Profiles in Mentorship : JOB

This is Your work. 

You better take care of me, Lord.

If You •don't•, You're gonna have •me• on Your hands.

William Blake did a series of engravings based on the Book of Job, rendering in immaculate tableaux Job’s trials and suffering. It is as if Blake through his art and the Bible through the means of prose refer to the same subliminal truth, as if this story, the Book of Job, contains essential truths that we can only behold fleetingly and through the lens of image or language. 

In one tableau, Yaweh, or God, from on high shows Job ‘the behemoth and the leviathan that I made, as I made thee’. These creatures as rendered by Blake are dreadful and uncanny. The dumb, muscular, skinless beast, all sinew and mouth. The deep-dwelling sea serpent ever present but invisible in its awful depths. 

When regarding these silently screaming images the horror of God’s power is awesome, more terrifying though is the suggestion of ambivalence and that implicitly God The Creator is Not Only Good. 

In these images Job and Yaweh look the same, as if both the man made of flesh and the divine father are enshrined within a single form. 

These hypnotic tableaux induce a visionary state where we confront that God is within us and our own moral choices determine God’s values. That the capacity for Darkness and unconsciousness is as much part of the individual’s psychological make-up as the inclination to love and kindness. 

That we HAVEto be Good, because if We are not Good, then God is not Good, that God’s Grace is realized through us and if we do not realize it then it does not exist.

Like a terrible quantum equation where our intentions create all that is manifest. Do not be lost in the leviathan deep. Do not be trapped in the dumb carnality of form, transcend; transcend that God may imbue The World with His Grace through you. 

I Could Not Have Let That Young Man Go

“Say, for instance… most of us here are mostly pretty counter-culture types – y’know, we like our drugs, we like this and that; we like breaking a few rules. 

But we don’t like The Police, in general. 

Who here loves The Police? Hands up.

Nice one! Coz I’m gonna teach you to LOVE The Police.....”

“ARE WE DOING TOO MUCH OR TOO LITTLE?” 

Wonder Woman asked, cradling a dying bird in a dust-bowl landscape. 

“WHEN DOES INTERVENTION BECOME DOMINATION?”

“I CAN ONLY TELL YOU WHAT I BELIEVE, DIANA,” 

Superman replied. 

“HUMANKIND HAS TO BE ALLOWED TO CLIMB TO ITS OWN DESTINY. 

WE CAN’T CARRY THEM THERE.”

Then the Flash countered with: 

“BUT THAT’S WHAT SHE’S SAYING. 

WHAT’S THE POINT? 

WHY SHOULD THEY NEED US AT ALL?”

“TO CATCH THEM IF THEY FALL,” 

said Superman, gazing nobly at the sky. 

Issue no. 1 of the relaunched Justice League of America in 1987 had depicted its characters from an overhead perspective, giving the reader an elevated position that allowed us to look down on a newly humanized and relatable group of individuals.

At my request, Howard Porter drew our first cover shot of the JLA from below, endowing them with the majesty of towering statues on Mount Olympus, putting readers at the level of children gazing up at adults. JLA was a superhero title kids could read to feel grown-up and adults could read to feel young again.”

“Just beyond the railing that keeps cars from rolling over, a Young Man actually clearly about to jump and preparing himself to jump. 

The Police car stopped. 

The Policeman on the right jumps out to grab The Boy, and grabs him just as he jumped and was himself being pulled over, and would have gone over if The Second Cop hadn’t gotten around, grabbed him and pull the two of them back. 

And The Policeman was asked, 

“Why didn’t you let go? 

I mean, you would have lost your life?” 

And you see what had happened to that man, 

this is what’s known as one pointed meditation 

Everything Else in His Life dropped off. 

His Duty to His Family

His Duty to His Job

His Duty to His Own Career

All of his Wishes and Hopes for Life, 

just disappeared and he was about to go. 

And his answer was, 

“I couldn’t let go.

