# A Joseph Campbell Companion  ## Metadata - Author: [[Joseph Campbell]] - Full Title: A Joseph Campbell Companion - Category: #heros-journey #divinity ## Highlights - Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. ([Location 173](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005HFL3MW&location=173)) - Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world.   We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy. ([Location 177](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005HFL3MW&location=177)) - We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. ([Location 184](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005HFL3MW&location=184)) - There is no security in following the call to adventure.   Nothing is exciting if you know what the outcome is going to be.   To refuse the call means stagnation.   What you don’t experience positively you will experience negatively.   You enter the forest at 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 realize your potential. ([Location 218](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005HFL3MW&location=218)) - Sri Ramakrishna said: “Do not seek illumination unless you seek it as a man whose hair is on fire seeks a pond.” ([Location 263](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005HFL3MW&location=263)) - “As you go the way of life, you will see a great chasm.   Jump.   It is not as wide as you think.” ([Location 271](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005HFL3MW&location=271)) - Christianity and Judaism are religions of exile: Man was thrown out of the Garden. ([Location 296](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005HFL3MW&location=296)) - Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow. ([Location 413](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005HFL3MW&location=413)) - The dark night of the soul comes just before revelation.   When everything is lost, and all seems darkness, then comes the new life and all that is needed. ([Location 418](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005HFL3MW&location=418)) - Marriage is not a love affair, it’s an ordeal. It is a religious exercise, a sacrament, the grace of participating in another life. ([Location 507](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005HFL3MW&location=507)) - In marriage, the woman is the initiator, and the man rides along. ([Location 561](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005HFL3MW&location=561)) - In marriage you are not sacrificing yourself to the other person. You are sacrificing yourself to the relationship. ([Location 571](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005HFL3MW&location=571)) - The key to the Grail is compassion, suffering with, feeling another’s sorrow as if it were your own.   The one who finds the dynamo of compassion is the one who’s found the Grail. ([Location 585](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005HFL3MW&location=585)) - Survival is the second law of life. The first is that we are all one. ([Location 615](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005HFL3MW&location=615)) - If you follow your bliss, you will always have your bliss, money or not.   If you follow money, you may lose it, and you will have nothing. ([Location 661](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005HFL3MW&location=661)) - In the living of a life today, money is a facilitating energy source. With money in the tank like gasoline, you can get places you other wise couldn’t go. ([Location 669](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005HFL3MW&location=669)) - As Schopenhauer says, when you look back on your life, it looks as though it were a plot, but when you are into it, it’s a mess: just one surprise after another. Then, later, you see it was perfect. So, I have a theory that if you are on your own path things are going to come to you. Since it’s your own path, and no one has ever been on it before, there’s no precedent, so everything that happens is a surprise and is timely. ([Location 720](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005HFL3MW&location=720)) - What the Holy Grail symbolizes is the highest spiritual fulfillment of a human life. ([Location 830](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005HFL3MW&location=830)) - The crucial thing to live for is the sense of life in what you are doing, and if that is not there, then you are living according to other peoples’ notions of how life should be lived. ([Location 845](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005HFL3MW&location=845)) - Apotheosis, the realization that “I am that which all these other beings are.” The hero knows that he is It, the Buddha image, the knower of the truth. “The Kingdom of the Father is spread upon the earth and men do not see it.” That’s the illumination that comes with Apotheosis. You are not allowed that realization in Christianity, except in Gnostic Christianity. You can’t say, “The Christhood is in me.” ([Location 943](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005HFL3MW&location=943)) - The big initiation is when one has to leave the psychology of childhood behind: the death of the infantile ego, which is dependant and obedient, and the birth of the self-reliant adult participating in the society. ([Location 998](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005HFL3MW&location=998)) - Ritual introduces you to the meaning of what’s going on.   Saying grace before meals lets you know that you’re about to eat something that once was alive. ([Location 1063](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005HFL3MW&location=1063)) - The life of the animal that you’ve taken is given back when you recognize what you’ve done. ([Location 1069](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005HFL3MW&location=1069)) - Everything that comes… goes. ([Location 1158](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005HFL3MW&location=1158)) - …the hero would be no hero if death held for him any terror; the first condition is reconciliation with the grave. ([Location 1159](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005HFL3MW&location=1159)) - 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.” ([Location 1161](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005HFL3MW&location=1161)) - I think the idea of life after death is a bad idea. It distracts you from appreciating the uniqueness of the here and now, the moment you are living. For example, if you think that when you die your parents will be there and you’ll live with them forever, you may no longer appreciate the significant moments that you share with them on earth. ([Location 1234](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005HFL3MW&location=1234))