By ANNA OLSON
I have cried tears of joy thanks to Joseph
Campbell.
Before
this particular event, tears always meant pain. Not that I’m complaining. Ever
since I read that crying was good for a person, that we live longer because of
releasing pain through tears, I have let them flow.
The
tears of joy sprang to my eyes while watching a video of Joseph Campbell
explaining the Eastern theory of “lunar” and “solar” lines that run up our
spine on the etheric level (Joseph
Campbell and The Power Of Myth with Bill Moyers video). What he described
was what I had experienced in connection with my daughter Jenny after she died
following heart surgery.
There
were two sides to our relationship after Jenny died after open-heart surgery at
two and a half years of age. On the one hand, I believed in spirit life after
death and communicated with her often. I saw her in my inner vision, heard her
voice on occasion, and others saw her spirit as well. So I wasn’t bitter. I
knew that she was alive and well in spirit.
The
other side of me was like a deranged grizzly bear mother whose cub had been
taken away from her. I was furious at the world. I felt like getting a baseball
bat and smashing everything in sight. I demanded the return of my daughter and
hated this spiritual nonsense. Communicating through prayer and meditation with
her spirit meant nothing to grizzly mother. She screamed for her physical child
and was inconsolable if she couldn’t get her back.
This
is what Joseph Campbell was describing. He said the lunar side represents our
physical and emotional existence. It was named lunar because the moon seems to
appear and disappear the same way babies are born and people die. This side
relates only to physical reality.
The
solar side represents the spirit side of our nature, the part of us that lives
after death, that knows the body is only a temporary home for the soul. And
then Campbell said the words that flipped me out, “These two sides can’t
communicate with each other.” He drew a diagram on a board of two entwining
lines going up the spine. These lines rotated around each other but did not
touch. He said the spiritual line vibrated at a slightly higher rate than the
physical line.
I
jumped up from the couch in excitement. “That’s what I’ve been going through,”
I cried out to the empty room. Someone understood and had an explanation for my
craziness. What a relief! I didn’t understand why I was in so much pain from
her death when I was able to communicate with her in spirit. It seemed like the
emotional/physical side (grizzly bear mother) didn’t hear or see the same
things my spiritual side did. I paced the room in excitement, tears of joy and
gratitude streaming down my face.
So
thank you, Joseph Campbell. A blessing for you in spirit. You gave us a great
gift through your work on mythology: the books and videos are your legacy to
those hungry for your knowledge.
Joseph Campbell died in 1987 at the age of
83. He left behind many books (The
Power of Myth, Myths to Live By, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, The Masks of
God) and countless videos (check
with your library).
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