BILL MOYERS: Do you ever have the sense of... being helped by hidden hands?
 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: All the time. It is miraculous. I even have a superstition that has grown on me as a result of invisible hands coming all the time––namely, that 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. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be. 
 

Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth with Bill Moyers 120
 

When Joseph Campbell died just months after recording the interviews with Bill Moyers that would become The Power of Myth, he had no idea how these interviews, in particular the idea of following one's bliss, would resonate with the public. Within months of airing, "Follow Your Bliss" became a popular catchphrase.

It's an aphorism Campbell shared in multiple interviews the last fifteen years of his life: wisdom grounded in personal experience and a lifetime spent studying myth, distilled into a single phrase. 

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Yet, oddly enough, this expression does not occur in any of the books Campbell completed during his lifetime. Its first appearance in print is in an interview for Psychology Today the year Campbell retired from teaching.

Prior to that, this bit of advice was reserved primarily for his students.

My general formula for my students is “Follow your bliss.” Find where it is, and don’t be afraid to follow it. 

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Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth with Bill Moyers 148 

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BLISS CRITICS

Though this maxim clearly strikes a chord in the popular imagination, many new to Campbell’s work find the phrase elusive. A few critics have said that “following one’s bliss” is a reckless and hedonistic prescription, code for doing whatever the heck you want. Countless others who never heard of Joseph Campbell embrace the phrase as a sort of magic mantra.

A closer read suggests something deeper:

If your bliss is just your fun and your excitement, you’re on the wrong track. I mean, you need instruction. Know where your bliss is. And that involves coming down to a deep place in yourself. 

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The Hero’s Journey 253

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WHAT DID JOSEPH CAMPBELL MEAN BY "FOLLOW YOUR BLISS"?

What makes you enthusiastic? Follow it. 

That's been my advice to young people who ask me, "What shall I do?" I taught once in a boys' prep school. That's the moment for young boys (or it used to be; I don't know what's going on now) when they had to decide their life courses. You know, where are they going? And they're caught with excitement. This one wants to study art, this one poetry, this one anthropology. But Dad says study law; that's where the money is. Okay, that's the decision. And you know what my answer would be—where your enthusiasm is. So I have a little word: “Follow your bliss.” The bliss is the message of God to yourself. That's where your life is.

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Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove: “Understanding Mythology”: Thinking Allowed Productions, 1988


Determining what one’s bliss might be isn’t simply a matter of choosing whatever one wants and then waiting for the universe to hand it over. We don’t “will” our bliss; we discover our bliss.
 

HOW DO YOU DISCOVER YOUR OWN BLISS?

Socrates’ dictum is relevant here: “Know thyself.”

To find your own way is to follow your own bliss. This involves analysis, watching yourself and seeing where the real deep bliss is—not the quick little excitement, but the real, deep, life-filling bliss. 

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“Man and Myth: A Conversation with Joseph Campbell,” Psychology Today, July 1971

We are having experiences all the time which may on occasion render some sense of this, a little intuition of where your bliss is. Grab it. No one can tell you what it is going to be. You have to learn to recognize your own depth.

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Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth with Bill Moyers118

It’s not just what you want (“I’d like to be the next Hemingway”), but a matter of your passion. What do you keep coming back to? What catches your soul and will not let you go? There is a world of difference between wanting to play the guitar like a rock star, and always having a guitar in your hand, practicing six or eight hours a day, because you love making music. Because this is what you would rather be doing more than anything else in the world, even if there’s no money in it, no fame––because THIS is your bliss.

BLISS AND RAPTURE

Campbell sometimes describes bliss as “rapture,” which is likely to be very different from one’s will. You might consciously will to become a lawyer or computer programmer or news anchor, but if your bliss, your passion, your Calling, is music or preaching or teaching or building or writing, then by all means follow the Call. This is the path out of the Wasteland.

Our bliss is the what, where, and when we feel most authentic, most ourselves. It is what we are doing when time drops away and we reside in an eternal now. Eternal means more than “forever.” From the Latin e or outside, and ternum or time, that which is eternal exists outside time. It transcends time. 

When you are in your bliss, ego concerns dissolve: you aren’t thinking about that misunderstanding with your sister, or what you should do for dinner, how you’re going to pay the light bill next Tuesday, or what’s on television tonight. When you are in your bliss, whether that bliss is sculpting clay or crunching numbers, time ceases to exist.

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