The Rapture of Life

When you follow your bliss... doors will open where you would not have thought there would be doors, and where there wouldn't be a door for anyone else.

We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty “Yes!” to your adventure.

Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths. 

I don't have to have faith, I have experience.

We are having experiences all the time which render some sense of our own depth, and it is miraculous if 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.

I don't think there is any such thing as an ordinary mortal. Everybody has his own possibility of rapture in the experience of life. All he has to do is recognize it and then cultivate it and get going with it. I always feel uncomfortable when people speak about ordinary mortals because I've never met an ordinary man, woman, or child. 

 

If you meditate on your past sins long enough, you can get lost in your sins and not know what your virtues are. Why not meditate on the virtues? Foster the virtues and let the sins fall off. Find the virtues. Affirm life! Instead of criticizing it, affirm life! 

The conquest of fear yields the courage of life. That is the cardinal initiation of every heroic adventure—fearlessness and achievement.

The mystery that you're looking for and you think is somewhere external to yourself is not out there at all. It's what you are. You don't have to go anywhere to find god, and you don't have to go anywhere to find the Promised Land. It's here, inside every human being. It's where you are. It's what you are. We don't realize that the gods are not out there somewhere. They live in us all.

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are. 

—Joseph Campbell