If I had let that Young Man go, 

I could not have lived another Day of My Life.”

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

The God of Death is The Lord of Sex at the same time.

BILL MOYERS: 

What do you mean?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

It’s a marvelous thing. 

One after another, you can see these gods Ghede, The Death God of the Haitian voodoo, is also The Sex God. 

Wotan had one eye covered and the other uncovered, do you see, and at the same time was The Lord of Life.

Osiris, The Lord of Death and The Lord of The Generation of Life. 

It’s a basic theme: That Which Dies is Born. 

You have to have Death in order to have Life.

Now, this is the origin thought really of the head hunt, in Southeast Asia and particularly in the Indonesian zone. 

The head hunt, right up to now, has been a sacred act, 

it’s a sacred killing: 

Unless there is Death, there cannot be Birth, and a Young Man, before he can be permitted to Marry and Become a Father, must have gone forth and had his kill.

BILL MOYERS: 

What does that say to you?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Well, that every generation has to die in order that the next generation should come. 

As soon as you beget or give birth to a child, you are the dead one; the child is the new life and you are simply the protector of that new life.

BILL MOYERS: 

Your time has come and you know it.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Yeah, well, that’s why there is this deep psychological association of begetting and dying.

BILL MOYERS: 

Isn’t there some relationship between what you’re saying and this fact, 

that a father will give his life for his son, 

a mother will give her life for her child?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

There’s a wonderful paper. 

I don’t whether you knew it that I would love to talk to this point there’s a wonderful paper by Schopenhauer, who’s one of my three favorite philosophers, called 

“The Foundation of Morality.”

There he asks exactly the question that you’ve asked. 

How is it that a human being can so participate in the peril or pain of another, that without thought, spontaneously, he sacrifices his own life to the other? 

How can this happen? 

That what we normally think of as the first law of nature, namely self-preservation, is suddenly dissolved, there’s a breakthrough.

In Hawaii, some four or five years ago, there was an extraordinary adventure that represents this problem. 

There’s a place there called the Pali, where the winds from the north, the trade winds from the north, come breaking through a great ridge of rocks and of mountain, and they come through with a great blast of wind. 

The people like to go up there to get their hair blown around and so forth, or to commit suicide, you know, like jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. 

Well, a police car was on its way up early, a little road that used to go up there, and they saw just beyond the railing that keeps cars from rolling over, a young man actually clearly about to jump and prepare himself to jump. 

The police car stopped. 

The policeman on the right jumps out to grab the boy, and grabs him just as he jumped and was himself being pulled over, and would have gone over if the second cop hadn’t gotten around, grabbed him and pull the two of them back. 

There was a long description of this, it was a marvelous thing, in the newspapers at that time.

And the policeman was asked, “Why didn’t you let go? I mean, you would have lost your life?” 

And you see what had happened to that man, this is what’s known as one pointed meditation everything else in his life dropped off. His duty to his family, his duty to his job, his duty to his own career, all of his wishes and hopes for life, just disappeared and he was about to go. And his answer was, “I couldn’t let go. If I had,” and I’m quoting almost word for word, “if I’d let that young man go, I could not have lived another day of my life.”

How come? 

Schopenhauer’s answer is, this is the breakthrough of a metaphysical realization that you and the other are one. 

And that the separateness is only an effect of the temporal forms of sensibility of time and space. 

And a true reality is in that unity with all life. 

It is a metaphysical truth that becomes spontaneously realized, because it’s the real truth of your life. 

Now, you might say the hero is the one who has given his physical life, you might say, to some order of realization of that truth. 

It may appear that I’m one with my tribe, or I’m one with people of a certain kind, or I’m one with life. 

This is not a concept; this is a realization, do you see what I mean?

BILL MOYERS: 

No, explain it.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

And the concepts of love your neighbor and all are to put you in tune with that fact, but whether you love your neighbor or not, bing, the thing grabs you and you do this thing. 

