#456: The Power of Myth — The Hero’s Adventure with Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers

Optimal mental this altitude I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking

another organism living tissue over a metal endoskeleton.

Hello boys and girls ladies and germs lemurs and squirrels. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show where it is normally my job to interview and deconstruct world-class performers of all different types this episode flips the script but you get an absolutely masterful interview in the process some cheating. I suppose. It features the first program or chapter titled the heroes adventure of the 6 part series The Power of myth, which I recently digested. I'm going to be

Listening to it again in full the series is just incredible. I found it oddly and profoundly calming and I really wanted to share the first program with you. So I reached out to many different people and had to figure out rights and get it all sorted out and blah blah blah blah blah end of the day was able to get this for you. Here's a short description and why I'm so excited about it 40 years ago renowned scholar Joseph Campbell. You might know that name because George

Lucas consulted with Joseph Campbell on writing the original Star Wars sat down with veteran journalist Bill Moyers for a series of interviews that became one of the most enduring lie popular programs ever on PBS in dialogues that adroitly span Millennia of history and far-flung geography the two men discuss myths as metaphors for Human Experience and the path to Transcendence. You can listen to the full series on Audible simply search for the power of myth and it will pop right up. It has an average of four point seven.

Stars out of five with nearly 4,000 ratings its outstanding. I highly recommend you check it out. You will not be disappointed. And in the meantime, here's a taste test, please enjoy the first program the heroes adventure. And without further Ado here are Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers.

program 1 the heroes adventure

That one day every Valley shall be exalted every Hill and Mountain shall be made

What places will be made plain? And the Crooked places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and All Flesh shall see it together.

We have not even to risk the adventure alone for the heroes of all time have gone before us.

The Labyrinth is Thoroughly. No.

We have only to follow the thread of the hero path and where we had thought to find an Abomination. We shall find a God and where we had thought to slay another we shall slay ourselves where we had thought to travel out would we should come to the center of our own existence and where we had thought to be alone. We shall be with all the world.

Joseph Campbell and the power of myth with Bill Moyers the hero's Adventure.

Joseph Campbell believe that everything begins with a story. So we begin this series with Joseph Campbell with one of his favorites. He was in Japan for a conference on religion and he overheard a another American delegate a social philosopher from New York say to a Shinto priest. We've been now to a good many ceremonies and have seen quite a few of your shrines, but I don't get your ideologies. I

It's your theology. The Japanese paused as though in deep thought and then slowly shook his head. I think we don't have ideologies. He said we don't have theology. We dance Campbell could have said it of his own life when he died in 1987 at the age of 83. He was considered one of the world's foremost authorities on mythology the stories and legends told by human beings Through the Ages to explain the universe and their place in it. The 20 books. He wrote a red.

It did have influenced artists and performers as well as Scholars and students when he died. He was working on a Monumental historical atlas of world mythology his effort to bring Under One Roof the spiritual and intellectual wisdom of a lifetime. Some of his books are Classics the hero with a thousand faces, which established his Fame 40 years ago and is for volume study of Mythology The Masks of God Joseph Campbell was one of the most spiritual men I ever met but he didn't have an

Geology or theology mythology was to him the song of the universe music so deeply embedded in our Collective unconscious that we dance to it. Even when we can't name the tune over the last two summers of his life. We tape these conversations in California at Skywalker Ranch the home of his friend George Lucas who's movie trilogy Star Wars had been influenced by Campbell's work. We talked about the message and meaning of myth about the first storytellers about love.

Love and Marriage gods and goddesses religion ritual art psychology, but we always came around to his favorite subject the hero with a thousand faces.

Why the hero with a thousand faces

well because there is a certain typical hero sequence of actions which can be detected in stories from all over the world and from many many periods of history. And I think it's essentially you might say the one deed done by many many different.

People

why are there so many stories of the hero of Heroes in

mythology. Well because that's what's worth what writing about

I mean even in in popular novel writing you see these the main character is a hero or heroine that is to say someone who has found or achieved or done something beyond the normal range of achievement experience a hero properly is someone who has given his life to something bigger than himself or other than himself.

