Bliss, etc.

Joseph Campbell formulated what became his most quoted dictum, "Follow your bliss" in the decade before his death. Join this conversation to explore this idea and share stories.

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Cindy B.
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Post by Cindy B. »

I'm glad to hear that things are going better for you, Carmela. And in the near future, I hope you can get that good night's sleep. :)
If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s. --Jung

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

"...perchance to dream..."

~
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

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Post by CarmelaBear »

Note to Dad--

I walked, like you,

And there it was.

A chair.

It was nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

And, Dad, I went to school and learned

That for me, everything is nothing.

What do I do with all this nothing

That claims my heart

And has no need of me?

Daddy, it hurts,

And I cannot cry.

I only keep walking

And meeting new chairs.

~

Note to Chair--

Hello, how are you?

Glad to know you.

Will you be my friend?

~
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

Bliss is a warm, fuzzy idea, and I do so like it.

~
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

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Post by CarmelaBear »

Just thinking about organizing something political is exciting and wonderful. Some want me to think it's all about money, but if it were, it would be called monetics or economitics or fundsitics. Politics means people, and their my best source of energy.

Just saying.

~
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

The middle way is ambiguous and uncertain. I am preparing to dissolve personal political dreams and stop making art. I may write without publishing, (even online, even here).

On the policy front, I can leave the climate crisis and other important issues to those with the resources to do the best job. After all, I'm just one person, and not at all unique. There are plenty of others with my skills.....dime a dozen, really. On art, I just don't have time. It is a distraction. Need to think, read and write, without concern about what others think.

I seek freedom.

For the moment, I feel glad to know the world is in good hands. Enjoying living independently, in joy and peace. I can always come back later. May change my mind in a few days.....who knows? Only time will tell.

[Yes, something happened, and it brings out the shy in me. I wish I could explain, but I am not at liberty to say more.]

~
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

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Post by CarmelaBear »

Feelings are sometimes mysterious, puzzling and mind-boggling. For some reason, the Bear doesn't know whether to take her personal feelings seriously or to chuck them out with the dirty laundry. This is especially true of my feelings about Truth, a cruel and rather miserable, (but dear), old friend.

No, I am not prepared to elaborate. A number of locals have a clue, and the clue is travelling well, but that is quite enough. I remain befuddled and absurdly happy.

Such is the nature of bliss.

~
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

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Post by CarmelaBear »

One writer's take on how to live "an extraordinarily blissful life"....

http://thoughtcatalog.com/bianca-sparac ... t-you-are/

~

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

Heard this recently:

If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.

Exactly.... :roll:
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

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Post by CarmelaBear »

Animal Madness by Laurel Braitman.

In the late 1800s, California was teeming with grizzly bears:
"Until the latter half of the nineteenth century, the forests, meadows, and riverbanks of California were thick with grizzly bears. If you knew what you were doing, it was fairly easy to capture one. In 1858 a sheriff in Sacramento sold a wild grizzly for $15.50; a trained one went for $20.50. When the trapper George Yount arrived in California in 1831 and settled in Napa Valley, he said that the bears 'were everywhere -- upon the plains, in the valleys and on -- the mountains, venturing even within the camping-grounds, so that I have often killed as many as five or six in one day, and it was not unusual to see fifty or sixty within twenty-four hours.'

"In the 1850s, Grizzly Adams, the famous bear hunter and showman, traveled with two trained bears, Lady Washington and Ben Franklin, and exhibited dozens more in a menagerie in San Francisco. Ben Franklin had been captured as a still-nursing cub, so Adams gave him to a greyhound dog who had recently had a litter of pups and made buckskin mittens for the bear's paws so he wouldn't hurt the dog. Benjamin nursed from the greyhound for weeks, until Adams started feeding him meat. Both bears traveled hundreds of miles with Adams, sometimes chained to the wagon, other times walking freely alongside, and occasionally inside the wagon with him and the dog. Lady Washington also carried a pack, dragged a sled, and moved timber, and both bears helped Adams hunt grizzlies and other game that they shared at mealtime.

"Well into the 1860s captive bears could be found chained or caged at train stations, where they performed tricks or ate sweets and cakes fed to them by waiting passengers. One bear was said to have played the flute. People bought tickets to watch bears fight with bulls. Some Californians even kept them as pets. The actress and dancer Lola Montez chained two large grizzlies by the front door of her cottage in Grass Valley. By the late nineteenth century, however, the bears were few and far between. Those that hadn't been killed had become more reclusive, and captive bears were harder to buy. The animals who, only a few years before, had been everywhere were now hunted almost out of existence.

"William Randolph Hearst, the eccentric California newspaper magnate, watched shrewdly as the bears became ever rarer. He decided that he could exploit his readership's interest in the impending extinction of such a charismatic animal. In 1889 he hired Allen Kelly, a newspaper reporter with a bit of hunting and trapping experience, to capture a grizzly bear as a mascot for one of his papers, the San Francisco Examiner, known as the 'Monarch of the Dailies.' Hearst hoped that the tale of capturing one of the state's last grizzlies would boost readership. He would name him Monarch, after the paper.

Kelly began his hunt in the hills behind Santa Paula in Ventura runty, but the bears avoided his traps. A few weeks became months and still he had nothing. Kelly's editor at the paper fired him, but he continued undeterred. A few months later a Mexican man trapped a large grizzly in the San Gabriel Mountains of Los Angeles County and offered to sell it to Kelly. The bear furiously tried to escape his wooden trap, biting and tearing at the logs, hurling his body against the walls. For a full week he raged and refused to touch food. It took an entire day just to chain one of his legs. Finally, the bear was hauled onto a rough sled to be pulled by a team of skittish horses. The rest of the long trip to San Francisco was made by wagon and then railroad.

