Joseph Campbell

I had an epiphany while writing last week’s article: I want to be more spiritual and explore it in my art and writing. I don’t actually want to do this because talking about spirituality is…icky. But then I asked myself, “What’s the point of ‘following my bliss’ if I just turn around at the first sign of fear?” How do you become more spiritual? In this article, I share the approach that I’m learning from the books of psychoanalyst James Hollis and comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell.… View More

There are two things that one should never talk about: politics and religion. I’m breaking that rule today. As I “follow my bliss,” I’m grudgingly realizing that I need to explore spirituality in my art and writing. I really don’t want to. Because, well, of the first sentence of this article. It was with great trepidation that I kept reading James Hollis’s book, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life (affiliate link). In his view, the two main tasks during the second half of life are recovering a personal authority and discovering a personal spirituality. I already wrote about personal authority in part 1, so this article will focus on spirituality.… View More

The pandemic lockdown is an opportunity to journey inward to find your bliss. It’s easy to say, but where do you actually start? I believe that keeping a journal is key to finding your bliss. In this article, I share journaling ideas and techniques I’ve picked up over the years from trying different approaches, such as diaries, morning pages, daily planners, productivity journals, bullet journals, and habit-tracking journals. Who knows, maybe these ideas might finally convince you of the habit of journaling!… View More

With the unmasking of systemic racism in our society, not just in policing, but in employment, housing, academia, and the list continue to grow every day, I keep thinking of a line in Joseph Campbell’s Power of Myth book: “We need myths that will identify the individual not with his local group but with the planet.” We need a mythology of inclusion rather than exclusion. Unfortunately, mythology has always worked by excluding others. This article goes into why that is and how an individual might change the mythology that he lives by. Consider this post a book review focused on mythology as applied to the systemic racism that is evident today.… View More

Like you, I long for the days before February. “I just want to return to normal.” “But would you want to return to normal?” one Facebook friend asked. I thought about this for days afterward.  I don’t have it all figured out, but I would like to share a story of how I arrived at an answer through the writings of three wise people.… View More

Coronavirus preparations at home and what mythology has to say about the battle with the coronavirus.… View More

Joseph Campbell tells us that mythology had four functions: cosmological, social, eliciting a sense of awe, and psychological. One of these haven’t been replaced by something created by humankind. Which one? The cosmological function explains how the universe was created. In Greek mythology for example, out of the void (referred to as Chaos) came the… View More

Before The Fall, recently released on amazon video and other streaming services, is a gay version of Pride & Prejudice. It’s worth a watch. Pride & Prejudice is a timeless love story written by Jane Austen over 200 years ago. It features two people from opposite sides of the social… View More

The nights of the King Arthur’s court were seated at a table and Arthur would not let the meal be served until an adventure had occurred. And, indeed, an adventure did occur. The Grail itself appeared, carried by angelic miracle, covered, however, by a cloth. Everyone was in rapture and then it… View More

A friend and I decided to have lunch outside. It was nice out–something that will become increasingly rare as summer unfolds. My friend was especially reflective that day, and we got to talking about choices that he made in life. He felt that he hadn’t achieved anything worthwhile. He never made… View More