Follow Your Bliss

Follow your dreams, wherever they may take you.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL'S life encompassed the years 1904-1987. He was a philosopher of sorts, a man who spoke with wisdom about spirituality, mythology, and living life. In 1987, he participated in a series of interviews with Bill Moyers. Those conversations became a mini-series and then were published as a book, The Power Of Myth.

Although his words were spoken in the 1980s, they still have relevance in our fast-paced world of today. He spoke of the desire, deep withing human beings, to follow inner passions, what the soul is crying out to do. Mr. Campbell says, "If you 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. Wherever you are - if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.." Doing so, following your bliss, leads you to a fulfilling life, a life well-lived.



How do you discover, or more likely, know, what your bliss is and involves? You need what Mr. Campbell calls a "sacred space". It's a place to ponder and contemplate, a place to think without interruption, a place of reflection. It is a place to discover your creativity, your inner passion. As he says, "[Sacred space] 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 that morning, you don't know who your friends are, you don't know what you owe anybody, you don't know what anybody owes to 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 may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen."

The distractions of our day, some 30 years later, are even more than what was happening back then. We all have constant exposure to a type of chatter, connected with our electronic devices to constant conversation, various types of input. We even complete our work utilizing these devices, to the point that it can be hard to break away from them, we are so plugged in.

Somehow, even back then, Mr. Campbell saw that surface, material drain on human life. Here he is again, "Our life has become so economic and practical in its orientation that, as you get older, the claims of the moment upon you are so great you hardly know where the hell you are, or what it is you intended. You are always doing something that is required of you. Where is your bliss station? You have to try to find it."

Be fulfilled in your life; make life more meaningful.

Finding your bliss and your bliss station can be even more difficult today than in Mr. Campbell's time. But in order to live life meaningfully, you must make the time. Unplug, empty your mind, spend time getting to know yourself. Greater fulfillment of your dream, your bliss, awaits!

Just follow your bliss.

Thanks to this article from Daily Good: http://www.dailygood.org/story/1047/how-to-find-your-bliss-joseph-campbell-on-what-it-takes-to-have-a-fulfilling-life-maria-popova/.

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