This is an excerpt from my thesis regarding the collective loss of soul. This theme has come up often recently. I reflect on its presence as a collective, symbolic substrate in western media, politics, and conversations with people around me.


Both James Hillman and CG Jung saw that as modern man suffered stress and isolation, the depression and yearning for meaning was reflective of the psychopathology of the larger modern culture without roots. The mytho-poetic, imaginal realm returns us to a deeper sense of meaning and to the experience of sentience.

The history of art can also be viewed as a history and tapestry of the human psyche across time. Most art historians also note that the history of art is generally also a history of religious art. The religion of a time and place served to embed the individual psyche in the larger cultural and physical matrix. As we view the history of art, we see that up until the 21st century, art served as a communication medium. In the general sense, modern art has taken a turn toward solipsism and narcissism.

The dislocation and loss of these cultural matrices to the progression of modern materialism and reductivism has also resulted in individual isolation. In The Portable Jung, edited by Joseph Campbell, Jung is said of modern mankind,

“The man who has attained consciousness of the present is solitary. “(1971, p. 457). The distress produced by the modern “unhistorical” (1971, p. 458) man, dislocated from the cultural continuum of the past, and assailed from a solipsistic grandiosity within and optionality without, results in this modern condition being a source of subjective distress. Often this solipsistic loss of soul is at the root of psychopathological and addictive processes.

In the book Mediated, Thomas De Zengotita said, “So the real world, dissolving into optionality, is reconstituting itself on a plane that transcends ancient solidities of nature and custom, craft and industry.” (2005, p. 17)

Hillman saw the manifestation of outward neurosis and suffering something which should be celebrated as an awakening of the psyche. “The right reaction to a symptom may as well be a welcoming rather than laments and demands for remedies, for the symptom is the first herald of an awakening psyche which will not tolerate any more abuse. “ (1989 p. 18)

Save this date! Check it out Art opening at Bryce and Melinda's salon! xoxo, Sunny
Come and join us for the Fashion Stroll/Art Opening at

High Life
245 East 300 South. SLC UT
September 19, 2008 7:00pm

Featuring art by Sunny Strasburg and Martin Stensaas
Solar Saucer and DJ, Scotty Soltronic, Fire Spinning and Circus Freaks

Come see Martin Stensaas new paintings! They'll be featured at the premiere opening of Vivo Gallery this Friday, Aug 15 6-9pm.

The Hero's Journey
(On Living in the World)
by Joseph Campbell

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.
What you have to do, you do with play.
Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it.
The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be.

Being alive is the meaning.

The warrior’s approach is to say “yes” to life: “Yea” to it all.

Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world.
We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.
When we talk about settling the world’s problems, We’re barking up the wrong tree.
The world is perfect. It’s a mess. It has always been a mess.

We are not going to change it.
Our job is to straighten out our own lives.
We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come.

If we fix on the old, we get stuck. when we hang onto any form, we are in danger of putrefaction.
Hell is life drying up. The Hoarder, the one in us that wants to keep, to hold on, must be killed.
If we are hanging onto the form now, we’re not going to have the form next.
You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.

Destruction before creation.

Out of perfection nothing can be made. Every process involves breaking something up. The earth must be broken to bring forth new life. If the seed does not die, there is no plant.
Bread results from the death of wheat. Life lives on lives. Our own life lives on the acts of other people.
If you are lifeworthy, you can take it. What we are really living for is the experience of life, both the pain and the pleasure.
The world is a match for us. we are a match for the world. Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging. Negativism to the pain and ferocity of life is negativism to life.

We are not there until we can say “Yea” to it all.

To take a righteous attitude toward anything is to denigrate it. Awe is what moves us forward. As you proceed through life, following your own path, birds will shit on you. don’t bother to brush it off. Getting a comedic view of your situation gives you spiritual distance. Having a sense of humor saves you. Eternity is a dimension of here and now.

The divine lives within you. Live from your own center.

Your real duty is to go away from the community to find your bliss. The society is the enemy when it imposes its structures on the individual.
On the dragon there are many scales. Every one of them says “Thou Shalt.” Kill the dragon “Thou Shalt.” When one has killed that dragon, one has become The Child.
Breaking out is following your bliss pattern, quitting the old place, starting your hero journey, following your bliss. You throw off yesterday as the snake sheds its skin.

Follow your bliss.

The heroic life is living the individual adventure. There is no security in following the call to adventure. Nothing is exciting if you know what the outcome is going to be. To refuse the call means stagnation.
What you don’t experience positively you will experience negatively. You enter the forest at the darkest point, where there is no path.
Where there is a way or path, it is someone else’s path. You are not on your own path. If you follow someone else’s way, you are not going to realize your potential.
The goal of the hero trip down to the jewel point is to find those levels in the psyche that open, open, open, and finally open to the mystery of your Self being Buddha consciousness or the Christ.

That’s the journey.

It is all about finding that still point in your mind where commitment drops away. It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life.
Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.
The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for. The damned thing in the cave that was so dreaded has become the center.
You will find the jewel, and it draws you off.

In loving the spiritual, you cannot despise the earthly.

The purpose of the journey is compassion.

When you have come past the pairs of opposites, you have reached compassion. The goal is to bring the jewel back to the world, to join the two things together.
The separateness apparent in the world is secondary.

Beyond that world of opposites is an unseen, but experienced, unity and identity in us all.

Today, the planet is the only proper “in group.” You must return with the bliss and integrate it. The return is seeing the radiance everywhere.

Sri Ramakrishna said: “Do not seek illumination unless you seek it as a man whose hair is on fire seeks a pond.”

If you want the whole thing, the gods will give it to you. but you must be ready for it. The goal is to live with godlike composure on the full rush of energy, like Dionysus riding the leopard, without being torn to pieces.

A bit of advice given to a young Native American at the time of his initiation: “As you go the way of life, you will see a chasm.

Jump!

It is not as wide as you think.” ;-)

Hello Friends,

Hot off the binary code press....Here is the cover illustration for my book, The Hero's Dream (its the 'working title' for now)

I've finished my 1st hard copy draft of the dream workbook. This means finishing my degree at Pacifica (turning it in as a production thesis), and switching gears to find a publisher...or deciding to self-publish and finding a publicist and distributer.

Its a workbook which uses the theoretical methodology of Narrative Therapy (Whyte) and uses the concepts of the Hero’s Journey (Campbell) and places the life path in the visual realm with an map based on Edinger’s Archetypes complete with a travel journal with exercises.

In layman's term's...its a visual travel guide to your psyche! There is an illustration of an alchemical map I developed which contains the four elements...Water, Fire, Air and Earth. This map serves as the entry point for self-reflection. It includes concepts based in alchemy and archetypes (Edinger, Jung and Von Franz) to create a visual navigation system for users to track the reader's path, framed in a Narrative Therapy context...reframing and reclaiming obstacles and forging them into the hero's journey, rather than sorrows told from the victim's stance.

The workbook consists paintings I was inspired to create in order to record, recollect, and witness a series of dreams I had over a period of two years. And then I saw in my therapy practice how there are universal archetypal themes in the Four Directions/Elements. That spurred me to craft the exercises and practical use as the workbook. Hopefully, it will help at least one person, hopefully many people, awaken to how amazing each individual is.

Its been an epic journey for me to create. I feel super happy that I can see the finish line...my creation will take its first breath in the world very soon!

What do you think about the illustration? I always love feedback and good critique.

I hope you're all well and happy!