Joseph Campbell
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.Collection: Trying
The adventure of the hero is the adventure of being aliveCollection: Inspirational
If you see your path laid out in front of you - Step one, Step two, Step three - you only know one thing . . . it is not your path. Your path is created in the moment of action. If you can see it laid out in front of you, you can be sure it is someone else's path. That is why you see it so clearly.Collection: Two
The demon that you can swallow gives you it’s power, and the greater life’s pain, the greater life’s reply.Collection: Inspirational
We can safely say, therefore, that whereas some moralists may find it possible to make a distinction between two spheres and reigns-one of flesh, the other of the spirit, one of time, the other of eternity-where ever love arises such definitions vanish, and a sense of life awakens in which all such oppositions are at one.Collection: Two
We save the world by being alive ourselves.Collection: Inspirational
What's made up in the head is the fiction. What comes out of the heart is a myth.Collection: Heart
Whatever the hell happens, say, 'This is what I need.'Collection: Needs
We keep thinking of deity as a kind of fact, somewhere; God as a fact. God is simply our own notion of something that is symbolic of transcendence and mystery. The mystery is what’s important.Collection: Thinking
The conquest of the fear of death is the recovery of life's joy. One can experience an unconditional affirmation of life only when one has accepted death, not as contrary to life, but as an aspect of life. Life in its becoming is always shedding death, and on the point of death. The conquest of fear yields the courage of life. That is the cardinal initiation of every heroic adventure - fearlessness and achievement.Collection: Fear
Their task [creative artists], therefore, is to communicate directly from one inward world to another, in such a way that an actual shock of experience will have been rendered: not a mere statement for the information or persuasion of a brain, but an effective communication across the void of space and time from one center of consciousness to another.Collection: Communication
The insecure way is the secure way.Collection: Insecure
The real important function of the church is to present the symbol, to perform the rite, to let you behold this divine message in such a way that you are capable of experiencing it. What the relationship of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost to each other might be, in technical terms, is not half important as you, the celebrant, feeling the Virgin Birth within you, the birth of the mystic, mythic being that is your own spiritual life.Collection: Spiritual
Suddenly you’re ripped into being alive. And life is pain, and life is suffering, and life is horror, but my god you’re alive and its spectacular.Collection: Motivational
Our life evokes our character. You find out more about yourself as you go on. That's why it's good to put yourself in situations that will evoke your higher nature rather than your lower.Collection: Character
The god you worship is the one you're capable of becoming.Collection: Inspirational
In meditating, meditate on your own divinity. The goal of life is to be a vehicle for something higher. Keep your eyes up there between the world of opposites watching your 'play' in the world.Let the world be as it is and learn to rock with the waves.Collection: Eye
The purpose of the journey is compassion. When you have come past the pairs of opposites, you have reached compassion.Collection: Past
Just as anyone who listens to the muse will hear, you can write out of your own intention or out of inspiration. There is such a thing. It comes up and talks. And those who have heard deeply the rhythms and hymns of the gods, can recite those hymns in such a way that the gods will be attracted.Collection: Inspirational
He who thinks he knows, doesn't know. He who knows that he doesn't know, knows.Collection: Ignorance
The world is full of people who have stopped listening to themselves or have listened only to their neighbors to learn what they ought to do, how they ought to behave, and what the values are they should be living for.Collection: People
Apocalypse does not point to a fiery Armageddon but to the fact that our ignorance and our complacency are coming to an end.Collection: Ignorance
Once you know the difference between right and wrong, you have lots fewer decisions to make.Collection: Differences
Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it.Collection: Cancer
Breaking out is following your bliss pattern, quitting the old place, starting your hero journey, following your bliss. You throw off yesterday as the snake sheds its skin.Collection: Hero
Myths are the world's dreams. They are archetypal dreams and deal with great human problems. Myths and dreams come from the same place. They come from realizations of some kind that then have to find expression in symbolic form.Collection: Dream
I don’t think people are really seeking the meaning of Life. I think we’re seeking an experience of being alive…we want to feel the rapture of being aliveCollection: Inspirational
There are mythologies that are scattered, broken up, all around us. We stand on what I call a terminal moraine of shattered mythic systems that once structured society. They can be detected all around us. You can select any of these fragments that activate your imagination for your own use. Let it help shape your own relationship to the unconscious system out of which these symbols have come.Collection: Relationship
People who don't have a concept of the whole can do very unfortunate things.Collection: Unfortunate Things
If you follow someone else's way, you are not going to realize your potential.Collection: Hero Journey
Dream is personalized myth, myth is depersonalized dream; both myth and dream are symbolic in the same general way of the dynamics of the psyche. But in the dream the forms are quirked by the peculiar troubles of the dreamer, whereas in myth the problem and solutions shown are directly valid for all mankind.Collection: Dream
To find your own way is to follow your bliss. This involves analysis, watching yourself and seeing where real deep bliss is -- not the quick little excitement , but the real deep, life-filling bliss.Collection: Real
The dreamer and his dream are the same...the powers personified in a dream are these that move the world.Collection: Dream
The perfect human being is uninteresting.Collection: Perfect
Behind all these manifestations is the one radiance, which shines through all things. The function of art is to reveal this radiance through the created object.Collection: Art
Not all who hesitate are lost. The psyche has many secrets in reserve. And these are not disclosed unless required.Collection: Inspirational
The call to adventure signifies that destiny has summoned the hero.Collection: Hero
[Comedies], in the ancient world, were regarded as of a higher rank than tragedy, of a deeper truth, of a more difficult realization, of a sounder structure, and of a revelation more complete. The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man. ...Tragedy is the shattering of the forms and of our attachment to the forms...Collection: Inspirational
So that's what destiny is: simply the fulfillment of the potentialites of the energies in your own system.Collection: Destiny
If you live with the myths in your mind, you will find yourself always in mythological situations. They cover everything that can happen to you. And that enables you to interpret the myth in relation to life, as well as life in relation to myth.Collection: Life
Economics and politics are the governing powers of life today, and that's why everything is so screwy.Collection: Today
And that Aha! that you get when you see an artwork that really hits you is, 'I am that.' I am the very radiance of energy that is talking to me through this painting.Collection: Talking
When you look at that nature world it becomes an icon, it becomes a holy picture that speaks of the origins of the world. Almost every mythology sees the origins of life coming out of water. And, curiously, that's true. It's amusing that the origin of life out of water is in myths and then again, finally, in science, we find the same thing. It's exactly so.Collection: Rain
Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your lifeCollection: Inspiration
......the interesting thing was that the Roman Catholic monks and the Buddhist monks had no trouble understanding each other. Each of them was seeking the same experience and knew that the experience was incommunicable. The communication is only an effort to bring the hearer to the edge of the abyss; it is a signpost, not the thing itself. But the secular clergy reads the communication and gets stuck with the letter, and that's where you have the conflict.Collection: Buddhist
Love your enemies, for they determine who you are.Collection: Love You
We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.Collection: About Life
You’ve got to find the force inside you.Collection: Intuition
I think the person who takes a job in order to live – that is to say, for the money – has turned himself into a slave.Collection: Birthday