A Soulful Journey

“That is the problem of Dante’s Divine Comedy too.  The crisis comes in the “middle of the way of our life,” when the body is beginning to fade, and another whole constellation of themes comes breaking into your dream world.  Dante says that, in the middle year of his life, he was lost in a dangerous wood.  And he was threatened there by three animals, symbolizing pride, desire and fear.  Then Virgil, the personification of poetic insight, appeared and conducted him through the labyrinth of hell, which is the place of those fixed to their desires and fears, who can’t pass through to eternity.” – Joseph Campbell If you hold onto the past you cannot access the  possibilities  of the future.   Be open. That is the  gateway  to heaven while the  other  is the  pathway  to hell.

One of the most penetrating insights into sin comes from Dante’s Divine Comedy.  It can be found in the “Purgatory” portion, where Dante portrays himself climbing the mountain out of purgatory accompanied by the Roman poet Virgil.  Slowly moving up the mountain, he is purged in turn by each of the seven deadly sins. Virgil makes the observation that love is the basic driving force of all virtue, and at the root of all sin is love-gone-wrong. Love is the highest good, but when it is diverted from a true aim and perverted into a false form, it becomes sin.