You don’t even know who it is. 

That policeman didn’t know who that young man was. 

And Schopenhauer says in small ways you can see this happening every day all the time. 

This is a theme that can be seen moving life in the world, people doing nice things for each other.

BILL MOYERS: 

What do you think has happened to this mythic idea of the hero in our culture today?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

It comes up in an experience. 

I think, I remember during the Vietnam war, seeing on the television the young men in helicopters going out to rescue one of their companions at great risk to themselves. 

They didn’t have to rescue that young man; that’s the same thing working. 

It puts them in touch with the experience of being alive. 

Going to the office every day, you don’t get that experience, but suddenly you’re ripped out into being alive. 

And life is pain and life is suffering and life is horror, but by God, you’re alive and it’s spectacular. And this is a case of being alive, rescuing that young man.

BILL MOYERS: 

But I also know a man who said once, after years of standing on the platform of the subway, 

“I die a little bit down there every day, but I know I’m doing so for my family.” 

There are small acts of heroism that occur without regard to the nobility or the notoriety that you attract for it.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

That’s right, that’s right.

BILL MOYERS: 

And the mother does it by the isolation she endures in behalf of the family, of raising…

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Motherhood is a sacrifice. 

On our veranda in Hawaii, there are little birds that come that Jean likes to feed. 

And each year there have been one or two mothers, mother birds. 

And if you’ve ever seen a mother bird plagued by her progeny for food, that the mother should regurgitate their meal to them, and the two of them, or five of them in one case, flopping all over this poor little mother, they bigger than she in some cases, you just think, well, this is the symbol of motherhood. 

This is just giving of your substance, every thing, to this progeny.

There should be it in marriage. 

A marriage is a relationship. 

When you make a sacrifice in marriage, you’re not sacrificing to The Other, you’re sacrificing to The Eelationship. 

And this is symbolised, for example, in that Chinese image of the tai chi, the tao, you know, with the dark and the light interacting, it’s a well-known sign. 

That is the relationship of yang and yin, male and female, which is what a marriage is. 

And that’s what you are, you’re no longer This, 

you’re The Relationship. 

And so marriage, I would say, 

is not a love affair, it’s An Ordeal.

BILL MOYERS: 

An ordeal?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

The ordeal is sacrifice of ego to the relationship, of a two-ness which now becomes the one.

BILL MOYERS: 

One not only biologically but spiritually, 

and primarily spiritually.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Primarily spiritually.

BILL MOYERS: 

But the necessary function of marriage, in order to create our own images and perpetuate ourselves in children, but it’s not the primary one, as you say.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

No, that’s really just the elementary aspect of marriage. 

There are two completely different stages of marriage. 

First is the youthful marriage, following the wonderful impulse, you know, that nature has given us, in the interplay of the sexes biologically. 

And in the reproduction of children. 

But there comes a time when the child graduates from the family, and the family is left. 

I’ve been amazed at the number of my friends who in their forties or fifties go apart, who have had a perfectly decent life together with the child, but they interpreted their union in terms of relationship through the child. 

They did not interpret it in terms of their own personal relationship to each other.

BILL MOYERS: 

Utterly incompatible with the idea of 'Doing One’s Own Thing'?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

It’s not one’s own thing, you see. 

It is in a sense one’s own thing, 

but the one isn’t just you, it’s the two together. 

And that’s a purely mythological image, of the sacrifice of the visible entity for a transcendent unit, cracking eggs to make an omelet, you know? 

And by marrying The Right Person, 

we reconstruct the image of the incarnate god, 

and that’s what marriage is.

BILL MOYERS: 

The right person. How does one choose the right person?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Your heart tells you; it ought to.

BILL MOYERS: 

Your inner being.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

That’s the mystery.

BILL MOYERS: 

You recognize your other self.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Well, I don’t know, but there’s a flash that comes and something in you knows that this is the one.

