We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned,
so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.
Destruction before creation.
* * *
Follow your bliss.
* * *
The heroic life is living the individual adventure.
Nothing is exciting if you know what the outcome is
going to be.
To refuse the call means stagnation.
***
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.
* * *
It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the
treasures of life.
Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.
* * *
You become mature when you become the authority for
your own life.
* * *
The creative act is not hanging on but yielding to new
creative movement.
Art is the set of wings to carry you out of your own
entanglement.
* * *
Dew is an ambrosia fallen from the moon.
* * *
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.
* * *
All we really want to do is dance.
* * *
A bit of advice given to a young Native American at the
time of his initiation:
“As you go the way of life, you will see a great chasm.
Jump.
It is not as wide as you think.”
Reflections on the Art of Living
A Joseph Campbell Companion
Selected and Edited by Diane K. Osbon