Detachment and Transfiguration - 2

"The first work of the hero is to retreat from the world scene of secondary effects to those causal zones of the psyche where the difficulties really reside, and there to clarify the difficulties, eradicate them in his own case (i.e., give battle to the nursery demons of his local culture) and break through to the undistorted, direct experience and assimilation of what C. G. Jung has called 'the archetypal images'....The hero, therefore, is the man or woman who has been able to battle past his personal and local historical limitations to the generally valid, normally human forms.  Such a one's visions, ideas and inspirations come pristine from the primary springs of human life and thought.  Hence they are eloquent, not of the present disintegrating society and psyche, but of the unquenched source through which society is reborn."

"His second solemn task and deed therefore (as Toynbee and all the mythologies of mankind indicate) is to return then to us, transfigured, and teach the lesson he has learned of life renewed."

Detachment and transfiguration - 1

"But it is possible...for the principle of regeneration to be sought and found within the very walls of the tyrant's empire itself.  Professor Toynbee uses the terms "detachment" and "transfiguration" to describe the crisis by which the higher spiritual dimension is attained that makes possible the resumption of the work of creation.  The first step, detachment or withdrawal, consists of a radical transfer of emphasis from the external to the internal world, macro- to microcosm, a retreat from the desperations of the wasteland to the peace of the everlasting realm that is within....It is the realm we enter in sleep.  We carry it within ourselves forever.  All the ogres and secret helpers of our nursery are there, all the magic of childhood.  And more important, all the life potentialities that we never managed to bring to adult realization, those other portions of ourself, are there; for such golden seeds do not die.  If only a portion of that lost totality could be dredged up into the light of day, we should experience a marvelous expansion of our powers, a vivid renewal of life.  We should tower in stature.  Moreover, if we could dredge up something forgotten not only by ourselves but by our whole generation or our entire civilization, we should become indeed the boon-bringer, the culture hero of the day - a personage of not only local but world historical moment."

Joseph Campbell
The Hero With A Thousand Faces

Interesting again on several levels
     Culturally and politically
     Artistry and creativity
     Personal spiritual growth

For Campbell in the 40's, the "everlasting realm within" was identified completely with "the infantile unconscious" described with confident authority by the psychoanalysis of the time.  But since he paid equal homage to both Freud and Jung, it was a realm open to the potential of the wider spirituality of the Jungian vision, including its vague intimations of the numinous, the divine and (with synchronicity) even of providence.