According to Joseph Campbell, the power of myth in the modern world is not what it once was in antiquity. Today, the individual is left to their own devices to build a connection with the mystery of life. According to him, there are two primary ways to obtain guidance from the soul.
One way is through a wise mentor—someone you admired in your youth because they touched a specific quality within you. The other is to follow your bliss, which he defines as:
“the deep sense of being present and doing what you absolutely must do to be yourself.”
Doing the things that bring us into sync with ourselves is incredibly difficult. We face fears that attack us from the outside through the critical, uncomprehending, and rejecting reactions of others. But we are also attacked from within by the voice of doubt and our own inability to see clearly.
In such cases, it truly helps to read stories about real people who dared to live their personal myth—or about literary characters whose fates touch, move, and inspire us. They are the true creators of living myth-making in the modern world, encouraging us to dare to follow the call of our own hearts.
“A rolling stone gathers no moss. And myth is moss. That is why now one has to manage alone, to improvise… This is the situation regarding myth at the present moment. We have all been left without guides.
And yet you can find two kinds of guides. The first may be a person from your youth who seemed like a noble, great personality. You can use this person as a model. The other way is to live for bliss. Thus your bliss becomes your life. There is a saying in Sanskrit: the three aspects of thought that point furthest, toward the edge of the abyss of the transcendent, are sat, chit, and ananda: Being, Consciousness, and Bliss.
When I reached my later years, I began to think about these things. I don’t know what being is. I don’t know what consciousness is. But I do know what bliss is: the deep sense of being present and doing what you absolutely must do to be yourself. If you can hold firmly to that, you are already on the edge of the transcendent…
There is a moment in the Arthurian hall of feasts, when all the knights were gathered around the Round Table. Arthur would not allow anyone to eat until an adventure had occurred… They waited for the adventure of the day to appear—and behold, it truly came. The Holy Grail itself appeared to the gathered knights—not in its full splendor, but covered with a vast, radiant veil. Then the vision vanished.
Finally, Gawain, Arthur’s nephew, stood up and said: ‘I propose a vow to this company—that we all go forth to seek the Grail, to see it unveiled.’
And here we come to the text that intrigued me. It reads: ‘They thought it would be a disgrace to go forth as a group. Each entered the Forest Adventurous at the place he had chosen for himself, where it was darkest and there was no path or way.‘
Enter the forest at the darkest point, where there is no path. If there is a path, it is someone else’s; every human being is a unique phenomenon. The idea is to find your own way to bliss.” — Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss
The same thing that intrigued Campbell intrigued me as well. It is the real reason I wanted to share the excerpt above. Therefore, I will repeat it:
“Enter the forest at the darkest point, where there is no path. If there is a path, it is someone else’s; every human being is a unique phenomenon. The idea is to find your own way to bliss.”
Kameliya Hadzhiyska