Profiles in Mentorship : The Institution

Bureau 19 has recommended desk duty.

Clark :

Perfect.

Except, you know, in The Field.

What? 

Clark :

I said, that's great.

Desk duty.

Perfect.

I'll bring the desk with me.

That was my feeling.

Small desk, obviously.

Maybe it folds up.

But that way I'll have it while I'm Making The World Safe for Democracy some more.

Specialists don't —

Clark :

Yeah, okay.

Here's The Deal —

I have burns over 40% of my body and I spent six weeks with a tube jammed into the head of my dick while my husband cried himself to sleep every night.

We were ambushed at The Pool.

Men Died.

And I am going to finish what I started.

So if you want me behind a desk, you better find a portable one.

Because the second I walk out of this room, I'm going to War.

“Perhaps these are the perfect conditions for Mentorship: a Mentor, a Mentee, a Method and an Institute. The Hindu guru–disciple relationship typically functions along these lines, as does martial arts training. 

Interestingly, neither of these paths have an obvious Western counterpart; the most obvious comparison – trade apprenticeship – is contextualized by commerce and professional necessity. In my experience, mentorship is more successful when there is no financial component.

The most immediate and obvious thing that Chip taught me was that it is okay to talk about your feelings, more than okay, MANDATORY. 

In fact that’s ALL we did, talked about feeling vulnerable, inadequate, fearful and angry.”

Abhinava tells us that the process of creative contemplation or holistic meditative inquiry (bhāvanā-krama) that leads to experiential knowing of reality is based on these three supports: 

❖ sound and careful reflection on your experience (sat-tarka) 

❖ the guidance of a great teacher (sad-guru) who is skilled in meditative enquiry and has attained its fruit 

❖ the wisdom of the scriptures (sad-āgama) 

When these three come together in agreement, Abhinava suggests, we know we have arrived at Truth. 

One or two of them is insufficient for certainty. 

In fact, allowing ourselves to abide in uncertainty about anything not supported by all three keeps us open and in a process of learning that closes down if we prematurely decide that we know. 

Thou Art

BILL MOYERS: 

So The Story of The Buffalo’s Wife was told to confirm the reverence.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

That’s right.

BILL MOYERS: 

What happened when the white man came and slaughtered this animal of reverence?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

That was a sacramental violation. 

I mean, in the eighties, when the buffalo hunt was undertaken, you know, with Kit Carson…

BILL MOYERS: 

The 1880s, a hundred years ago.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

— and Buffalo Bill and so forth. When I was a boy, whenever we went for sleigh rides we had a buffalo robe. 

Buffalo, buffalo, buffalo robes all over the place. 

This was the sacred animal to the Indians. 

These hunters go out with repeating rifles, and then shoot down the whole herd and leave it there. 

Take the skin to sell and the body’s left to rot. 

This is a sacrilege, and it really is a sacrilege.

BILL MOYERS: 

It turned the buffalo from a “thou-”

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

To an “it.”

BILL MOYERS: 

The Indians addressed the buffalo as “thou.”

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

As a “thou”.

BILL MOYERS: 

As an object of reverence.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

The Indians addressed life as a “thou,” I mean, trees and stones, everything else. 

You can address anything as a “thou”, and you can feel the change in your psychology as you do it.

 The ego that sees a “thou” is not the same ego that sees an “it.” 

Your whole psychology changes when you address things as an “it.” 

And when you go to war with a people, 

the problem of the newspapers is to turn those people into its, so that they’re not “thous.”

BILL MOYERS: 

That was an incredible moment in the evolution of American society, when the buffalo were slaughtered. 

That was the final exclamation point behind the destruction of the Indian civilization, because you were destroying…

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Can you imagine what the experience must have been for a people within 10 years to lose their environment, to lose their food supply, to lose the object of the… the central object of their ritual life?

