I caught tidbits of the Bill Moyers interviews with Joseph Campbell that have been on PBS the past week or two. Moved to tears. When I watched these videos when they were originally broadcast in the 1980s, I didn't realized how enlightened Campbell was . And poor Moyers shows by his responses that he hasn't a clue! But what an opportunity and gift he got. I wonder how he looks at the experience now, in his 70s.
Of course, the phrase from JC (oh, same initials as that other bloke) that everyone knows is "follow your bliss." In his case, he followed the "myth" path and it led him to Truth. Not bad advice and hard to do. I am always, ALWAYS moved to tears when I come across someone who has done it. Jane Goodall would be another example. It doesn't have to end up in enlightenment -- but there IS something illuminated about someone who has lived this way.
For me, what has been in the way my whole life is wanting to be like other people. When I was a child, I wanted to be like the other kids -- and I never was. Being different always meant being LESS. And it is just now occurring to me that it doesn't mean that at all -- that one only truly comes into one's power and does what one is meant to do on this planet when one finds the gift of the uniqueness of one's being.
I don't know if there are, literally, such things as "old souls" but if there are, I'm sure I am one. And it is only now that I realize I could never find satisfaction in all of the things others found it in because I simply was not meant to. My calling has been this Truth which is finding voice in me now. And I realize that one doesn't have to be "completely enlightened," whatever that is, to speak that Truth. In a sense, one HAS to speak it -- not to do so is to betray oneself and that Truth.
