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

– Joseph Campbell

Authenticity is as much a buzz word these days as fame.  One is made of earth, the other plastic.  There are a million brightly-lit reasons for fame’s magnetic appeal, but the value of authenticity –  the deep line that runs through so much of our contemporary yearning for spiritual purpose – was ploughed by just one man: Joseph Campbell.

Most people remember Campbell for his influential series of conversations aired in 1988 with the PBS interviewer, Bill Moyers, and the best-selling companion book, The Power of Myth.  Both lit a fire in the public imagination and made Campbell into a cultural visionary and cult figure.

But it was Campbell’s first book , A Hero With A Thousand Faces, published in 1949, that marked out the path for how to lead a life of meaning.  George Lucas re-wrote the screenplay for Star Wars based on what he read, turning it from a lost in space story to a hero’s journey toward mythic fulfillment.  Campbell had a long habit of provoking creative exploration and he knew enough about the value of myth to make his own life mythic.  One long adventure toward purpose.

Like anyone looking to lead a legendary life, Campbell got going by doing his Masters in Arthurian Studies and thinking about all those tales told over hearth fires in the Middle Ages.  He had previously spent his youth filling up on Indian spiritual folklore after seeing a Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show when he was 8.  Having studied Latin, old French, Provencal and Sanskrit texts, he knew that myth was common to all cultures.  Campbell was keenly fascinated by the way that marvels and miracles entered common lives.

On a trip up the Inland Passage in 1932 that brought him to British Columbia (he had tea in Nanaimo while fogged in), Campbell was profoundly affected after seeing the ruined native village of Masset in Haida Gwaii.   All those old totems of identity were gone and the community was suffering spiritual neglect.  Without myth, Campbell wrote, modern society would also “fall to pieces”.  Myth made man whole.

What’s entertaining about Campbell’s visit to our shores is that he was on the lam from John Steinbeck, a close friend, after having an affair with the budding author’s wife, Carol.  Or maybe he just lusted for life.  Campbell was in no way an ivory tower academic and went at his life as if on “an epochal voyage”.  But he knew he was one of the lucky ones – among the magical circle that knew the value in the search for spiritual truths.

Campbell turned authenticity into a quest for the Holy Grail, for that essential part of ourselves that is born in us but we lose sight of and must find again by setting out on a journey toward an authentic self.  Follow your bliss.  That particular Campbell slogan has made its way onto countless fridge magnets (if only as a blessing to eat that last piece of cake), but there is more to him than just a new age excuse for self-indulgence.

In his conversation with Moyers, Campbell said:

“The theme of the Grail is the bringing of life into what is known as ’the wasteland’.  The wasteland is…the world of people living inauthentic lives doing what they are supposed to do”.

So what is an authentic life?  It’s definitely not more cake. For Campbell, bliss was the Holy Grail of personal authenticity, the core of ourselves that is most meaningful, most essential, most pure.  Unlike hierarchical religions that often tease out the meaning of life through devotion, the hero’s journey that Campbell proposed was about the experience, not the meaning, of being alive.  It was not a promise for the hereafter but a plan for the here and now.  Be true to yourself, follow your heart, live your love are all notions that radiate from the idea of living an authentic life.  Campbell lamented that people – individuals –  had turned away from their core strengths by trying to prove their worth by someone else’s rules.

Campbell’s writing – for all its adventurous curiousity – is a simple guidebook for how to look at life from a more honest perspective and give it more purposeful direction. A heart and a compass, useful gear for the journey ahead. In his books and interviews, there are many passages and quotes that resonate, but this one is perhaps the simplest and most potent – “The privilege of life is being who you are”.  Many aren’t afforded that privilege, often due to political reasons, but many also don’t allow it for themselves, for very personal reasons. It can initially seem more complicated to achieve than the slogan suggests. Still, in a fundamental way, it’s also the basic acts of humility and self-awareness and self-love that bring us to a place of authenticity. In a conformist, razzmatazz world always distracting us in different directions, authenticity is a revolutionary act. No matter all the distractions, Campbell says to stay true to the path of your authentic self and make your life a hero’s journey. Know your light and shine it. And skip the cake – there is something more delicious ahead. 

• Barry Dumka

© Barry Dumka/BCREATIVE CONSULTING