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A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living (Joseph Campbell)
- Follow your bliss.
- Destruction before Creation.
- Awe is what moves us forward.
- The spirit is the bouquet of nature.
- The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.
- You can’t make an omelet without breaking the eggs.
- If you want resurrection, you must have crucifixion.
- Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it.
- Whatever the hell happens, say, ‘This is what I need.’
- The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come.
- The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come.
- There is no security in following the call to adventure.
- You should be willing to be eaten also. You are food body.
- What will they think of me? — Must be put aside for bliss.
- Nothing is exciting if you know what the outcome is going to be.
- The warrior’s approach is to say ‘yes’ to life: ‘yea’ to it all.
- You become mature when you become the authority of your own life.
- The best way to help mankind is through the perfection of yourself.
- The hoarder, the one in us that wants to keep, to hold on, must be killed.
- So that’s what destiny is: simply the fulfillment of the potentialites of the energies
- Life will always be sorrowful. We can’t change it, but we can change our attitude toward it.
- The distance of your love is the distance of your life. Love is exactly as strong as life.
- We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
- To refuse the call means stagnation. What you don’t experience positively you will experience negatively.
- One great thing about growing old is that nothing is going to lead to anything. Everything is of the moment.
- The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.
- Sri Ramakrishna said, ‘Do not seek illumination unless you seek it as a man whose hair is on fire seeks a pond.’
- In marriage you are not sacrificing yourself to the other person. You are sacrificing yourself to the relationship.
- Vegetarianism is the first turning away from life, because life lives on lives. Vegetarians are just eating something that can’t run away.
- Don’t think of what’s being said, but of what’s talking. Malice? Ignorance? Pride? Love? The goal of the hero’s journey is yourself, finding yourself.
- In choosing your god, you choose your way of looking at the universe. There are plenty of Gods. Choose yours. The god you worship is the god you deserve.
- Want to pick up a great book or two this season? Check out our recommendations of hot books selected by your fellow readers, bestselling authors, and more!
- People say that what we are seeking is a meaning of life. I don’t think this is what we’re really seeking. I think what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive.
- A bit of advice given to a young Native American at the time of his initiation: ‘As you go the way of life, you will see a great chasm. Jump. It’s not as wide as you think.’
- Every moment is utterly unique and will not be continued in eternity. This fact gives life its poignancy and should concentrate your attention on what you are experiencing now.
- The only way you can talk about this great tide in which you’re a participant is as Schopenhauer did: the universe is a dream dreamed by a single dreamer where all the dream characters dream too.
- Writer’s block results from too much head. Cut off your head. Pegasus, poetry, was born of Medusa when her head was cut off. You have to be reckless when writing. Be as crazy as your conscience allows.
- You enter the forest at the darkest point, where there is no path. Where there is a way or a path, it is someone else’s path. You are not on your own path. If you follow someone else’s way, you are not going to realize your potential.
- Then, when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures followed by wreckage were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. You’ll see that this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes.
- The call is to leave a certain social situation, move into your own loneliness and find the jewel, the center that’s impossible to find when you’re socially engaged. You are thrown off-center, and when you feel off-center, it’s time to go. This is the departure when the hero feels something has been lost and goes to find it. You are to cross the threshold into new life. It’s a dangerous adventure, because you are moving out of the sphere of the knowledge of you and your community.
- Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again. You really don’t have a sacred space, a rescue land, until you find somewhere to be that’s not a wasteland, some field of action where there is a spring of ambrosia—a joy that comes from inside, not something external that puts joy into you—a place that lets you experience your own will and your own intention and your own wish so that, in small, the Kingdom is there. I think everybody, whether they know it or not, is in need of such a place.
- Nietzsche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life, the idea came to him of what he called ‘the love of your fate.’ Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, ‘This is what I need.’ It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment—not discouragement—you will find the strength is there. Any disaster that you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow.