BILL MOYERS: 

So it is in your belief that it was in this period of hunting man and woman, the time of hunting man, that human beings begin to sense a stirring of the mythic imagination, the wonder of things that they didn’t know.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

There is this burst of magnificent art and all the evidence you need of a mythic imagination in full career.

Profiles in Mentorship : Syd and Gabrielle

GABRIELLE HALLER,

Mother of LEGION :

They're insane, you know.

Babies.

SYDNEY BARRETT,

A Spirit from The Future :

All of them? 

GABRIELLE HALLER,

Mother of LEGION :

The way their brain works.

They have no logic.

If they see something, it exists, and then when it's gone —

SYDNEY BARRETT,

A Spirit from The Future :

You know, it's not crazy babies that worry me.

It's The Men They Become.

Like a Fire, falling in love with a Fire.

We try to smother them, put them out, but they just burn us up.

GABRIELLE HALLER,

Mother of LEGION :

It bothers you, because you think you matter.

That people matter.

SYDNEY BARRETT,

A Spirit from The Future :

What's the point of living if not? 

GABRIELLE HALLER,

Mother of LEGION :

Have you ever seen a mass grave? All people, with names, with families now just a pile.

What's the meaning of that? 

SYDNEY BARRETT,

A Spirit from The Future :

But you're Here.

You have a child.

GABRIELLE HALLER,

Mother of LEGION :

All animals fight to live.

Whether they want to or not.

“Some time into our relationship it occurred to me that you have the family you are born with and the family you consciously appoint. 

Meredith became an appointed mother. I don’t mean for this to diminish the vital role of my own mother, nor do I mean to say that I have depended on Meredith to the enormous degree that the word ‘mother’ suggests. 

It is that on some biochemical or philosophical level I recognized her as a portal for maternal nurture of a type that I required as an adult. 

A mentor is a type of hero and a hero is a symbol, much of the work they do for you is in effect done by you, yourself, in your own mind. 

Take the example of Meredith and the revealing question she asked in this instance. She revealed to me that I was living dishonestly and demonstrated, by her own being, that there was an alternative. 

Now I don’t need to set up camp at the foot of her bed or be there at the breakfast table sobbing, while she feeds her actual family, to receive the benefits of her wisdom. I just need to be open to education, willing to change. In this way we author our reality.

I determined to make Meredith a ‘mother’. I decided to accept her nurture.”

Excerpt From

Mentors

by Russell Brand

SYDNEY BARRETT :

So, is he a good baby? David? 

GABRIELLE HALLER,

Mother of LEGION :

He, uh He cries a lot, like he knows something.

SYDNEY BARRETT,

A Spirit from The Future :

What could he know? 

GABRIELLE HALLER,

Mother of LEGION :

Me.

SYDNEY BARRETT :

People talk about having a second childhood.

What they mean is they feel young again.

But I've had two actual childhoods.

Meaning I was a baby twice.

I grew up Twice.

The first time I ran, 

and then I walked.

This time I crawled, 

I walked,

I felt Safe.

That's all he wants — To feel Safe.

That's all he wants — To feel Safe.

GABRIELLE HALLER,

Mother of LEGION :

My grandmother had The Sickness.

She was, uh — [Speaks Romany]

Spells, Moods, she Spoke in Tongues.

I remember her eyes.

Miserable and Giddy, like a Happy Death.

My mother was 16 when The Sickness hit her.

In the witching hour, she woke up laughing.

Didn't stop for 14 days.

SYDNEY BARRETT :

You're talking about Mental Illness.

GABRIELLE HALLER,

Mother of LEGION :

Such a clinical name for something so raw.

Like an animal with its Heart on The Outside.

SYDNEY BARRETT :

It's so odd.

I never thought of that.

It's hereditary, What's Wrong with Him.

Why He's Like This.

GABRIELLE HALLER,

Mother of LEGION :

Who? 

SYDNEY BARRETT :

Listen to me.

