To those who do not know him, Joseph Campbell is, in a few short words, a hero to mythology. Hero in the sense that he took the truth out of the story – comparing different mythological stories from all over the world, to pare them to their most basic teachings, whilst drawing parallels in real life.
You can easily find the whole breadth and depth of his teachings in the book The Hero With A Thousand Faces, which is a compilation of all his works. From an early age, Campbell had been an avid reader of mythology, not just of the Greeks but those of different cultures in different parts of the world. Beginning with his main book you can get a good intro to his works and then discover the vastness of the different spiritual truths when you read more about the ageless wisdom of other cultures and their myths.
The sum of Josephs teachings can be summed up in these words: The hero on his journey to following his bliss. He maintains that bad experiences or challenges are really nothing more than starting points to arriving at what we need to do in this lifetime, and getting from Point A to Point B, from rising above the challenges to becoming the person we need to be is called the heros journey..
All stories in the world have a heros journey attached them when simple men and women are posed with seemingly insurmountable challenges, only to conquer after a deep journey within. .
Campbell states that there is a parallelism to the mythological stories and that of real life. Thus, challenges or problems should be dealt with some degree of detachment – they are merely triggers that send us down the path to bliss, that is if we rise up to the challenge and become what we need to be..
Another of Campbells teachings is that there are spiritual truths buried in every story. Take, for example, the King Arthur story where a horse had to be cut in half in order to enter into a magical kingdom. The mythologist scoffs at literal interpretation. For him, the story is all about discarding the physical body and physical attachments in order to achieve spiritual enlightenment. .
Campbells works have been cited as a reference by different modern authors, including New York bestselling author David Wilcock, whose books include The Source Field Investigations and The Synchronicity Key, which tackles the overwhelming evidence for deliberate synchronicity as against happy coincidences.
