Marriage – a spiritual exercise, not just a social construct

MOYERS: You’re saying that marriage is not just a social arrangement, it’s a spiritual exercise. CAMPBELL: It’s primarily a spiritual exercise, and the society is supposed to help us have the realization.

Experience, marriage, and spirituality

What Joseph Campell has alluded to regarding marriage is definitely in connection with the spirit. And wouldn't one think, for a myth to have a deeply satisfying character, it must address the human spiritual need?

Myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life.

We’re so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget that the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it’s all about.

The allure and the need for myths

Till the time a person finds the story - the myth - that satisfyingly explains his existence and gives purpose to his soul, the power within is still not released.

Why pay attention to myths?

There are stories we keep telling ourselves.  Don't simply think of a story as something written in a book, one we might read for pleasure.  The creating and telling of stories is simply a human characteristic.  It has very little to do with them being written down or being read. For instance, we look at …

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Myths give us power

Be they myths or not, whether we call them stories or not, we as humans are living in them and with them all the time. That's the power humans have - to create, tell, and live stories - some even becoming myths.

The Journey Begins

Thanks for joining me! Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton