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Contact Us Table of Contents Search Site Google listing of all pages on this website Site Map Toby Johnson's Facebook page Toby Johnson's YouTube channel Toby Johnson on Wikipedia Toby Johnson Amazon Author Page  Secure site at https://tobyjohnson.com  Also on this website: As an Amazon Associate
I earn from qualifying purchases. Toby Johnson's books: Toby's books are available as ebooks from smashwords.com, the Apple iBookstore, etc. FINDING
YOUR OWN TRUE MYTH: What I Learned
from Joseph Campbell: The
Myth
of the
Great Secret
III GAY SPIRITUALITY: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness
GAY PERSPECTIVE: Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us about the Nature of God and the Universe
SECRET MATTER, a sci-fi novel with wonderful "aliens" with an Afterword by Mark Jordan
GETTING
LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE:
A
Fantastical Gay Romance set in two different time periods
THE FOURTH QUILL, a novel about attitudinal healing and the problem of evil  TWO SPIRITS: A Story of Life with the Navajo, a collaboration with Walter L. Williams  CHARMED LIVES: Spinning Straw into Gold: GaySpirit in Storytelling, a collaboration with Steve Berman and some 30 other writers
THE MYTH OF THE GREAT SECRET: An Appreciation of Joseph Campbell
IN SEARCH OF GOD IN THE SEXUAL UNDERWORLD: A Mystical Journey
Books on Gay Spirituality: White Crane Gay Spirituality Series
Articles and Excerpts:
Review of Samuel Avery's The Dimensional Structure of Consciousness Funny Coincidence: "Aliens Settle in San Francisco" About Liberty Books, the Lesbian/Gay Bookstore for Austin, 1986-1996 The Simple Answer to the Gay Marriage Debate A Bifurcation of Gay Spirituality Why gay people should NOT Marry The Scriptural Basis for Same Sex Marriage
Gay ConsciousnessQ&A about Jungian ideas in gay consciousness What Jesus said about Gay Rights Common Experiences Unique to Gay Men Is there a "uniquely gay perspective"? Interview on the Nature of Homosexuality What the Bible Says about Homosexuality Mesosexual Ideal for Straight Men Waves of Gay Liberation Activity Wouldn’t You Like to Be Uranian? The Reincarnation of Edward Carpenter Why Gay Spirituality: Spirituality as Artistic Medium Easton Mountain Retreat Center Andrew Harvey & Spiritual Activism The Mysticism of Andrew Harvey
Enlightenment
Joseph Campbell's description of Avalokiteshvara You're Not A WaveJoseph Campbell Talks about Aging What is Enlightenment? What is reincarnation? How many lifetimes in an ego? Emptiness & Religious Ideas Experiencing experiencing experiencing Going into the Light Meditations for a Funeral Meditation Practice The way to get to heaven Buddha's father was right What Anatman means Advice to Travelers to India & Nepal The Danda Nata & goddess Kalika Nate Berkus is a bodhisattva John Boswell was Immanuel Kant Cutting edge realization The Myth of the Wanderer Change: Source of Suffering & of Bliss World Navel What the Vows Really Mean Manifesting from the Subtle Realms The Three-layer Cake & the Multiverse The est Training and Personal Intention Effective Dreaming in Ursula LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven Gay
Spirituality
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 Joseph Campbell from The Power of Myth In March, 2016, I participated in a seminar at Easton Mountain Retreat Center titled Journey to Elderhood. It was led by Ed Marchi, a Health Care administrator and professional in geriatric services and then President of the Board of Directors of Easton Mountain. 
Marchi was a wonderful leader, interesting, knowledgeable, personable,
and very welcoming of participation from everyone present. A number of
the participants shared expertise and perspectives on aging… And what
amazing wealth of knowledge, insight and experience the fifteen or so
men in the seminar showed!I presented an idea from my “Wise Old Man,” Joseph Campbell, about looking back on life from the perspective of elderhood—and making a discovery. In “The Power of Myth” PBS-TV series with Bill Moyers which is how most people came to be familiar with the comparative religion scholar and consummate storyteller, Campbell says:  “[The 19th C German philosopher Arthur] Schopenhauer, in his splendid essay called ‘On an Apparent Intention in the Fate of the Individual,’ points out that when you reach an advanced age and look back over your lifetime, it can seem to have had a consistent order and plan, as though composed by some novelist. Events that when they occurred had seemed accidental and of little moment turn out to have been indispensable factors in the composition of a consistent plot. So who composed that plot? “Schopenhauer suggests that just as your dreams are composed by an aspect of yourself of which your consciousness is unaware, so, too, your whole life is composed by the will within you. And just as people whom you will have met apparently by mere chance became leading agents in the structuring of your life, so, too, will you have served unknowingly as an agent, giving meaning to the lives of others. The whole thing gears together like one big symphony, with everything unconsciously structuring everything else. “And Schopenhauer concludes that it is as though our lives were the features of the one great dream of a single dreamer in which all the dream characters dream, too; so that everything links to everything else, moved by the one will to life which is the universal will in nature.  “It’s a magnificent idea —an idea that appears in India in the mythic image of the Net of Indra, which is a net of gems, where at every crossing of one thread over another there is a gem reflecting all the other reflective gems. Everything arises in mutual relation to everything else, so you can’t blame anybody for anything. It is even as though there were a single intention behind it all, which always makes some kind of sense, though none of us knows what the sense might be, or has lived the life that he quite intended.” This image by Gail Atkins
at Awakening to Reality
Neither Campbell nor Schopenhauer were gay, and there’s nothing particularly gay about this notion of the Will within us as the creator of our lives. In a way, the whole idea is an example of selective sampling, primary narcissism, and the blinders of ego. But it is also a “magnificent idea,” as Campbell says, because it calls us to affirm our lives and experience being part of something bigger. Most of us at the Easton Mountain seminar seemed relatively happy, but a few shared experiences of depression, and I’d bet all the rest have experienced despondency at some time. Certainly this generation who lived through AIDS saw a lot to be angry and despondent about, though we’ve also seen an unbelievable transformation in how homosexuality is accepted by the general public. And just by being here—gems in the Net of Indra—we’ve been part of the transformation and get to take credit for that success. But gay people, even still, are set up to experience isolation, fear, loneliness, and poor self-esteem. Everybody experiences this just as part of developing a sense of self and learning to deal with the slights of the world, but gay people are really inculcated with the idea that we can’t achieve the normal happinesses of life because these are all centered in the heterosexual reproductive cycle. And our sex-linked pop culture is so focused on sexiness and youth—for lots of wonderful reasons, as well as some hurtful ones—we are led to expect there’ll be no place for us as we age. We face a particular kind of crisis in self-image anyway that straight men simple don’t: we have to keep addressing the self-reflexive questions: would I have sex with myself? Am I attracted to people like me? And because we grow up surrounded by so much homophobia, we are likely to feel alienated from other homosexuals. What "internalized homophobia" means, after all, is that we inadvertently buy into the negative judgment of homosexuals—including ourselves—but then, for self-protection (as humans do), we project the negative judgment out onto other homosexuals, seeing them as different from us. And, according to the dynamic C.G. Jung called The Shadow, we resent them and blame them for what we fear in ourselves. (There is a curious provenance here: Back in 1890, when history might say there were only two "openly gay men" in the world —Walt Whitman in America and John Addington Symonds in England— Symonds wrote a delicately worded letter to Whitman effectively asking if his words about male comradeship meant he were gay. And Whitman denied it. The homophobia stared from the very beginning of modern gay consciousness.) It’s a wonderful practice then to see how Schopenhauer’s “will to life” has manifested itself. How is it that you are still alive? Look how many times you’ve escaped death. This is an especially poignant question for those who’ve lived through AIDS. Look what amazing things have happened to you. Who helped you along? Our sexually-liberated environment often gave us the chance to meet people we would never have otherwise, to leap social classes, to break racial and economic barriers. How did you get to be where you are now? What doors opened? Campbell
is famous for this aphorism: “Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid,
and doors will open where you never knew there were going to be doors.”* For the gay men of the Stonewall Gay Lib generation certainly “bliss” meant sexual liberation and recovery from internalized homophobia. Our journey to elderhood has taken us through many doors. It’s been a “roller-coaster,” to mix metaphors, with ups and downs, successes and tragedies, joy and pain. And it is still going on… We have to say: Yes. Schopenhauer’s “will to life” is personal and subjective. I am the one composing my story. But we individual subjects are also part of some bigger will. Indeed, the will that creates our world is shared. We are part of a community. What we are manifesting in our lives is the will—and the long hoped for dream—of all the homosexuals who’ve lived before us. Experiencing being part of a community was especially meaningful in our coming together at Easton Mountain. That we were there was certainly selective sampling. The journey to Easton leads through one of Joseph Campbell’s unknown doors. Here's a link to a wonderful essay by Payam Ghassemlou MFT, Ph.D. titled Deeply Gay about finding meaning in aging, especially in developing meditation and loving attitude.  *I’ve wondered if
Campbell wasn’t trying to quote from the last lines of the Broadway
play Auntie Mame: “Oh, I am going to open doors for you, doors you never even dreamed existed.” The character of Mame Dennis, created by the gay playwright Patrick Dennis, is a wonderful example of enthusiasm for life. She's a whimsical exaggeration, of course; she's a "myth," in the way Joseph Campbell might have used that word. She is famous for her dictum: "Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death." Her advice: "Live, live, live."  Rosalyn Russell played Mame on Broadway and then in the original movie of the play. She looks like a drag queen. The play was rewritten in the 1960s as a musical, titled Mame; Angela Lansbury opened in the part on Broadway (personal note: I went to the 1983 revival of this play with my friend Cam Read when I was in New York July 23, 1983 with Lansbury in the lead). Lucille Ball played the part in the 1974 movie of the musical. I’ve joked that gay men get God to be their Auntie Mame. back |
Toby Johnson, PhD is author of nine books: three non-fiction books that apply the wisdom of his teacher and "wise old man," Joseph Campbell to modern-day social and religious problems, four gay genre novels that dramatize spiritual issues at the heart of gay identity, and two books on gay men's spiritualities and the mystical experience of homosexuality and editor of a collection of "myths" of gay men's consciousness.
Johnson's book
GAY
SPIRITUALITY: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of
Human Consciousness won a Lambda Literary Award in 2000.
His GAY
PERSPECTIVE: Things Our [Homo]sexuality Tells Us about the Nature
of God and the Universe was nominated for a Lammy in 2003. They
remain
in
print.
Two
Spirits is available as an
audiobook narrated by Arthur Raymond. 