The Brain Pickings website is a treasure trove of wonderful articles, brimming with delightful, intense and thought provoking excerpts hand-picked from the works of some of the greatest writers and artists of the world, and shared with the readers so lovingly that each post reads like a personal gift to the reader.

I greatly enjoyed this article by Maria Popova which collated the wisdom of Joseph Campbell’s writing on how to find your bliss.

http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/04/09/find-your-bliss-joseph-campbell-power-of-myth/

“Poets are simply those who have made a profession and a lifestyle of being in touch with their bliss“, says Campbell.
“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.”

Campbell explains how he arrived at this philosophy. “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.”

The bliss that Joseph Campbell talks about exudes from each of his books. I can sense it whenever I turn the pages of ‘The Power of Myth‘ or ‘The Hero with a thousand faces‘. I could re-read his books any number of times, and each time feel the same sense of rapture fill me, making me aware of my consciousness and my being. It is a blessing to read such writers.