CURRENT MISSION

Activate the creative culture and they'll take care of the rest... In short, I facilitate connection with the information, experience, and techniques necessary for creative people to step fully into purpose as a primary healing force on this planet.

ABOUT ME

[still completing the places I've lived and visited]

When I discovered Joseph Campbell's work in the early '90s, I was deeply attracted to his emphasis on art. Since then I've explored the creative impulse with particular focus on the role of the artist within the context of a newly emerging mythos—i.e., the overarching worldview or “story” a culture accepts about itself and its place in the universe.

Joseph Campbell insisted throughout his work that a living, effective, mythological system functions by putting the subject culture in accord with the natural order. When an individual or a group is living in accord with nature, then nature yields its bounty.

Looking at our planet today, the mythos by which we live, on a collective, global level, does not appear to be placing us in accord with nature, let alone with each other. “Dysfunctional” or “ineffective” are arguabley much more accurate descriptions of our current state of environmental harmony. This position obviously requires qualification, so please consider it merely an initiator of dialogue.

As a “Creative,” I strive to embody the role as one of many vehicles through which pours the current mythos for the global community: to study the mythological foundations of my being, achieving a personally relevant understanding of the myths of the past; to deeply regard my dreams, visions and interior messages, and take personal guidance from them; and to share my insights with others through the medium most appropriate to my specific competencies and experience (i.e., music, writing, social/cultural development projects, and more).

A 2011 release of my first book titled Awakening the Artist is scheduled through Michael Wiese Books (MWP.com), an industry leading film arts publisher with a line of over 140 books on all aspects of filmmaking, including many bestsellers. MWP is known for creating highly-accessible books that guide filmmakers in all aspects of their craft including writing, directing, storyboarding, camera, producing, financing, marketing, distributing, new media, and more.

Michael Wiese Books is also quite focused on the power of art and media to influence widespread global healing and cohesion …that art can serve to shift the consciousness of humanity in a direction where a greater quality of life may be shared by all. My book is offered in that spirit.

A Little More About Me: http://www.awakeningtheartist.com/ - http://mwp.com/ - http://www.facebook.com/mannyotto.

PHILOSOPHY

Quotations...

"There is an almost sensual longing for communion with others who have a larger vision. The immense fulfillment of the friendships between those engaged in furthering the evolution of consciousness has a quality almost impossible to describe." (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)

"Myth is the secret opening through which pour the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos into human cultural manifestations." (Joseph Campbell)

"Myth must be kept alive. The people who can keep it alive are artists of one kind or another. The function of the artist is the mythologization of the environment and the world." (Joseph Campbell)
...
"You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." (Marianne Williamson)

"I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing—a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process—an integral function of the universe." (Buckminster Fuller)

"Be inconsistent" (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

"We must be willing to let go of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us." (Joseph Campbell)

"don't give me jars of water, take me to the river" ( Rumi)

"...if a person has had a sense of the Call--the feeling that there's an adventure for him--and if he doesn't follow that, but remains in society because it's safe and secure, then life dries up." (Joseph Campbell)

"Pointing to those subtle and casual dimensions beyond the physical is part of the purpose of my work. Interweaving the dimensions together - physical, emotional, conceptual, psychic, subtle, and spiritual has been part of my intention, my mission of art, always with the hope that it resonates with people and affirms their own deeper understanding of themselves and the world." (Alex Grey, Transfigurations, p. 106.)

"(The artist) can only obey the apparently alien impulse within him and follow where it leads, sensing that his work is greater than himself, and wields a power which is not his and which he cannot command . . . From the living fountain of instinct flows everything that is creative; hence the unconscious is not merely conditioned by history, but is the very source of the creative impulse. It is like Nature herself - prodigiously conservative, and yet transcending her own historical conditions in her acts of creation . . . All art intuitively apprehends coming changes in the collective unconsciousness." (Jung)

"If it's not a hell yea ...it's a hell no" (Jen Pumo)

Perché sono iscritto su Couchsurfing

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Just signed up. I'm looking forward to sharing more soon.

Interessi

• arts
• culture
• writing
• books
• film making
• environment
• cars
• music
• communications
• history
• tourism

Musica, film e libri

Movies...
The Color Purple, Monty Python's Life of Brian, The Shawshank Redemption, Young Frankenstein, The Matrix, The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, Ghost in the Shell 1, Ghost in the Shell, Final Fantasy Advent Children, Hero, House of Flying Daggers, A Band of Brothers, The Deer Hunter, Three Kings, Pink Floyd The Wall, and many more that I can't remember now...

Television...
Lost, Brotherhood (because Jason Isaacs is a badass!), Cheers, ... (there are others, but not a lot of TV).

Books...
Fiction J.R.R. Tolkien, J. K. Rowling, William Faulkner, Ayn Rand, Audrey Niffenegger, Ken Follett, Frank Herbert, Robert Heinlein, William Gibson, Non Fiction Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, Huston Smith, Alex Gray, Peter Russell, Robert Bly, Alan Watts, Spirituality, Philosophy, Psychology, Fantasy, Cyberpunk, Science fiction, Fiction, Ken Wilber

Insegna, impara, condividi

See the rest of my profile...

Paesi che ho visitato

Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Croatia, France, Italy, Mexico, Spain, United Kingdom, United States

Paesi in cui ho vissuto

United States

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