I have read some of Campbell’s other books. I bought this one because I thought a friend recommended it. Turns out he mentioned a similar named author.
As an Architect I am always looking to see what I really see. In the end, I am just who I am, it is a privilege of a lifetime being who I am. I will share some of the books comments, using my interpretations. It helps staying focused on being me!
- If you are ready for it, the doors will open for you where there were no doors before. You must have the courage. Think of the Wizard of Oz. Oz is the friend I was talking about, it is a call to adventure.
- The gates will often close fast. Be brave and move into a field of your future.
- With one little hook, you can teach and introduce your message to the people. Your message is your art!
- The realization, the final thing is knowing, loving, and serving life in a way in which you are eternally at rest.
- Freedom to pass back and forth across the world --- is the talent of the masters. (Nietzsche)
- You set new responsibilities in life as new conditions to live by. The renunciation is literally a death and a resurrection.
- The outer world is tied to sensation, thinking, feeling, and intuition. (Carl Jung) These provide us the ability to estimate the possibilities inherent in the object or its situation. There is an intentional limitation in order to go in a direction, in getting there. Each of us has individual capacities.
- Decide to be imperfect. Joyful participation in the world. Do not give up your vices. Make your vices work for you. Life is a spiritual quest.
- It is useful to strive for perfection and precision in everything. As in poetry, heighten your power of expression. The simplest objects stand out in mysterious beauty. The silence holds the secret of temporal existence. Experience the moment in and out of the home. Instill into the nation.
- The question was about the laws of space. They are known to the mind for they are of the mind. (Kant) The outer and inner space are the same.
- The inward joy inspires you to realization. The childhood meditation is a systematic discipline that will solve your problems. Find the systems that is blocking you. This is the “knowing” part of: “To know, to love, to serve.” (Joyce)
- The journey to the new life is the free fall into a future that is mysterious and fluid. The first law is that you and the other are one.
- Find yourself again and again. Joy from the inside lets you experience your own will and your own intensions, all in your own kingdom.
- Everything is in the moment! Create timelessness. Create great Architecture.
- Connect with your sacred space, the Grail, the inward life.
- If you are to advance, all fixed ideas must go! (Buddha) Find the Buddha within yourself.
- Without changing the world, there is escape from sorrow just by shifting the perspective. We can change our attitude toward it.
- Synergy is the behavior of the whole system, unpredicted by the behavior of the parts. (Buckminster Fuller). Synergy holds the Earth together.
- Integritas (the wholeness of being – harmony in the placement of everything), Consonantia (rhythm of beauty including the spaces between), Claritas (Radiance – esthetic arrest) are the key, the Grail.
- Music is nothing but Rhythm. It is really space. There is no beginning or end.
- Your mental attitude determines whether you experience the revealing power. This is Maya! This determines what you see looking at an object.
- The Grail is the sense of total rapture and of spiritual fulfillment.
- The change of consciousness from stasis to kinesis is the Fall in the Garden. Release yourself from bondage.
- When at Chartres Cathedral (outside of Paris) you experience the Rose Window, revealing the radiance. This is an expression of a spiritual insight. This structure is one at the very top of Gothic design. It is true for I have been there. The town lives around the Cathedral just like ancient cities of Greece and Rome.
- You need to learn all the rules, get the experience and then and only then forget them. Melt back into pure action. Remember playing as a kid.
- Form and expression are similar. One has to translate that into movement. That makes the art.
- Art is the harmony parallel to nature. That dance is the highest symbol of life itself. Nurture your creative aspect! Give it a defined number of hours daily. Exercise your intensions. Be consistent. That is a meditation.
- Do not design unless the stuff is really working on you. Dream it over and over again. Hold the door open for as long as you can. Then get to work.
- Fear of God will block you. Love of God will carry you on. Chose any God for that is personal.
- Turn it over and over again. Turn it into a work of ART! That is the duty (Dharma) of your experiences. At that point do not listen to others.
- Perfection is the fulfillment implicit in Art. Imperfection is life. All forms in life are imperfect, but the function of art is to see the radiance through imperfection. (Thomas Mann and Joyce) The artist opens the forms of the work to transcendence.
- The craft keeps the artist in touch with the phenomenality of the World. That is the revealing power.
- Art talks directly to the feeling system and immediately elicits a response. Afterwards the brain may come along with comments.
- Look for symbols everywhere. Symbols talk directly to the feeling system and immediately elicit a response. It is like a magical accord uniting symbols as one spiritual organism, functioning through members who, though separate in space, are yet one in being and belief. (Joyce)
- One soars beyond thought into boundless space. Our bodies are one with this Earth, the oasis in the desert of infinite space. It’s the mathematics of that space, our mind, Newton’s mind, the Earths mind, and the Universe’s mind, that all comes to flower and fruit in this beautiful oasis through ourselves.
As I read many different types of books they seem to come to similar points within the realm of life philosophies. They direct. They open up thought. For me they reinforce my life’s past, current, and future choices, my free will, my Art. I am an Architect. I am here to dream and serve.
