Featured tool: I use this tool to discover new authors through whom I follow my bliss. Let me share it with you.

Seldom do I mention this here, but I minored in ancient literature and mythology in college.  In my last semester, the academic dean helped me build a one-on-one class with him that featured major mythology texts. Joseph Campbell’s Power of Myth made the list in which I first found the follow your bliss quote:

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.

Now this gets misquoted about as often as Tolkien’s not all who wander are lost and, like the Tolkien quote, ends up being twisted to mean the exact opposite. Campbell did not mean go do whatever you desire — go snort some coke or drain your life’s savings on sex slaves. Doesn’t really fit into the monomyth, that. He meant that the deep things you desire — the desire behind the desire for sex, the desire behind the desire for gold, the desire behind the desire for gourmet food — will lead you to your ultimate end. Let yourself, in other words, be surprised by joy.

A bit more context to his quote:

Now, I came to this idea of bliss because in Sanskrit, which is the great spiritual language of the world, there are three terms that represent the brink, the jumping-off place to the ocean of transcendence: sat-chit-ananda. The word “Sat” means being. “Chit” means consciousness. “Ananda” means bliss or rapture. I thought, “I don’t know whether my consciousness is proper consciousness or not; I don’t know whether what I know of my being is my proper being or not; but I do know where my rapture is. So let me hang on to rapture, and that will bring me both my consciousness and my being.” I think it worked.

He’s right, of course, to think that he needed to get his being and consciousness in order before he could truly experience bliss. But sometimes you got to let the bliss to the talking. Certainly C.S. Lewis did in Surprised by Joy and it did lead Lewis to people in his field of bliss.

Further, in the broader context, Joseph Campbell gave advice for how to find these wellsprings of joy and bliss. One of his pieces of advice was to read everything ever written by the author who most moves you. Then read everything they ever read. Of every text that author ever read, pick the ones that move you and read everything those authors ever wrote and ever read.

I had only finished the Harry Potter series a couple years prior and had only just been given permission to really enjoy reading — in my hometown growing up, people made fun of boys who read too much. So I read a commentary text for that class by John Granger, interacted with his community for awhile and found the main influences on J.K. Rowling, particularly regarding her mythopoetic nature:

J.K. Rowling’s influences:

1. Jane Austin
2. Elizabeth Goudge
3. J.R.R. Tolkien
4. C.S. Lewis
5. Nabakov

Now I had already been a huge fan of Lewis and Tolkien, so I started there and made a list of their friends and mentors:

1. G.K. Chesterton
2. Charles Williams
3. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
4. Tennyson
5. Wordsworth
6. Jane Austin (again)
7. Beowulf
8. John Milton
9. John Bunyan
10. Norse Mythology
11. George MacDonald

I was reading Norse Myths at the time, so that was done. I’d read Bunyan and Beowulf, both of which I loved for different reasons. I started Milton (from whom I learned a great deal of poetry and a great deal of myth making).

But when I got ahold of Chesterton and MacDonald, I struck gold. I read a good deal of MacDonald who gave me tons of joy with the myths, but Chesterton hit me like lightning and began to eclipse everyone else. I even saw where Lewis had STRAIGHT UP STOLEN Chesterton’s lines. I have nearly made it through everything Lewis and Tolkien wrote outside of what they’re truly known for — Middle Earth and Narnia — which I’m milking as I go since I already know so much about them, but now I’ve started reading the complete Chesterton — even rereading stuff — and am hooked forever.

Featured tool: I use this tool to discover new authors who will help me follow and find my bliss. Let me share it with you.

At the same time, I consulted friends who had loved and reread Rowling even more than I.

They gave me the following:

1. Patrick Rothfuss
2. Ready Player One
3. Stephen King’s On Writing
4. Dune
5. Sandman by Gaiman

Of King I read all of his nonfiction first — every interview, every article, Danse Macabre. Then I dipped my toe into the novels and felt like I was reading my dad. It was weird, but I only knew of King from the horror films I watched as a kid. None of his books. Rothfuss I loved because of how he, like Rowling, tried to subvert the fantasy genre from within and say this is why we need stories. But Rothfuss and King, both avid readers themselves, led me to all sorts of stuff: McAffrey, obscure Dr. Suess, tons of stuff.

Sandman, interestingly enough, let me right back to Chesterton. And Rothfuss and King led me right back to Lewis and Tolkien, which also led me to Chesterton. So that was doubly sealed.

These days, I have no problem putting a book down if it’s bad because King said it right: life is long, books are many, why finish a bad one? Everyone I pick, I pick strategically from out of the overflow of the trust  this compost heap of great writing has earned from me and I follow the joy, follow the bliss, and it teaches me, it enlightens my consciousness and resonates with my being. It’s like swimming in a current.

After seven years, I can say that Campbell was right, at least in part: follow your bliss.

Featured tool: I use this tool to discover new authors who will give me a piece of my bliss. Let me share it with you.