The hero is the champion of things becoming, not of things become, because he is.

A hero ventures forth from the world
of common day into a region of
supernatural wonder. Fabulous forces
are there encountered and a decisive
victory is won.

And so every one of us shares the supreme ordeal —carries the cross of the redeemer— not in the bright moments of his tribe's great victories, but in the silences of his personal despair.

People say that what their seeking is a meaning for life.... I think that what we are seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.

The courage to face the trials and to bring... possibilities into the field of interpreted experience for other people to experience that is the hero's deed. We have only to follow the heros path, and where we had thought to find abomination, we shall find a God. And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves... Where we had thought to travel outward we will come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone we will be with all the world.

At best spiritual voices help us replace madness with clarity & violence with compassion and peace. But we will live up to the promise only if we overcome the temptation to promote our own narrow comfort and individual peace of mind. If we fail this challenge we will not get a spiritual "new age", but a spiritual dead end.