So in all of these cultures

Whatever the costume the hero might be wearing. What is the

deed? Well, there are two types of deed one is the physical deed the hero who has performed a war act or a physical act of heroism saving a life. That's a hero act giving himself sacrificing himself to another and the other kind is the spiritual hero who has learned our

and a mode of experiencing the super normal range of human spiritual life and then come back and communicated it. It's a cycle. It's a going and return that the hero cycle represents, but then this can be seen also in the simple initiation ritual where a child has to give up his childhood and become an adult has to die.

You might say to its infant tiles personality and psyche and come back as a self responsible adult.

It's a fundamental experience that everyone has to undergo. We're in our childhood for at least 14 years and then to get out of that posture of dependency psychological dependency into one of psychological self responsibility requires a death and resurrection. And that is the basic motif of the Hero Journey leaving one condition.

Finding the source of life to bring you forth in a richer or more mature or other condition

so that if we happen not to be heroes in the grand sense of redeeming Society we have to take that Journey ourselves spiritually psychologically inside us.

That's right and Auto Rock in his wonderful very short book called The Myth of the birth of the

Hero, he says that everyone is a hero in his birth. He has undergone a tremendous transformation from a little mice a water creature living in a realm of the amniotic fluid and so forth then coming out becoming an air-breathing mammals that ultimately will be self standing and so forth this enormous transformation and it heroic act as a heroic act on the mothers part to bring it about that stiff.

Primary hero hero form you might

say still a journey to be taken after

that. There's a big one to be

taken and that journey is not consciously undertaken do Heroes go out on their own initiative.

Well, do they sometimes a very common one that appears in Celtic myths of someone who has followed the lure of a deer or animal that has been following and Carries him into a range of forest and Landscape that he's never been

been in before and then the the animal will undergo a transformation become the queen of the fairy Hills or something like that. That is one of not knowing what you're doing. You suddenly find yourself in full career of an adventure. There's another one where once that's out responsibly and intentionally to perform the deed for instance when the Ulysses son telemachus was called by Athena go find your father that father.

Is a major hero adventure for young people at is the adventure of finding what your career is what your nature is what your source is? He undertakes that intentionally, then there's one into which you are thrown and pitched for instance being drafted into the army. You didn't intend it they are in they are in another transformation. You've only gone a death and Resurrection you

put on the uniform another creature.

So doesn't heroism have a moral objective.

The model objective is that of saving a people are saving a person ours saving an idea. He is sacrificing himself for something. That's the morality of it. Now you from another position my say that something was something that should not have been realized, you know, that's judgment from another side, but it doesn't destroy the heroism of what was done. Absolutely not.

Well, that's a different angle on Heroes. Then I got when I was reading as a as a young boy the story of Prometheus going after the fire and bringing it back and benefiting humanity and suffering. Yeah for it.

I mean Prometheus brings fire to Mankind and consequently civilization. That's by the way a universal thing. What is the hero the fire fire theft theme with a usually with the relay race after it often?

It's blue jay or woodpecker or something like this that steals the fire and then passes it on something else and something else and one animal after another and their brand by the fires as they carrying it on that accounts for the different colorings of animals and so forth. It's a it's a worldwide myth if I have theft

do these stories of the hero vary from culture to

culture? Well, it's the degree of the

Nation that our action that makes him different there is a typical early culture hero who goes around slaying monsters now that is in the period of history when man is shaping his world out of a wild Savage unshaped world with has another shape, but it's not the shape for man. He goes around killing monsters.

So the hero evolves over time like most other Concepts and ideas and

well if he evolves as the culture evolves now Moses is a hero figure in his assent of the mountain is meeting with Yahweh on the summit of the mountain and coming back with the rules for the formation of a whole new Society. That's the heroic departure.

Fulfillment return and on the way, there are Adventures that can be parallel also in other traditions.

Now the Buddha figure it's like that of Christ because 500 years earlier. You could match those two Traditions Right Down the Line even to the characters of their Apostles. They're

monks

priced. Now, there's a perfectly good hero deed formula represented there and he undergoes three Temptations the economic Temptation where the devil says you look hungry young man changed the

Stones to bread she said and lives not by bread alone. But every word from the mouth of God next we have the political Temptation. He's taken to the top of a mountain and shown the nations of the world and says, you can come into control of all these if you bow to me and then now you're so spiritual. Let's go up to the top of herod's Temple and see you cast yourself down and the god.

