The Power of Myth
Ah, The Power of Myth. This book is based on the amazing PBS interview series Bill Moyers did with Campbell shortly before he passed away and captures some of the 24 hours of filmed wisdom that hit the cutting floor. We'll learn how Campbell came up with the admonition to "follow your bliss!" (hint: it's from the Upanishads), the importance of loving our fate, how we're helped by hidden hands when we really commit to our paths and so much more.
Big Ideas
- Sat, Chit, AnandaFollow your ananda!
- Sit in a Room and Read—and Read and Read!…And read and read!
- Your Sacred Place: An Absolute NecessityAn absolute necessity.
- Bless Me Father, for I Have Been Great!For I have been great!
- Do You Think I Can Do That?Got 10,000 hours in ya?
- Amor FatiLove your fate!
- Being Helped by Hidden HandsBy hidden hands.
- The Influence of a Vital PersonVitalizes.
- Give Your Life to Something Bigger than YouTo something bigger than you!
“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”
~ Joseph Campbell from The Power of Myth
Joseph Campbell. He’s amazing. In my spiritual family tree, I call him “Grandpa Joe.” (Right below Great-Grandpa Abe (Maslow). :)
Have you ever watched the DVDs of him chatting with Bill Moyers? He just *radiates* enthusiasm and bliss and wisdom and passion for life and for his work. Really inspiring. That interview series was called The Power of Myth and was filmed a short time before Campbell passed away in 1987.
In total, they filmed 24 (!!!) hours of discussion between Campbell and Moyers (who does a phenomenal job leading the interview). Only 6 magical hours wound up on the DVDs and this book, The Power of Myth, features some of the wisdom that wasn’t captured in the original DVDs. Really cool.
For those not yet familiar with Grandpa Joe, he was a mythology guru (mentored George Lucas—who based his Star Wars empire in large part on Campbell’s mythology studies) who coined the phrases “Follow your bliss” and “The hero’s journey.”
Seeing that it’s such a *huge* part of Campbell’s work (check out my Note on A Joseph Campbell Companion for even more Big Ideas, btw), let’s kick this Note off with a look at where Campbell came up the idea of “Following our bliss!” Then, we’ll look at some Big Ideas on how to actually do it! (Starting NOW! :)
Download MP3
Download PDFThis, I believe, is the great Western truth: that each of us is a completely unique creature and that, if we are ever to give any gift to the world, it will have to come out of our own experience and fulfillment of our own potentialities, not someone else’s.
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Listen to the PodcastSat, Chit, Ananda
“Now, I came to this idea of bliss because in Sanskrit, which is the great spiritual language of the world, there are three terms that represent the brink, the jumping-off place to the ocean of transcendence: Sat, Chit, Ananda. The word ‘Sat’ means being. ‘Chit’ means consciousness. ‘Ananda’ means bliss or rapture. I thought, ‘I don’t know whether my consciousness is proper consciousness or not; I don’t know whether what I know of my being is my proper being or not; but I do know where my rapture is. So let me hang on to rapture, and that will bring me both my consciousness and my being.’ I think it worked.”
I don’t know about you, but, like Campbell, I can get confused about what proper “consciousness” or proper “beingness” is all about. What feels good? MUCH easier to follow.
Of course, even that can be challenging as we’ve been so conditioned to simply do what we’re told when/how/where/why someone else decides; but deep down, we KNOW what makes us feel good. Now, we may or may not have the courage to actually LISTEN to what our heart’s are telling us, but we know. :)
Ayn Rand says this about it in her classic The Fountainhead (see Notes): “Why do they always teach us that it is easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves. It’s the hardest thing in the world—to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage.”
And Carlos Castaneda (see Notes) shares ancient Toltec wisdom as he tells us that we must follow a path only if it has heart. He says: “But how will I know for sure whether a path has a heart or not?’ ‘Anybody would know that. The trouble is nobody asks the question; and when a man finally realizes that he has taken a path without a heart, the path is ready to kill him. At that point very few men can stop to deliberate, and leave the path.’”
Love that. So, how about you? Are you on your path with heart? Are you doing what you want? Are you following your bliss?
Sometimes we don’t know *exactly* what we want (and, in fact, our vision of our ideals is ALWAYS beautifully evolving as we outgrow some past ideals and generally evolve). At those times, it’s often best to simply get clear on what you know you DON’T want! How ‘bout a quick check-in:
These are things that make me feel giddy/blissful (!) to be alive:
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
These are things that, well, don’t make me feel quite so blissful!
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
Now, what can you do to create a life in which you’re spending more and more time in your bliss zone and less time in your “don’t need to spend my precious hours on this spinning green ball doing THAT” stuff?
What SPECIFIC steps can you take to follow your bliss more? Starting today?!? I can (and WILL! :) do these 3 things:
1. ____________________________________________________________________
2. ____________________________________________________________________
3. ____________________________________________________________________
How about some ways to really get in touch with our bliss?!?