"Egged on by wildly embellished tales of his capture in the Examiner, twenty thousand people came to see Monarch on his first day at Woodward's Gardens, an amusement park in the city's Mission District. He was kept there, in a steel cell, for five or six years, until visitors lost interest in watching him. Hearst gifted the bear to the new Golden Gate Park in 1895. Shortly after Monarch arrived, the park commissioners were preoccupied with a number of more pressing issues than the bear, such as bicycles, new machines that the park leadership worried would frighten horses or lead to violent collisions. Monarch's arrival took up a mere two sentences in the commissions' annual report. The large gift from the Examiner first 'objected to its strange surroundings and tried to make his escape but now seems reconciled to his fate, and is a very popular attraction.' "
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

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Post by CarmelaBear »

If I were important, I would be guilty of hubris. That's not my problem. In point of fact, like most folks, I am nobody, and it is confirmed in a thousand ways every day.

If I dare to entertain the thought that I might matter, then any simple reality check confirms that it is just delusion, fantasy and wishful thinking.

Fortunately, like most people, I don't need to be important. I just need to be alive, and enjoy the experience...mostly alone...in my private and blissful mental, emotional and cyber heaven.

:D

It may seem like a sad way to find happiness, but the joy of being alive is very real.

:idea:
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

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Post by CarmelaBear »

Enjoy the self-help genre. Discovered another one that seems to be helpful. It's called "How You Got Here, Won't Help You Get There".

~
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

Visited the Harvard Law School website. Looked over the pictures and names of faculty, and there appear to be no Latino-Hispanic professors. After all these years...none at all. :shock:

I see that my old crush is still on board. He is a Portuguese-New Yorker of Brazillian birth, Roberto Mangabeira Unger. Searched Wiki for his story, and discovered that I am responsible for inspiring one of his key ideas. He does not give me credit, of course. Not surprising, since we can't relate to each other.

The idea is this: when I took a course taught by him, he proclaimed with typically magnificent confidence that the nature of man is "finitude". After class, I wrote a number of short sentences on the blackboard, indicating how it is that the nature of the human being is essentially infinite. Physically, we can be reduced to subatomic levels that have no apparent end and we can travel outward without limit, and our potential for realization is equally without boundaries.

Well, sports fans, the good professor now believes firmly in the infinite nature of the individual. And I remain utterly invisible at the ivory tower of skewered self confidence, where one is lucky to get out in one piece.

~ Note to Professor Unger~

Roberto, what was that smile about? You were reading my letter, you glanced up, saw me and smiled. My responsive microexpression was shy. I removed my gaze and returned it quickly, only to find you had already moved on. I never understood. I've received two similar smiles since then, and my response was to smile back. Perhaps I have learned to feel differently about such smiles.

Smiles are exquisite. Yours was in stark contrast to your usual demeanor. Love and attraction are passionate emotions that burn intensely and leave embers flickering for decades. You have aged well; as handsome as ever.

You live on another planet. Planet Genius. Your words are dense with meaning, but clear. If a person is super smart or has a committee to assist, or several lifetimes, your work is within reach. Without Wikipedia and YouTube, I wouldn't stand a chance. With them, I have to just quit trying to figure out what you are saying. There is too much going on.

I am sure your work is important, and in an exotic Rio sort of way, your ideas are influential. (Rumor has it that you and Obama communicated for a while, and later...not so much. He roundly ignored your criticism of his economic policies. He owed his victory to the wealthy, and he exercised his authority to favor them. You didn't like that. Most people would agree with you.)

My status as a Campbell follower is lightweight and personal, in contrast to your writings. Yet, we are somehow "equals", at least in theory.

It was a great privilege to be part of the educational experience at Harvard. You, sir, are absolutely wonderful.

I have to miss Cambridge and all my old stomping grounds. "Time's winged chariot...."

Take care, Roberto. You are loved.

~
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

Relationships these days are complex, but close ones are especially so. I worry about two big things. First, I do not want to do any harm to anyone. Second, I want to be of service to others.

Easier said than done. I write truth, and it sometimes steps on toes, including my own. I worry a lot about that. Sometimes my feelings get too raw, and I can be disrespectful. Bothers me to no end.

If I were better at serving the needs of others, I think I could be less afraid of people and more positive and fearlessly show a real interest in people. Instead, I tend to be shy and isolated. I think that's why I had almost no financial or political career. I just worked for pennies as though I thought my work was unworthy of compensation. I was alone and frightened. I could only help individuals, and I could not help either society or myself.

I feel frustrated and awkward. I don't know what to do with all this longing for justice and for a cleaner, smarter planet Earth. Do I want too much? Are my ambitions absurd?

Strangely, for all this hemming and hawing over the future, the present is as blissful as ever. If life is not perfect, it is wildly and spectacularly beautiful and awesome. If I let myself focus on this simple fact, I can only be happy. On that note, I reclaim my life and let my worries wash over me like water on the edge of a sandy beach. There is a vast ocean of health and happiness that every one of us can tap whenever we need it.

Now, as doubts threaten to take over, I invoke the right to ignore my negative feelings and embrace the moment.

~
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

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