Oh bear you up and you won't even be bruised your heel So I says you shall not tempt the logic on. Those are the three Temptations of Christ in the desert. The Buddha also goes into the forest has conferences with the leading gurus of the day and goes past them comes to the boat tree the tree of Illumination undergoes three Temptations. They're not the same Temptations, but they are three Temptations.

And one is that of lust another is that a fear and another is that of social Duty doing what you're told and then both of these men come back and they choose disciples who help them establish a new way of Consciousness in terms of what they have discovered their the these are the same herodias. These are the spiritual here are days.

He's Moses the Buddha Christ Mohammed Mohammed literally and we know this about him he was a camel Caravan Master, but he would leave his home and go out into a little mountain cave that he found and meditate and meditate and meditate and meditate and one day a voice says right and we have the Koran, you know.

It's an old story.

Sometimes it seems to me that that we ought to feel pity for the hero instead of admiration. So many of them have sacrificed their own needs. They all happened very often what they what they accomplished is Shattered by the inability of the followers to see

ya the come out of the forest with gold and it turns to ashes that's another Motif that occurs

in this culture of easy religion.

Lee achieved it seems to me we've forgotten that all three of the great religions teach that the trials of the Hero Journey are a significant part of it that there's no reward without renunciation. And without a price the Quran speaks. Do you think that you shall enter the garden of bliss without such trials as came to those who passed before

you well, if you realize what the real problem is and that is of losing primary think primarily.

Really thinking about yourself and your own self protection losing yourself giving yourself to another that's that's what a trial in itself is it not there's a big transformation of Consciousness that's concerned and what all the myths have to deal with is transformation of Consciousness that you're thinking in this way.

And you have now to thinking that

way well, how is the Consciousness transformed

by the trials the test that they hear all the codes are certain Illuminating Revelations trials and Revelations are what it's all about

who in society today is making any heroic myth that all for us do movies do this. The movies create

human know my experience of movies. I mean the significant experience I had a movie so so when I was a boy and they were all

Really movies I'm going to talk is that were black and white movies and I had a hero figure who meant something to me and he served as a kind of model for myself in my in my physical character and that was Douglas Fairbanks. I wanted to be a synthesis of Douglas Fairbanks and Leonardo DaVinci that was my idea. But those were models were roles that came to me.

Does a movie like Star Wars sill some of that need for the spiritual adventure for the hero

Gloria? Perfect that does the the cycle perfectly. It's not simple morality play it has to do with the powers of life and their inflection through the action of man one of the wonderful things I think about this Venture into space. Is that the narrator the

The artist the one thinking up the story is in a field that is not covered by our own knowledge has you know, there was much of the adventure in the old stories as where they go into regions that no one's been in before. Well, we've now conquered the planet so there are no empty spaces for the imagination to go forth and fight its own War, you know with the powers and that was the first

Thing I felt that there's a whole new realm for the imagination to open out and live its forms.

Do you when you look at something like Star Wars recognize some of the themes of the hero throughout

mythology? Well, I think that George Lucas was using standard mythological figures the old man as the advisor. Well specifically what he made me think of

Is the Japanese sword master? Remember a Jedi can feel the force flowing through him? I don't some of those people and this man has a bit there their character.

Well, there's something mythological to is leader in the sense that the hero is helped by this stranger who shows up and gives him some instrument a sword or Sheaf of lush

after he gives him not only a physical instrument by the psychological commitment and the psychological center this time.

Go your conscious self.

And act on

Instinct Bonnie had him exercising with that strange weapon and then pulled the mask over that's real Japanese stuff myself. When I took

our two sons to see it. They did the same thing the audience did at that moment when the voice of Ben Kenobi says to Luke Skywalker in the climactic

moment. Use the

Snoop let go Luke

the audience broke out into they did a relation to

applaud and see this thing communicates. It is in a language that is talking to young people today. And that's marvelous.

So the hero goes for something he doesn't just go along for the ride. He's not a mere Adventurer.

