Joseph Campbell

We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.

A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.

You enter the forestat the darkest point,where there is no path.Where there is a way or path,it is someone else's path.You are not on your own path.If you follow someone else's way,you are not going to realizeyour potential.

Writer__ block results from too much head. Cut off your head. Pegasus, poetry, was born of Medusa when her head was cut off. You have to be reckless when writing. Be as crazy as your conscience allows.

Follow your bliss. Find where it is and don't be afraid to follow it.

Now I found it in writing sentences. You can write that sentence in a way that you would have written it last year. Or you can write it in the way of the exquisite nuance that is sriting in your mind now. But that takes a lot of ... waiting for the right word to come.

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.

If you do 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.

Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.

A priest is a functionary of a social sort. The society worships certain deities in a certain way, and the priest becomes ordained as a functionary to carry out that ritual. The deity to whom he is devoted is a deity that was there before he came along. But the shaman's powers are symbolized in his own familiars, deities of his own personal experience. His authority comes out of a psychological experience, not a social ordination.

Only birth can conquer death__he birth , not of the old thing again, but of something new .

The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.

For the bliss of the deep abode is not lightly abandoned in favor of the self-scattering of the wakened state,

The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight.

The LSD phenomenon, on the other hand, is__o me at least__ore interesting. It is an intentionally achieved schizophrenia, with the expectation of a spontaneous remission__hich, however, does not always follow. Yoga, too, is intentional schizophrenia: one breaks away from the world, plunging inward, and the ranges of vision experienced are in fact the same as those of a psychosis. But what, then, is the difference? What is the difference between a psychotic or LSD experience and a yogic, or a mystical? The plunges are all into the same deep inward sea; of that there can be no doubt. The symbolic figures encountered are in many instances identical (and I shall have something more to say about those in a moment). But there is an important difference. The difference__o put it sharply__s equivalent simply to that between a diver who can swim and one who cannot. The mystic, endowed with native talents for this sort of thing and following, stage by stage, the instruction of a master, enters the waters and finds he can swim; whereas the schizophrenic, unprepared, unguided, and ungifted, has fallen or has intentionally plunged, and is drowning.

In marriage you are not sacrificing yourself to the other person. You are sacrificing yourself to the relationship.You become mature when you become the authority of your own life.Life will always be sorrowful. We can't change it, but we can change our attitude toward it.Awe is what moves us forward.

Life will always be sorrowful. We can't change it, but we can change our attitude toward it.

One great thing about growing old is that nothing is going to lead to anything. Everything is of the moment.