This baby, this little baby.

You HAVE to love him.

Okay? Like his life depends on it.

Like The World will end if you don't.

Hold him and Love him.

Don't let The Monsters in.

Because when he's grown, it will be too late.

Hey, look at me.

We all have our role to play in  This War we're fighting, 

Good against Evil.

There is no Good stronger than Mother's Love.

Do you understand? 

GABRIELLE HALLER,

Mother of LEGION :

I think so.

Are you really here? 

SYDNEY BARRETT :

No.

Profiles in Mentorship : LEGION and Switch

LEGION :

I'm David.

Come on in.

I'll make some Tea.

DAVID: 

Yes, it pays to be kind.

DAVID 2 

[SCOTTISH ACCENT.] : 

Are you out of your mind?!?

"Is black tea okay?" 

What are you gonna do with This One? 

Give her a wee nib of The Blue Stuff and sling her in with all The Others?

“Honesty is non-negotiable in a relationship of this nature because you need to Trust someone if you’re going to allow them to Help you, and they of course need to be dealing with The Truth of Who You Are, not the Facebook, press release version of yourself you’ve been fobbing the world off with up till now. 

What I brought to the relationship, I now know, was Honesty, Open-mindedness and Willingness – known as ‘HOW’ in 12 Step jargon. 

This is the attitude I deploy still in any relationship where I am The Student. Whether in meditation, Jiu Jitsu or business affairs I approach my teacher, my ‘mentor’, in an honest, open-minded and willing way. 

I recognize that they have something I want, that they have achieved something that I haven’t, that as I am in the moment I sit before them, I am insufficient, and for the transfer of energy or education to take place I must be mentally and spiritually prepared. 

This is as true for a yoga class as it is for a Spanish lesson or therapy.”

Excerpt From

Mentors by

Russell Brand

LEGION:

Hi.

I'm David.

Come on in.

I'll make some tea.

Switch :

What is this place? 

LEGION:

People have their pain.

Their hearts are sad.

Their minds are tired.

I help them.

Switch :

How? 

LEGION:

I'm the magic man.

All I ask is that they stay and keep me company after.

Take care of the house.

Love each other.

I need that.

Love.

Switch :

How is this here? 

This cave? 

LEGION:

I made it.

Try this.

Close your eyes.

Close your eyes.

And picture your bedroom.

Your bed.

Can you see it? Really see it? 

The walls, the windows? 

The way the light falls? 

• Open your eyes •

It's a mental space.

You imagined it.

I made it Real.

Switch :

You read my mind? 

LEGION:

No secrets.

That's one of our rules.

Switch :

What about Trust? 

LEGION:

Mm.

I tried that, and it's better to read people's minds.

I'm adopted.

When I was a baby, a monster snuck into my head and haunted me for 33 years.

[MONSTER SNARLING.]

But I'm better now.

Switch :

How are you? 

LEGION:

Good. I'm good.

How are you? 

Switch :

You know.

Fine.

My dad collects robots.

Robotto.

There's a room in our apartment.

[FAINT WHIRRING.]

Some are life-sized.

Some toys.

Hundreds.

Sometimes at night, I go in there.

[WHIRRING, TICKING.]

I stand very still, 

and pretend I'm a robot, too.

So what are 

"The Forces of Division"? 

Why do you need a Time Traveler? 

Switch :

So it's a girl thing.

You want to go back in time and what? 

Get your girlfriend back? 

LEGION:

I thought about it.

Doing everything again, making different choices, but 

[CLICKS TONGUE.] 

it won't work.

You know how sometimes 

you can be so sure 

what The Problem is 

and then you realise The Problem 

is really something else? 

Switch :

No.

LEGION:

Oh.

Well, you're Young.

When I was in the psych ward,

everybody was so sure 

The Problem was neurological.

Brain chemistry, serotonin.

"David Haller, schizophrenic." 