Well, serendipitous Adventure can take place. Also, you know what the word Serendipity comes from comes from the Sanskrit Sarah and Reba the Isle of silk, which was a form of the formerly the name of Ceylon, and it's a story about a family that just rambling on its way to Ceylon and all these Adventures take

Place so you can have the serendipitous Adventure as well

is the adventurer who takes that kind of trip hero in the

mythology is ready for it. This is a very interesting thing about these mythological themes that in the achievement of the hero is one that he is ready for and it's really a manifestation of his character and it's amusing the way in which the landscape and the

Missions of the environment match the Readiness of the hero the adventure that he's ready for is the one that he gets look I ain't in this for your

Revolution and I'm not in it for you princess. I expect to be well paid the mercenary solo begins as as a mercenary and ends up as a hero.

He was a very practical guy a materialist in his character at least as he thought of himself, but he was a compassionate human.

Being at the same time. It didn't know it the adventure evoked the quality of his character that he had known he was asked if he thinks he's an aggressive really isn't and that's a very lovable kind of human being I think and there are a lots of them functioning beautifully in the world. They think they're working for them.

Self very practical and all but now there's something else pushing him.

What did you think about the scene in the bar?

That's my favorite not only in this piece. But of many many pieces I've ever seen. Well, where are you are is on the edge are about to Embark into the outlying spaces and real Adventurer real Adventure. This is the jumping off.

Place and there is where you meet people who've been out there and they run the machines that go out there and you haven't been there reminds me a little bit in Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island that atmosphere before you start off the adventure in the seaport. And there is the old salt sea men who've been on the sea and they'll that's their world and these are the space people

also bad.

Feeling about this.

My favorite scene was when they were in the garbage compactor and the walls were closing in and I thought that's like the belly of the whale

that yoga is what it is. That's where they were down in the belly of the

whale. What's the mythological significant for the

belly? It's the scent into the dark.

Jonah in the whale. I mean, that's that's a standard motif of going into the whale's belly and coming out again.

Why must the hero do that

the whale represents the personification you might say of all that is in the unconscious psyche in reading these things psychologically water is the unconscious the creature in the water would be the dynamism of the unconscious which

Is is dangerous and powerful and has to be controlled by Consciousness the first stage in the hero Adventure when he starts off on an adventure is leaving the realm of Light which he controls and knows about and moving toward the threshold and it's at the threshold that the monster of the risk comes to medium. And then there are two or three results one the hero is cut to pieces.

And descends into the abyss.

In fragments to be resurrected or he may kill the dragon power as Siegfried does when he kills the dragon, but then he tastes the Dragon Blood. I say he has to assimilate that power and when Siegfried has killed the dragon and tasted the blood he hears the song of nature. He has transcended his Humanity, you know and re Associated himself with the powers of

Nature which all the powers of our of our life from which our mind removes us. You see this thing up here this Consciousness thinks it's running the shop. It's a secondary organ. It's a secondary organ of a of a total human being and it must not put itself in control. It must submit and serve the humanity of the body join me and I will complete your training.

When it does put itself in control, you get this father the man who's gone over to the intellectual side.

I'll never join you. If you only knew the power of the dark

side isn't thing in than our living in terms of humanity. He's living in terms of a system and this is the threat to our lives. We all face it. We all operate in our society in relation to our system.

That was the system going to eat you up and relieve you of your Humanity or are you going to be able to use the system to human purposes

would the hero with a thousand faces help us to answer that question about how to change the system so that we are not serving

it. I don't think it would help you to change the system, but it would help you to live in the system as a human being.

By doing

what? Well like Luke Skywalker not going over but resisting it's it's impersonal claims,

but I can hear someone out there in the audience saying well, that's all well and good for the imagination of a George Lucas a for the scholarship of a Joseph Campbell, but that doesn't isn't what happens in my life. You bet it

does if the person doesn't listen to the demands of his own spiritual and and heart

Life and insists on a certain program you're going to have a schizophrenic cracked up. The person has put himself off center. He has aligned himself with a programmatic life and it's not the one the body's interested in at all when the world's full of people who have who have stopped listening to themselves in my own life. I've had many opportunities to commit myself to a system.

to go with it and to obey its

my life has been that of a Maverick I would not submit.

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You really believe that the creative Spirit ranges on its own out there beyond the boundaries. Yeah, I do.

Something of the hero in that. I don't mean to suggest that you see yourself as a

hero, but I think myself as a Maverick.

So perhaps the hero lurks in each one of us when we don't know it.