I don’t think there is any such thing as an ordinary mortal. Everybody has his own possibility of rapture in the experience of life. All he has to do is recognize it and then cultivate it and get going with it. I always feel uncomfortable when people speak about ordinary mortals because I’ve never met an ordinary man, woman, or child.
If you want to find out what it means to have a society without any rituals, read the New York Times.
Sit in a Room and Read—and Read and Read!
Moyers:“How do we know these things [how to experience bliss]?”
Campbell:“I’ll tell you a way, a very nice way. Sit in a room and read—and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time. This realization of life can be a constant realization in your living. When you find an author who really grabs you, read everything he has done. Don’t say, ‘Oh, I want to know what So-and-so did’—and don’t bother at all with the best-seller list. Just read what this one author has to give you. And then you can go read what he had read. And the world opens up in a way that is consistent with a certain point of view. But when you go from one author to another, you may be able to tell us the date when each wrote such and such a poem—but he hasn’t said anything to you.”
Love that.
This is pretty much how I’ve picked the books I’m reading. When I fall in love with an author I tend to read all of their stuff (I’ve read nearly all of Coelho, Abraham-Hicks, Dan Millman, and most of Campbell, Dyer and Deepak and a *lot* of my other favorites). AND I love going to the back of their books and looking at their recommended reading lists and then IMMEDIATELY Amazoning the ones that resonate with me/I noted while reading.
How about you? Are you *really* diving into the authors you dig and then reading the peeps THEY recommend or are you kinda skimming the surface of a lot of the “best-sellers”? Also, WHO CARES if we can quote a poem or cite the date so and so said this about whatever if the authors haven’t said anything to us and we don’t LIVE the truths?!? The ONLY reason to study this stuff is to LIVE it, eh?
So, two lessons in this Big Idea: 1. Go deep into the authors you dig and really soak ‘em up! 2. LIVE the truths you are studying! :)
(P.S. Did you know Campbell spent 5 years reading 9 hours a day? Yep.)
The person who thinks he has found the ultimate truth is wrong.
Your Sacred Place: An Absolute Necessity
“This is an absolute necessity for anybody today. You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers this morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you might find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.”
Are you taking the time to create this sacred time?
(Please say, “YES!”)
If not, and if the reason you give why you’re not is that you’re too busy, know that saying you’re too busy to check in with your highest Self is kinda like saying you’re too busy driving to stop for gas.
That’s just not smart and *definitely* not gonna help you live a life of meaning and bliss!
God is an intelligible sphere—a sphere known to mind, not to the senses—whose center is everywhere and whose circumference nowhere.
Bless Me Father, for I Have Been Great!
“Ramakrishna once said that if all you think of are your sins, then you are a sinner. And when I read that, I thought of my boyhood, going to confession on Saturdays, meditating on all the little sins that I had committed during the week. Now I think one should go and say, ‘Bless me, Father, for I have been great, these are the good things I have done this week.’ Identify your notion of yourself with the positive, rather than with the negative.”
Genius.
We are what we think about most of the time.
So… What are YOU thinking about most of the time?
Your sins? Or your greatness?
Invest time EVERY day in recalling all the wonderful things you have done and plan to do—from the big stuff to the mundane. And go get your blessing on! :)
What am I? Am I the bulb that carries the light, or am I the light of which the bulb is a vehicle?
Do You Think I Can Do That?
“When I taught in a boy’s prep school, I used to talk to the boys who were trying to make up their minds as to what their careers were going to be. A boy would come to me and ask, ‘Do you think I can do this? Do you think I can do that? Do you think I can be a writer?’ ‘Oh,’ I would say, ‘I don’t know. Can you endure ten years of disappointment with nobody responding to you, or are you thinking that you are going to write a best seller the first crack? If you have the guts to stay with the thing you really want, no matter what happens, well, go ahead.’”
Are you asking people around you whether or not you can chase a big dream or follow your heart? First, be careful with that. Few people will give as wise advice as Campbell. Most will tell us to be “reasonable” or fire us up with a false confidence that we can do it and see results NOW!!! (Um, not so much.)
Patience! Diligence! Persistence!
Then? Well, yah. Go for it!
As my Vipassana teacher, S.N. Goenka says:“Work diligently. Diligently. Work patiently and persistently. Patiently and persistently. And you’re bound to be successful. Bound to be successful.”
How about Epictetus (see Notes on The Enchiridion), the former slave and renowned Roman Stoic Philosopher: “If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.”
And, how about Malcolm Gladwell in his new book, Outliers? (Great, fun read, btw. Finished it in one 5 1/2 hour sitting recently.) He looked at the world’s greatest “outliers”—those peeps at the edge of the bell curve (really far from the norm/mean).
One thing he found that separated ALL of the truly GREATs: they’d put in about 10 years or 10,000 hours of diligent work/practice before they became outliers.
