Ahh, but how does one exist as a non believer yet stand in awe and wonder of myth?

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It's easy
Clip Joseph Campbell on the Big Bang BillMoyers.com

 

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Moyers Moment 1988 Joseph Campbell on the Importance of Mythology Moyers Moments BillMoyers.com

 

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George Lucas on Mentors and Faith BillMoyers.com

Lucas may be wrong on some things, but...

 

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THE FIRE IS IN THE MIND

David Miller first gave this presentation on May 18, 1992, at an Open Center conference in New York City entitled, "A Fire in the Mind: An Evaluation of Joseph Campbell's Creative and Intellectual Influence." It was published in Spring 56 (1994), 78-91, and in Saga: Best New Writings on Mythology, ed. J. Young (Ashland: White Cloud Press, 1996), 55-67. A version of this essay was presented at a Spring Conference, "Celebrating the Life and Work of Joseph Campbell," sponsored by Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, California, on April 17, 2004. A recording of this 2004 version is available from Conference Recording Service, 1308 Gilman St., Berkeley, CA 94706. Website: Conference Recording carries thousands of audio recordings by prominent teachers and speakers. Telephone: 800-647-1110.

The Fire is in the Mind

 

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Joseph Campbell An Exchange by Joan Konner Huston Smith and Roy Finch The New York Review of Books

First, Mr. Gill advances an interpretation of one of Campbell’s most frequently quoted phrases, “Follow your bliss,” that I believe is hardly vigorous and, in fact, off-base. He writes that the meaning of Joe’s message is to do only that which makes one happy, and, as such, that it sanctions the selfishness that has become deplorably familiar to us in the Reagan years. With that interpretation, he likens Campbell’s philosophy to that of Ayn Rand, one of the absolutists for the value system of materialism.

After years of working with this material, I would suggest that this interpretation is the opposite of what Campbell meant. Campbell says: “We are so busy doing things of outer value that we no longer know what we intend,” and he says this in many different ways. What Joe meant—and continues to mean in this period of infant mortality that so irks Mr. Gill—is that the impositions of our culture, have caused us to lose touch with our inner selves and our own inner sense of being that directs us toward those things that are most meaningful in our lives.