Well, yes, I mean our life evokes our character and you find out more about yourself as you go on and it's very nice to be able to put yourself in situations that will evoke your higher nature rather than your lower. Give me an example. Don't give you a story I'm dealing with in

Across story right now. There's a motif that comes in American Indian story very often what I call the refusal of suitors.

But girl with her mother lived in a week one on the edge of the village. She was a very handsome girl, but extremely proud and would not accept any of the boys they propose to her through the mother and the mother was terribly annoyed. But the well one day they're out collecting wood and they have gone a long way from the village and while they are collecting the wood terrific darkness comes over them.

Now this wasn't the darkness of night sending when you have a doctor's like that some magician did work somewhere. So the mother says well, let's gather some bark and make a little Wigwam of Bach we grow for ourselves and collect wood for fire and we'd just spend the night here.

So they do that and the mother falls asleep and the girl looks on This Magnificent guy standing there with a Wampum sash glorious and feathers and all this kind of black better. He says I've come to marry you and I'll await your reply. She accepted the eye and the mother accepts the man and he gives the mother the wampum belt to prove that. He's serious about all this.

So he talked away with the girl. She has acquiesced mere human beings weren't good enough for her. But here's some that really cute. Ah, so she's in another domain now the adventures marvelous she goes with him to his village and they enter his large the people in their greeter and she feels very comfortable about it and all and then the next day

he says I'm going off to hunt. So he leaves the lodge and the door is closed with the flap that flat when he closes the flap. She hears a strange sound.

So the there's the whole day and she's just in the hot and this evening. Come see his that strange sound again and the door flap is flung off and incomes his prodigious serpent with his tongue darting and he puts his head in her lap and says now you must search my head for lice and things like that. She find all kinds of horrible things there and kills them all and then he withdraws and in a moment.

After the gate door has been closed. It opens again. And then he comes the same beautiful young man again and said we are afraid of me when I became in just now. Look she said she was with all afraid next day. He goes off to hunt.

And then she leaves the large to gather wood. And the first thing she sees is an enormous serpent basking on the rocks and then another and then another and she begins to feel very badly very homesick and discouraged then the evening The Serpent and then the man again the third day when he leaves she decides she's going to try to get out of this place.

She goes out and she standing in the woods thinking and a voice speaks to her and she turns and there's them but little old man there and he says darling you are in trouble. The man that you married is one of Seven Brothers, they are great magicians and like many people of this kind their heart are not in their bodies. There is a collection of seven heart in a bag. That is hidden.

Under the bed of the eldest to whom you are married must go get that and then we'll deal with the next part of the adventure. She goes and finds a bag of heart and it's running out and voice calls after stop stop. It's the voice of The Magicians and she continues to run. He says you may think you could get away from me, but you never can and just at that point. She his voice of the old man. He says, I'll help you there.

He's pulling her out of the water. She didn't even know that she was in water.

What does that say to you?

That's to say you have moved out of the Heartland the solid earth and her in field of the unconscious and she had pulled herself into the transcended realm and got caught in the negative powers of the abyss and she's been rescued now by the

Upper Powers, what you have done has been to elevate yourself out of the local field and put yourself in the field of higher power higher danger. And are you going to be able to handle it? If you are not eligible for this place into which you put yourself. It's going to be a demon marriage. It's going to be a real mess. If you are eligible, it can be a glory that will give you a life that

This is yours in your own way.

So these stories of Mythology are simply trying to express a truth that can't

Grasp any other way, it's the edge the interface between what can be known and what is never to be discovered because it is a mystery Transcendent of all human research the source of Life. What what is it? No one knows

why our store is important for getting it

that well, I think it's important to live life with a knowledge of its mystery and of your own Mystery and it gives life.

a new zest a new balance a New Harmony to do this

It's therapy and psychological therapy when people find out what it is that sticking in them. They get straightened out. And what is it that life is

I find thinking in mythological terms as help people.

I'm visibly you can see it happen. How what does it do? It erases anxieties?

It puts them in a card with.

the inevitable if their life and and they can see the positive values of what the negative aspects of what is positive its

It's whether you're going to say no to the serpent or yes to the serpent disease is that

no two the

adventure? Yeah the adventure of being alive of

When I was growing up Tales of King Arthur tales of the medieval knights tales of the Dragon Slayers were very strong in my world.

