If you 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. Wherever you are — if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time. ~Joseph Campbell

I first encountered Joseph Campbell in an undergraduate English lit course about mythology. I wish I could say that it changed my life, but at the time, I wasn’t paying enough attention to have such a transformational moment. Instead, I found myself coming back to Campbell, his hero’s journey, and his ideas about bliss over the years.

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. ~Campbell

I believe one of the best avenues for finding and following your bliss is the craft of writing. It shapes our ideas and provides a means of expressing them to ourselves or sharing them with others. In her excellent essay on Joseph Campbell and finding your bliss, Maria Popova sums it up this way: “The most uncomfortable but essential part of finding your bliss, Campbell argues, is the element of uncertainty — the willingness to, in the timeless words of Rilke, “live the questions” rather than reaching for the ready-made answers.” Writing allows us to live these questions, to find comfort in their exploration, to experience joy, not in finding the answers but in searching for them.

Write Your Bliss is my playground for this discovery, and I hope it will be one of yours as well.

This is me and the most important people in my life. I’m Joshua Bowen. I enjoy reading, writing, spending time with my family, and short walks on the beach.

This is my new leap.

It is just the beginning.

Come back soon for more.

Or email me with questions.