolute silence in the room. To them, their surroundings were vibrantly alive.
Finally they stopped. Willow sensed that her great grandmother was growing weary. Returning her attention to the physical world, she gawked at the time display. Two hours had passed. She resigned herself to missing her Experimental Art class too, yet it didn’t seem important anymore. The room, its occupants, the outside world—everything—had a fresh glow. The world was transforming before her eyes. It all coalesced unlike ever before.
Elzabeth had sunk deeper into her pillows, her eyes glazed. Concerned, Willow bounded out of her chair, energy pulsing through her. She leaned over her great grandmother, smoothing back her silvery-white halo. “Great Bet. Are you okay?”
Deep wrinkles and lips curved upward. “I’m wonderful, so wonderful thanks to you.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. Willow leaned in closer. “Oh, my dear, why didn’t I teach you long ago? I didn’t sense the possibility until I saw you again at my birthday party. It struck me that day so clearly that you were open but even then, I had no idea what you would be capable of. The others will be shocked when they experience your abilities.”
“You must tell me about the others. Who are they?”
“I meant the Vision Speak group at the Center, especially Jill, Aaron, and Simon. But, you can’t meet them yet. I don’t know how I’m going to explain this.” Her eyelids fluttered but she continued. “I’ll sort this out before I’m gone, my dear. I promise.” Her words trailed off at the end so that Willow had to strain to hear.
Leaning forward, she kissed the wrinkled forehead and pulled the covers up. “I’d better go now, Great Bet. You need to rest.”
“Wait.” Elzabeth’s eyes shot open and she gripped the young hand. “I forgot to tell you something.”
“What is it?”
“When I die…”
“Shh—no, don’t say that.”
“Don’t be foolish.” The frail woman snapped. “I’m dying soon and it’s long past due so don’t waste my remaining time with platitudes.”
“Okay, sorry.” She mumbled. “Please continue.”
“I want you to know that I’ve changed my will. I’ve made you my Protector.”
Willow gasped. To be the keeper and protector of memories was a privilege, usually entrusted to someone more mature, someone who had known the departed for many years. This meant that she, and she alone, would be responsible for Elzabeth’s Life Journals.
“Oh, I’m honoured, Great Bet. Really I am, but what will Grandma Sybil say? What will my mother say?” Her voice raised a decibel when she mentioned her mother. Willow sank back down into the chair, chewing on her fingernails.
“I don’t give a donkey’s ass what they say. I’m tired now, Willow, we’ll talk more later. You should know that before I found you, I wasn’t entrusting my journals to anyone in the family. And now that I’ve discovered you, now that I see what you can do, this is the only way. But, I know the legacy I’m leaving you…it won’t be easy. There may be, uh, interference.”
“What do you mean?”
The old woman closed her eyes again. She was silent for seconds that stretched out like minutes. She never answered Willow’s question but she did whisper one more instruction. “Please be careful. Keep the journals secret, even with the family—at least until you’re ready.” She smiled weakly. “I’ll explain more next time.”
But there never was a next time.
Before we jump ahead 17 chapters, here’s a brief background on what’s happened.
Elzabeth dies, leaving her journals to Willow in a public ceremony garnering unwanted attention from Republic leaders, spies, and even her family. Willow joins the “Vision Speak” group and her abilities advance rapidly. She finds herself attracted to one of their leaders, Aaron. They’re out together when they discover they’re being followed by Republic agents and Aaron gets a glimpse of Willow’s secret abilities for the first time.
In this scene, they’ve escaped to a secluded garden where Willow is reading a sealed entry from Elzabeth’s journal to Aaron. The entry describes an unexpected encounter with a powerful presence that Elzabeth could not explain. Willow is seeking Aaron’s advice but they get distracted..
Second excerpt (from Chapter 18, mid page 96-97)
Looking back at what happened as I record this entry, I struggle to find the words to describe the actual encounter. What stands out in my mind is the power of the visitor. I cannot say what the intention was—the force of it took me by surprise and my only response was to flee, to sever the connection.
I am home now and for the first time, I question what this new evolution of the human spirit will bring. Have I been too naïve? I’ve been so convinced that once all humans could relate at this level, understand each other to the depths of their souls that senseless violence, misunderstandings and manipulations would cease to hinder mankind’s progress.
But what if I am wrong? What if there are evil forces that will use this power for destructive means? I worry now that perhaps the cult has been resurrected. I thought we had disbanded them and their Sacred Trance sessions but now I don’t know. I pray that I have not been wrong.
Willow finished the passage and turned her unit off, gazing at Aaron. She admired the contours of his face in shadow, his wavy, thick hair. Not for the first time that night, she had to contain an urge to reach out and touch him, stroking the wild hair down, running her fingers along his muscular arms and back.
“Whew—that’s intense. I wasn’t aware of this.” Aaron looked off into the distance as he talked, searching his memory banks. “I’ll ask my mother if Elzabeth shared this with her but I think she would have mentioned it.
Do you know what she meant by the cult?”
Willow slipped the unit into her handbag, and set it down on the grass beside them. She stretched out her long legs, leaning back with her hands holding her weight behind her, gazing up at the majestic branches overhead. She knew Aaron’s eyes followed her movements, first her legs then tracing his way along her body up to her throat and face. Could he really think that she didn’t notice? Her long hair hung back behind her, almost touching the ground.
Softly she responded, careful not to disturb the currents that were humming between them. “No, I was hoping you might know.” She looked into his eyes then. “Have you ever experienced anything like that?” It was dark, they could barely see each other but something snapped between them.
Although she stayed perfectly still, she drew him in. It was imperceptible—a slight arch of her hips, the staccato sound of her breathing, perhaps pheromones triggered by her intense longing. He responded as if on a string.
