| "It seems to have had an order, to have been composed by someone, and those events that were merely accidental when they happened turn out to be the main elements in a consistent plot. Who composed this plot? Just as your dreams are composed, so your whole life has been composed by the will within you. Just as the people who you met by chance became effective agents in the structuring of your life, so you have been the agent in the structuring of other lives. And the whole thing gears together like one big symphony, everything influencing and structuring everything else. It's as though our lives were the dream of a single dreamer in which all of the dream characters are dreaming too. And so everything links to everything else moved out of the will in nature...It is as though there were an intention behind it yet it is all by chance. None of us lives the life that he had intended." Joseph Campbell |
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| Chief Seattle, of the Indians that inhabited the Seattle area, wrote a wonderful paper that has to do with putting oneself in tune with the universe. He said, “Why should I lament the disappearance of my people! All things end, and the white man will find this out also.” And this goes for the universe. One can be at peace with that. This doesn’t mean that one shouldn’t participate in efforts to correct the situation. But underlying the effort to change must be an “at peace.” To win a dog sled race is great. To lose is okay too. Joseph Campbell |
| A computer is like an Old Testament god, with a lot of rules and no mercy Joseph Campbell Popular Quotes |
| A one sentence definition of mythology? "Mythology" is what we call someone else's religion Joseph Campbell Adages |
| Any life career that you choose in following your bliss should be chosen with that sense — that nobody can frighten me off from this thing. And no matter what happens, this is the validation of my life and action. Joseph Campbell Quotes |
| Anyone who has had an experience of mystery knows that there is a dimension of the universe that is not that which is available to his senses. There is a pertinent saying in one of the Upanishads: When before the beauty of a sunset or of a mountain you pause and exclaim, 'Ah,' you are participating in divinity. Such a moment of participation involves a realization of the wonder and sheer beauty of existence. People living in the world of nature experience such moments every day. They live in the recognition of something there that is much greater than the human dimension. Joseph Campbell |
| As a white candle In a holy place, So is the beauty Of an aged face Joseph Campbell Sayings |
| At such moments, you realize that you and the other are, in fact, one. It's a big realization. Survival is the second law of life. The first is that we are all one. Joseph Campbell |
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But if a person has had the sense of the Call -- the feeling that there's an adventure for him -- and if he doesn't follow that, but remains in the society because it's safe and secure, then life dries up. And then he comes to that condition in late middle age: he's gotten to the top of the ladder, and found that it's against the wrong wall.
If you have the guts to follow the risk, however, life opens, opens, opens up all along the line. I'm not superstitious, but I do believe in spiritual magic, you might say. I feel that if one follows what I call one's "bliss" -- the thing that really gets you deep in your gut and that you feel is your life -- doors will open up. They do! They have in my life and they have in many lives that I know of.
…When you are at a certain age…and look back over your life, it seems to be almost as orderly as a composed novel. And just as in Dickens' novels, little accidental meetings and so forth turn out to be main features in the plot, so in your life. And what seem to have been mistakes at the time, turn out to be directive crises…
Life seems as though it were planned; and there is something in us that's causing what you hear of as being accident prone: it's something in ourselves. There is a mystery here… Can anything happpen to you for which you're not ready? I look back now on certain things that at the time seemed to be real disasters, but the results turned out to be the structuring of a really great aspect of my life and career. So what can you say?
And the other point is, if you follow your bliss, you'll have your bliss, whether you have money or not. If you follow money, you may lose money, and then you don't have even that. The secure way is really the insecure way and the way in which the richness of the quest accumulates is the right way. Joseph Campbell |
| Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy. Joseph Campbell |
| Economics and politics are the governing powers of life today, and that's why everything is so screwy. Joseph Campbell |
| Eternity has nothing to do with the hereafter... This is it... If you don't get it here, you won't get it anywhere. The experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life. Heaven is not the place to have the experience; here's the place to have the experience. Joseph Campbell Sayings |
| Eternity has nothing to do with the hereafter... This is it... If you don't get it here, you won't get it anywhere. The experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life. Heaven is not the place to have the experience; here's the place to have the experience. Joseph Campbell |
| Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble. Joseph Campbell |
| Find a place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain. Joseph Campbell Sayings |
| Furthermore, we have not even to risk the journey alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the Labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world. Joseph Campbell |
| God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that. Joseph Campbell Quotes |
| He said myths and mythology wasn't to give meaning to life but to give us an experience of life, an experience of vitality in being alive. Joseph Campbell Remarks |
| I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive. Joseph Campbell Quotes |
| I don't have to have faith, I have experience. Joseph Campbell Remarks |
| 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 own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. Joseph Campbell |
| 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. Joseph Campbell |
| If you can see your path laid outin front of you step by step, you knowit's not your path. Your own path youmake with every step you take. That'swhy it's your path. Joseph Campbell |
| If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track, which has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living Joseph Campbell Remarks |
| If you realize what the real problem is - losing yourself - you realize that this itself is the ultimate trial. Joseph Campbell |
| If you realize what the real problem is?losing yourself?you realize that this itself is the ultimate trial. Joseph Campbell Quotations |
| It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure. Joseph Campbell |
| Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is Whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning. Joseph Campbell Quotes |
| Love is a friendship set to music. Joseph Campbell |
| Love thine enemies because they are the instruments to your destiny. Joseph Campbell |
| Marriage is not a love affair. A love affair is a totally different thing. A marriage is a commitment to that which you are. That person is literally your other half. And you and the other are one. A love affair isn’t that. That is a relationship of pleasure, and when it gets to be unpleasurable , it’s off. But a marriage is a life commitment, and a life commitment means the prime concern of your life. If marriage is not the prime concern, you are not married. Joseph Campbell Adages |