A dragon's represent greed really the European Dragon guards things in his cave and what he gods are heaps of gold and virgins and he can't make use of either of them, but he just gods

There's no Vitality of experience either of the value of the gold or of the female humans guarding their psychologically. The dragon is one's own binding of oneself to one's ego and you're captured in your own dragon cage. And the power of the psychiatrist is to break that Dragon open him up so that you can have a larger.

field of relationships

Hume had a patient come to him who felt alone and she drew a picture of herself as caught in the rocks from the waist down. She was bound in rocks. And this was on a windy Shaw and the wind blowing her hair blowing and all the gold which is the sign of the Vitality of life was locked in the rocks and the next picture that he had her draw had followed.

Then he had said to her.

Suddenly a lightning flash hit the rocks and the gold came pouring out and then she found reflected on rocks round about the gold knows no more gold in the Rocks was all available on the top and then the conference is that followed those patches of gold were identified.

They were her friends. She wasn't alone.

But she had locked herself in her own little room and life but she had friends. Do you see what I'm eating? This is killing the dragon and you have fears and things this is the dragon that's exactly what that's all about. At least the European Dragon Chinese dragon this different. What is it? It represents the Vitality of the swamps and the dragon comes out beating his belly's hanging ha ha.

Aha, that's another kind of drag and he's the one that yields the Bounty and the waters and all that kind of thing is the great glorious thing. But this is the negative one that cuts now.

So what you're saying is if they're not dragons out there and there

may not be at the real dragon this in you.

What is that wheel

drive? That's your ego holding you in? What's my ego what I want what I believe what I can do.

Do what? I think I love and all that.

When I regardless the aim of my life and so far they might be too small. It might be that which pins you down.

And if it's simply that of doing what the environment tells you to do, it certainly is beating you down. And so the environment is your dragon as it reflects within yourself.

How do I slay how do you slay that dragon in me? What's the journey I have to make you have to make each of us has to make you talk about something called a Souls high

adventure. My general formula provides student is follow your bliss IV find where

Is and don't be afraid to follow

it. Can my Bliss be my life lover miles be alive work on my life.

Well, if the work that you're doing is the work that you chose to do because you are enjoying it. That's it. But if you think oh gee I couldn't do that. You know, that's your dragon locking you in. Oh, no, I couldn't be a writer. Oh, no, I couldn't do what so-and-so is doing

unlike the

Classical Heroes, we're not going on our journey to save the world but to save ourselves

and in doing that you saved the world. I mean you do the influence of a vital person vitalizes. There's no doubt about it. The World Is A Wasteland people have the notion of saving the world by shifting it around and changing the rules and so forth and know any world is a living world if it's still alive and the thing is to bring it to life and the way to bring

To life is to find in your own case where your life is and be alive yourself. It seems to

me that the power of the teacher isn't it to bring Vitality to others to make others see the Vitality in them children

happens. That's one of the Delights of teaching. I mean when you're not teaching in order to have an easy job, but because you really have something to teach and you love young people and you want to give what you've got found to them and to see them.

Come alive is the reward of

teaching. Do you say I have to take that journey and go down there and slay those dragons. Do I have to go alone?

If you have someone who can help you? That's fine, too. But ultimately the last trick has to be done by you

in all of these journeys of mythology. There's a place everyone wishes to find. What is it the Buddhist talk of Nirvana?

Jesus talks of peace. There's a place of rest Repose is that typical of the hero's journey that there's a place to find

but the place in yourself of rest. Now this I know a little bit about from Athletics.

The athlete who is in Championship form as a quiet place in himself.

And it's out of that that his action comes.

If he's all in the action field, he's not performing properly. There's the center out of which you act and Gene my wife a dancer tells me that in dance. This is true to as the center that has to be known and held there. It's quite physically recognized by the

person.

But unless this Center has been found you're torn apart tension come.

Now the Buddha's word is Nirvana. Nirvana is a psychological state of mind. It's not a place like heaven. It's not something that's not here. It is here in the middle of the turmoil what's called son, Sarah the whirlpool of Life conditions. The that Nirvana is what is the condition that comes when you are not

Held by desire or by fear or by social commitments when you hold your Center and act out of there