This is a summary of Reflections on the Art of Living — A Joseph Campbell Companion. This is a collection of Joseph’s teachings selected and edited by Diane K. Osbon. Consider reading the book if you’re interested in an expansion of your spiritual life and engagement with the human experience.
This book is a rather extensive collection of insights with a loose organization. So what you’ll read below is a summary of the main lessons…
There is no meaning of life - only the experience of being alive. The journey of your life is to become who you are. All myths and religions are metaphors pointing towards the truth of the human experience. You bring the metaphors to life, through life.
Campbell writes — "The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.”
One of his most used phrases is “follow your bliss”. He equates it to being on a balance beam. We usually have a sort of sense for when we are on the beam or off. We may get off the beam from time to time, but do so carefully…
You may have a success in life, but then just think of it - what kind of life was it? What good was it - you've never done the thing you wanted to do in all your life. I always tell my students, go where your body and soul want to go. When you have the feeling, then stay with it, and don't let anyone throw you off…. The way to find out about your happiness is to keep your mind on those moments when you feel most happy, when you really are 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 I call "following your bliss"... There’s something inside you that knows when you’re in the center, that knows when you’re on the beam or off the beam. And if you get off the beam to earn money, you’ve lost your life. And if you stay in the center and don’t get any money, you still have your bliss.
He draws on the work of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who used the allegory of the camel, the lion, and the child. As a young person you carry the burden of society’s expectations: those of friends, family, economics, and social convention. Like a camel you throw this load of weight on your back and venture into the desert. Then you must become the lion.
“Here the spirit becomes lion, it wants to hunt down its freedom and be master in its own desert.” The lion is self-assertion and breaking the bondage of expectation and obligation. Imagine the lion encounters a dragon. On every scale is written “thou shalt”. The lion must kill the dragon of “you shall”.
After the lion, comes the child. “The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a wheel rolling out of itself, a first movement, a sacred yes-saying.”
If the camel serves the concepts and rules of society, the lion serves his or her own concepts and rules. The child goes beyond concepts and rules. It’s a return to simplicity: the full experience of the mystery of life.
This is the “hero’s journey” of staying true to the self. Echoed by the likes of Jesus to Shakespeare.
“If you bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth will save you. If you don’t bring forth what is inside you, what you don’t bring forth will destroy you.” — Jesus
“This above all: to thine own self be true, / And it must follow, as the night the day, / Thou canst not then be false to any man.” — Shakespeare (Hamlet)
Follow your bliss…
Following from the first lesson, Campbell encourages us to keep moving forward while living enthusiastically.