| Marriage is not a simple love affair, it's an ordeal, and the ordeal is the sacrifice of ego to a relationship in which two have become one Joseph Campbell Quotes |
| Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths. Joseph Campbell Adages |
| Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging. Joseph Campbell |
| Original Experience has not been interpreted for you, and so you’ve got to work out life for yourself. Either you can take it or you can’t. You don’t have to go far off the interpreted path to find yourself in very difficult situations. The courage to face the trials and to bring a whole new body of possibilities into the field of interpreted experience for other people to experience – that is the hero’s deed. Joseph Campbell Popular Quotes |
| Our demons are out own limitations, which shut us off from the realization of the ubiquity of the spirit...each of these demons is conquered in a vision quest. Joseph Campbell |
| Out of perfection nothing can be made. Every process involves breaking something up. Joseph Campbell Quotations |
| Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy. Joseph Campbell Remarks |
| People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life... I think that what we're really seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our innermost being and reality, so that we can actually feel the rapture of being alive. Joseph Campbell |
| The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure. Joseph Campbell Popular Quotes |
| The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light. Joseph Campbell |
| The demon that you can swallow gives you it’s power, and the greater life’s pain, the greater life’s reply. Joseph Campbell |
| The goal is to live with godlike composure on the full rush of energy, like Dionysus riding the leopard, without being torn to pieces. Joseph Campbell |
| The night of December 25, to which date the Nativity of Christ was ultimately assigned, was exactly that of the birth of the Persian savior Mithra, who, as an incarnation of eternal light, was born the night of the winter solstice (then dated Decembe Joseph Campbell |
| The notion of this universe, its heavens, hells, and everything within it, as a great dream dreamed by a single being in which all the dream characters are dreaming too, has in India enchanted and shaped the entire civilization. The ultimate dreamer is Vishnu floating on the cosmic Milky Ocean, couched upon the coils of the abyssal serpent Ananta, the meaning of whose name is "Unending." In the foreground stand the five Pandava brothers, heroes of the epic Mahabharata, with Draupadi, their wife: allegorically , she is the mind and they are the five senses. They are those whom the dream is dreaming. Eyes open, ready and willing to fight, the youths address themselves to this world of light in which we stand regarding them, where objects appear to be distinct from each other, and an Aristotelian logic prevails, and A is not not A. Behind them a dream-door has opened, however, to an inward, backward dimension where a vision emerges against darkness... Joseph Campbell |
| The role of the artist I now understood as that of revealing through the world-surfaces the implicit forms of the soul, and the great agent to assist the artist was the myth. Joseph Campbell Remarks |
| The way to find out about happiness is to keep your mind on those moments when you feel most happy, when you are really happy — not excited, not just thrilled, but deeply happy. This requires a little bit of self-analysis. What is it that makes you happy? Stay with it, no matter what people tell you. This is what is called following your bliss. Joseph Campbell Popular Quotes |
| The world is full of people that have stopped listening to themselves or have listened only their neighbors to learn what they ought to do, how they ought to behave, and what the values are they should be living for. Joseph Campbell Quotations |
| There are now no more horizons. And with the dissolution of horizons we have experienced and are experiencing collisions, terrific collisions, not only of peoples but also of their mythologies. It is as when dividing panels are withdrawn from between chambers of very hot and very cold airs: there is a rush of these forces together…. That is just what we are experiencing; and we are riding it: riding it to a new age, a new birth, a totally new condition of mankind - to which no one anywhere alive today can say that he has the key, the answer, the prophecy, to its dawn. Nor is there anyone to condemn here… What is occurring is completely natural, as are its pains, confusions, and mistakes. Joseph Campbell Adages |
| 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. Joseph Campbell Quotations |
| We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. Joseph Campbell Quotations |
| We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come. Joseph Campbell Quotations |
| We're so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget that the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it's all about. Joseph Campbell |
| We're so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about. Joseph Campbell |
| Well, one of the problems about being psychoanalyzed is, as Nietzsche said, "Be careful lest in casting out your devils that you cast out the best thing that's in you." So many people who are really in deep analysis look as though and act as though they have been filleted. There's no bone there, there's no stuff! How to get rid of ego as dictator and turn it into messenger and servant and scout, to be in your service, is the trick. Joseph Campbell |
| What each must seek in his own life never was on land or sea. It is something that never has been and never could have been experienced by anyone else. Joseph Campbell |
| When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness. Joseph Campbell Adages |
| When we talk about settling the world's problems, we're barking up the wrong tree. The world is perfect. It's a mess. It has always been a mess. We are not going to change it. Our job is to straighten out our own lives. Joseph Campbell |
| When you follow your bliss... doors will open where you would not have thought there would be doors; and where there wouldn't be a door for anyone else. Joseph Campbell Quotes |
| When you make the sacrifice in marriage, you're sacrificing not to each other but to unity in a relationship. Joseph Campbell Sayings |
| Whenever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed. The living images become only remote facts of a distant time or place. Furthermore, it is never difficult to demonstrate that as science and history, mythology is absurd. Joseph Campbell |
| 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... a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. Joseph Campbell |
| Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again. Joseph Campbell |
| [I have no doubt that I stand here at the very center of creation. Every fir tree, each of its needles, the movement of wind, all that I perceive and even more that I don't, all resonate with a vital hum. It is the hum of the universe, what the Chinese call the ten thousand things, all of them speaking out, saying precisely nothing. Each is its own center, the exact place where the world begins.] The center is where you are standing, ... and the other center is where I am standing. Joseph Campbell |
| [Space dedicated to creativity is the goal of artists of all kinds. Virginia Woolf lauded the] room of one's own ... 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. . . This is the place of creative incubation . . . If you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen. Joseph Campbell Sayings |