Did you know the Beatles played 8 hours a day, 7 days a week at a strip club in Germany and logged in more live shows in a brief couple years than most bands EVER play? They *totally* transformed their mojo through constant practice and then landed in the US. Rock stars. But no one talks about how HARD they worked.
How about Bill Gates? Did you know when he was in high school he’d SNEAK out of bed to go to the University library where he programmed from 3-6am? His mom wondered why he was waking up so tired in the morning. The world experienced the fruits of his genius around a decade later when the computer started going mainstream.
How about violinists? Did you know one of the main reasons why someone is either a concert violinist performing solos vs. a less prominent (yet professional) violinist vs. a violin teacher vs. an amateur is how many hours they’ve committed to their practice? Yep. (Magic #? 10,000 hours of *committed*, diligent practice time for the soloist.)
Part two of this Big Idea: You’ve gotta LOVE what you do to put in that much effort. Hence, the whole “follow your bliss” thing. :)
There’s NO way you’re gonna log in that many hours consciously striving to improve your craft doing something you hate. Not gonna happen.
It’s also not gonna happen if you’re doing it simply for the external rewards. At some point, you’re gonna get burned out and walk away unless it’s what *really* sets your heart on fire.
So, what do youlove doing SO much, you’d joyfully put in 10,000 hours and even PAY to be able to do it?!?
(For me, btw, it’s reading and writing and living and sharing these truths! :)
There’s a major difference, as I see it, between a shaman and a priest. A priest is a functionary of a social sort. The society worships certain deities in a certain way, and the priest becomes ordained as a functionary to carry out that ritual. The deity to whom he is devoted is a deity that was there before he came along. But the shaman’s powers are symbolized in his own familiars, deities of his own personal experience. His authority comes out of a psychological experience, not a social ordination.
The ultimate aim of the quest must be neither release nor ecstasy for oneself, but the wisdom and the power to serve others.
Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck to its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.
Amor Fati
“There is an important idea in Nietzsche, of Amor fati, the ‘love of your fate,’ which is in fact your life. As he says, if you say no to a single factor in your life, you have unraveled the whole thing. Furthermore, the more challenging or threatening the situation or context to be assimilated and affirmed, the greater the stature of the person who can achieve it. The demon that you can swallow gives you its power, and the greater life’s pain, the greater life’s reply.”
Amazing.
Quick question: To what experience in your life are you saying “No” to right now?
LOVE YOUR FATE.
Love your life.
Say, “YES!!!” to it all and see that these challenges are like weights in our spiritual gym!!
I think it was Nietzsche who said, ‘Be careful lest in casting out the devils you cast out the best thing that’s in you.’
Being Helped by Hidden Hands
Moyers:“Do you ever have this sense when you are following your bliss, as I have at moments, of being helped by hidden hands?”
Campbell:“All the time. It is miraculous. I even have a superstition that has grown on me as a result of invisible hands coming all the time—namely, that if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.”
Amen.
How about some (mountaineer) W.H. Murray and (transcendentalist) Thoreau mojo on this idea that when we reallyfollow our bliss, magical things begin to happen?!?
W.H. Murray: “Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness concerning all acts of initiative and creation. There is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans; that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen events, meetings and material assistance which no one could have dreamed would have come their way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: ‘Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now!’”
Thoreau: “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary: new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or old laws will be expanded and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with license of a higher order of beings.”
So: What’s your bliss?
And what’re you waiting for?
I say: “Go for it!”
And, I echo Grandpa Joe who says: “Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid.” :)
Freud tells us to blame our parents for all the shortcomings of our life, Marx tells us to blame the upper class of our society. But the only one to blame is oneself.
The ground of being is the ground of our being, and when we simply turn outward, we see all of these little problems here and there. But, if we look inward, we see that we are the source of them all.
The Influence of a Vital Person
Moyers: “In this sense, unlike heroes such as Prometheus or Jesus, we’re not going on our journey to save the world but to save ourselves.”
Campbell:“But in doing that, you save the world. The influence of a vital person vitalizes, there’s no doubt about it. The world without spirit is wasteland. People have the notion of saving the world by shifting things around, changing the rules, and who’s on top, and so forth. No, no! Any world is a valid world if it’s alive. The thing to do is to bring life to it, and the only way to do that is to find in your own case where the life is and become alive yourself.”
Can I get another “Amen!”?!?
As Campbell so beautifully says, a vital person vitalizes!
As we discover and follow our bliss, our light will naturally brighten those around us!
I don’t believe in being interested in a subject just because it’s said to be important. I believe in being caught by it somehow.
Give Your Life to Something Bigger than You
“A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.”
We’ve talked a *lot* about following our bliss and taking risks and the magic that unfolds as we do that. Truly expressing our own unique selves is an *incredibly* important step.
It’s not the final one in the hero’s journey, however. We’ve gotta give ourselves to something bigger than us.
As Campbell says: “When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.”
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