Switch :

You were in a psychiatric hospital? 

LEGION:

[CHUCKLES.]: 

Oh.

Oh.

Lots of times.

Psych hospitals, emergency rooms.

"David, don't swallow all your mother's diet pills." 

"David, don't huff the chemicals under the sink." 

Like I'm supposed to what? 

Pretend The Voices aren't real? 

You know? 

Switch :

Yeah, sure.

LEGION:

You see, like I said, when I was a baby, 

a monster came into my head 

and haunted me for, like, 33 years.

Switch :

By "monster," you mean, like, a metaphor, right? 

LEGION:

Amahl Farouk.

The Shadow King.

My dad, my real dad, 

he kicked Farouk out of his body 

into the astral plane.

And then he found me, Farouk, 

and he moved in.

More tea? 

[SQUEAKS.]

[BIRDS CHIRPING.]

[SHOUTS.]

Switch :

I still don't know why you need 

a Time Traveler.

LEGION:

To go back in time.

What else? 

Switch :

How far? 

LEGION:

Well, how far can you go? 

Switch :

Sydney Barrett, Gabrielle Xavier 

and The Infant David —

The Universe Acknowledges You, That You Exist 

and 

That Your Existence is Important.

I can see that you've suffered, 

That people you love have suffered, 

and 

you want to know that it meant something.

It did.

It does.

Nothing of Value is Ever Lost.

SYDNEY BARRETT :

Did he do it? David? 

Switch :

The David You Know 

is almost gone.

His Past changed.

And now, Sydney Barrett, 

your past will change, too.

The Life You've Lived, 

your memories, 

everything will be new.

SYDNEY BARRETT :

So I die? 

Switch :

This You, The You You Are Now.

But The You You Will Be? 

She will be Glorious.

SYDNEY BARRETT :

How do you —

Switch :

I am Time.

I see all.

SYDNEY BARRETT :

I like your jumper.

Switch :

Thank you.

SYDNEY BARRETT :

So do I die now? 

Switch :

No.

I will give you time for 

One Last Thing.

And Thank You for helping me when I was human.

[They hug]

Kerry Loudermilk :

What just happened? 

SYDNEY BARRETT :

I Think We just 

Saved The World.

Profiles in Courage

Nothing is Real if You Don't Believe in Who You Are

I want Balboa. I want Balboa.

You hear that, old man? You tell Balboa.

Nobody can beat me. Tell him what I said.

And he's next. I'm gonna kill him.

Nobody can stop me.

You tell Balboa that. I'm comin' after him.

I want a shot at the title if Balboa's got the guts to meet me in the ring.

My whole life's been directed towards this title.

I live alone. I train alone.

I'll win the title alone. I want him.

He can't duck me forever.

He can run, but he can't hide.

““One time, sparring with another white belt, I was choked out with a ‘guillotine’ choke, where one arm is round your head like a playground headlock and the other under your throat pulling upwards. 

Because it was another beginner, not Chris or another warlord from the control end of the room, the sparring was competitive and – this is interesting – my ego was suddenly invited back into the equation. 

When I’m sparring with Chris the relationship has explicit and implicit safety built into it, I’m not competing, I couldn’t compete, I’m learning. When it’s against Dave, Smasher, my ego would do just as well to pit itself against the hydraulic jaws of a garbage truck. 

Against another white belt, my ego sees a little chance for glory and sidles in where it would best be left out. As the choke took hold and I felt beaten and submitted it were as if the wrench on my neck had opened a valve to an inaccessible cellar where my bruised adolescent self lay hiding. 

I sat quietly afterwards, uncertain of what I felt. 

My wife remarked that I was quiet that evening and I, reluctantly (ego, again) told her what had happened.

She almost thought it funny, not in a derisory way or in a way that made me feel more ashamed and defensive, but in a way that highlighted the idiosyncrasy of my feeling. 

