“What is the meaning of life?” Joseph Campbell was often asked, and he would respond, “There is no meaning. We bring the meaning to it.” Like Carl Jung, he saw the approach of old age, not as a mere diminution of life, but as a time of blooming. If we have filled up the beaker of life and allowed to catch fire everything that needs to be consumed, then the quiet of old age is welcome. If too much life remains unlived, we approach the threshold of old age with unsatisfied demands that turn our glances backward. As Jung said, “An old man who cannot bid farewell to life appears as feeble and sickly as a young man who is unable to embrace it.”
Joseph taught that we can choose to live in rapture, that is not “out there” in some other place or person, that we don’t have to go somewhere or have something or someone. “It is here. It is here. It is here.” A shift in consciousness is all it takes.”
Diane K. Osbon, in “Reflections on the Art of Living: A Joseph Campbell Companion”
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Jeff Maziarek, author of Spirituality Simplified and Codi’s Journey, launched Pondercentral.com in April 2007 as a Web-based forum for “PONDER on THIS,” a series of weekday inspirational email messages he began sending to subscribers in March 1999. A FREE service since its inception, “PONDER on THIS” provides subscribers with meaningful content to assist them on their individual paths of spiritual growth. In addition, it benefits subscribers, authors, and publishers by including links to Amazon.com where subscribers can learn more about the book being quoted, and also purchase it.
