At The Water's Edge
Following Your Bliss
The popular mythologist Joseph Campbell coined the phrase "Follow Your Bliss" and I think that Campbell meant by the phrase the persuing of peak moments which does not mean being "blissed out" via hedonism, drugs, partying etc. (There goes half my audience!)
One of the attractive things about the idea of "Following your bliss" is the idea of "helping hands", magic, strange coincedences, syncronities being drawn into your life. Indeed he had this to say on the topic in the TV series The Power of Myth (available on DVD) when interviewed by Bill Moyers:
Moyers: "Do you ever have the sense when you are following your bliss, as I have in moments, of being helped by hidden hands?"
Campbell: "All the time. It is miraculous. I even have a superstition that has grown on me as the result of invisible hands coming all the time - namely that if you 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 liviing is the one that you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don''t be afraid, and doors will open where didn't know they were going to be."
I too have felt these "helping hands", though it has to be said, somewhat worringly, not greatly since I started trying to be an artist full time. (Some examples of my experiences of "helping hands" are described here, here and here.) There could be reasons for this such as me pushing too hard, what I call "motoring", which perhaps doesn't allow enough space for "this magic" to happen. Indeed one of the few times I can think of when "luck" descended on me during this recent period is when an out of print book that I had been seeking for a long time became available on Ebay and I won it. And more recently when I found the guitar I wanted. Both times, had the sense of lightness about them, dare I say "grace" even and not of my "nose to the grindstone".
Also, there's another aspect: do you think success is just easily attainable by doing something that you really want to do? It's a nice thought but perhaps it's not that easy. Indeed there are plenty of talented people around me who are doing what they want but success is alluding them with what seems like a certain determination. In Finding Joe, the film describes how on The Hero's Journey (of which "following your bliss" is the starting point and in effect your compass) you are going to meet problems, you will have to "slay dragons" as the film puts it. I've a slightly different take to these dragons to that of the film in that I think the dragons are aspects of us that are holding us back. They may appear in your life as problems, even enemies, but I'm starting to think along the lines suggested in Shadows, Criticism of Others, Reflections, i.e. that these "problems" could be presenting us with clues as to the way forward which are dependent on adddressing issues within ourselves.
This is certainly where I think I am at the moment: I have snags that keep catching and for me to move forward I need to address them.