I spoke about it to someone else who doesn’t drink and does Jiu Jitsu and he explained that it’s a contact sport and that these feelings are normal and have to be accepted. I learned an important lesson through that particular experience. 

I had avoided an entire aspect of my nature because of an unwillingness to confront the vulnerability, no, the shame, that is inhered within physical defeat. 

It came to me in this way, this may not be historically true, but mythically it is: 

I.

As a boy I could fight, I had no fear. 

II.

As an adolescent I was not initiated. 

III.

As I awoke, I was not shown how to live at the new frequency, I had only women to observe and ‘role model’. 

• When violence came, as it does to all teenage boys, I was not equipped and the shame killed a part of me, it put it ‘underground’. 

• I was too afraid to try and revive it; it was in adolescence of course that I became a drug addict. 

• I did not become willing to go into The Underworld until I killed the person I had to become to survive my youth. 

• When I finally went there, in my middle years, through the means of Jiu Jitsu, I needed a mentor, in this case Chris, to hold the space for me.”

Russell Brand,

“Mentors.” 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

What is the meaning of the virgin birth? 

In India, there is this system of the kundalini, as it’s called, the idea of the centers, psychological centers up the spine. 

And they represent the psychological planes of concern and consciousness and action. The first is at the rectum, and this is that of alimentation. 

The serpent represents this, you know, a traveling esophagus going along just eating, eating, eating, eating. 

And all of us are — we wouldn’t be here if we weren’t eating. 

And then the second, the second center is at the sex organ center, and that’s the urge to procreation. 

The third center’s called, is at the navel, and this is where you eat and want to consume. 

And it’s not the alimentary eating, it’s the mastering and smashing and trashing of others, do you see? This is the aggressive mood.

Now, the first is an animal instinct, the second is an animal instinct, the third is an animal instinct, and these three centers are located in the pelvic base, do you see. 

The next one is at the level of the heart, and this is the opening of compassion. 

And there you move out of the field of animal action into a field that is properly human and spiritual. 

Now, in each of these centers there is a symbolic form. 

At the base, the first one, there is the form of the lingam and yeni, the male and female organs in conjunction. 

At the heart chakra, there is again the male and female organs in conjunction, but in gold. 

This is the virgin birth. It’s the birth of spiritual man out of the animal man. Do you understand?

BILL MOYERS: 

And it happens?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

When you are awakened at the level of the heart to compassion and to suffering with the other person. 

That’s the beginning of humanity. And the meditations of religion properly are on that level, the heart level.

BILL MOYERS: 

You say it’s the beginning of humanity, but in these Stories, that’s the moment when gods are born, the virgin birth, it’s a god who emerges from that chemistry.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Yeah, and you know who that god is? 

It’s you. 

All of these symbols in mythology refer to you. 

You can get stuck out there and think it’s all out there, and so you’re thinking of Jesus and all the sentiments about how he suffered and all; what that suffering is, is what ought to be going on in you. Have you been reborn? 

Have you died to your animal nature and come to life as a human incarnation?

BILL MOYERS: 

Why is it significant that this is of a virgin?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Well, it is that the begetter is the spirit. 

It is a spiritual birth. 

The virgin conceived of the Word, through the ear.

BILL MOYERS: 

The Word came like a shaft of light.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Yes. And now, the Buddha was born from his mother’s side, at the level of the heart chakra. 

That’s a symbolic birth; he wasn’t born from his mother’s side, but symbolically he was.

BILL MOYERS: 

But the Christ came the way you and I come.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Yes, but of a virgin.

BILL MOYERS: 

Which is a power greater than…

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

And then, according to Roman Catholic doctrine, her virginity was restored. 

So nothing happened physically, you might say. 

It’s not a physical birth. 

It’s symbolic of a spiritual transformation, that’s what the virgin birth is about. 

And so deities are born that way who represent beings who act in terms of compassion, and not in terms of the lower three centers.