Hi Felix
Did you ever get a chance to view the YouTube movie FINDING JOE? I really do think that you might find it interesting if not helpful.

I should leave the comment at that… but want to say something about the word ‘G o d’ which ought to transcend all words and duality. Its true  the word ‘God’  to day is associated with a Santa Clause like being ,judging the good and the bad, rewarding and pushing the good and the bad – reward and punishment theology.

Yet every wisdom tradition (when allowed to speak to the heart) points out that such a limited view of G_d is at best unskillful, (if useful politically But then we are talking about something else not G_d).  When the word ‘G_d’ allowed to be a holding place for that which transcends the language and opposites… now we might learn something.  The language of religion and the wisdom traditions is a language of symbol, pottery and song. a language that is meant to point past it self, to something greater then the words them selves (the word ‘tree’ is not a tree, the word ‘God’ is not G_d. )

All words are symbols and a wonderous world opens up when we learn to read and ‘see’ by looking past the words. For example even a simple story like Cinderella transforms from being about a prince that saves a princess, to a heroic story about overcoming depression, or working through the dark night of the soul where the end goal of the story is the “Alchemical Marriage” between ones Being and Doing, ones Thinking and Feeling, the union of duality.

When I read your post, the call to the hero journey screams out to me…. The question at the heart of the quest is “How am I responding to Life as it Is, to the Universe as it is, to G_d as it is if you will. The question I hear you asking in your posts is similar, How should I respond to Life as it is?

My own experience is that when I answer that question with a ‘No get me off this ride’ or ‘No I can fix’ I will  end up frustrated, disappointed and or depressed.  Fighting against the flow of life as it is, is exhausting! A answer of Yes, accepting Life as it is, the wonders and horrors, allows one to enter into the flow of that which is. This Yes is not a giving up but a engagement with life.  It may feel counter intuitive, yet It is when we are in the Flow of that which ‘is as it is’ that we have the opportunity to influence it as we may hope it to be. This I believe is the Zen art of doing by not doing. You can’t fight your way out of the rip-tide, you can “influence” your way out by working with it…

I know easier said then done.  To the question ‘How should I respond to Life as it is’ it seems to me that you have rejected the answer of No while not fully embracing YES. Now the task is accepting what it means to say Yes, that is the hero journey.

“What is it we are questing for? It is the fulfillment of that which is potential in each of us. Questing for it is not an ego trip; it is an adventure to bring into fulfillment your gift to the world, which is yourself. There is nothing you can do that’s more important than being fulfilled. You become a sign, you become a signal, transparent to transcendence; in this way you will find, live, become a realization of your own personal myth.”

“Make your god transparent to the transcendent, and it doesn’t matter what his name is.” — Joseph Campbell