But the makers of legend have seldom rested content to regard the world's great heroes as mere human beings who broke past the horizons that limited their fellows and returned such boons as any man with equal faith and courage might have found.

And if there was no Fall, what then of the need for Redemption? What god was offended and by whom? Some especially touchy cave bear whose skull had been improperly enshrined?

My writing is of a very different kind from anything I've heard about. All this mythological material is out there, a big gathering of stuff, and I have been reading it for some forty- or fifty-odd years. There are various ways of handling that. The most common is to put the material together and publish a scholarly book about it. But when I'm writing, I try to get a sense of an experiential relationship to the material. In fact, I can't write unless that happens ... I don't write unless the stuff is really working on me, and my selection of material depends on what works.

The privilege of a lifetime is beingwho you are.The goal of the hero tripdown to the jewel pointis to find those levels in the psychethat open, open, openand finally open to the mystery of your Selfbeing Buddha consciousnessor the Christ.That's the journey.

At first you might find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred space and use it, eventually something will happen. Your sacred space is where you find yourself again and again.

To find your own way is to follow your bliss.

Preachers err by trying to talk people into belief; better they reveal the radiance of their own discovery.