The privilege of a lifetime is
– Joseph Campbell in “A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living”becomingbeing who you truly are.
I love this quote and, to me, it has a few layers.
BECOMING WHO I TRULY AM AS A HUMAN SELF
In a conventional sense, it’s about becoming who we truly are as a human self.
This is Jung’s individuation.
How is it to get to know more of the many, innumerable, parts of me? The many subpersonalitites?
How is it to develop a more conscious relationship with more of these?
What’s truly important to me? What do I value? How is it to reorganize my life according to that?
If I take any surface desire, wish, or want and trace it back to it’s simple essence, what do I find? What do I hope to get out of it? And what do I hope to get out of that? And that? What I find that it traces back to something simple, essential, and (very likely) universal – coming home, love, sense of safety, acceptance, and so on.
BECOMING WHO I TRULY AM AS AN ECOLOGICAL SELF
This includes becoming who I truly am as an ecological self, in two ways.
First, by recognizing that I am as rich as the world.
Whatever I see in the wider world – in people, society, mythology, dreams, ecology, cosmos – is also here.
I can take whatever story I have about any of it, turn it to myself, and find genuine and specific examples of how it’s true, including right now.
Then, by recognizing I am part of the web of life.
More than that, I am a local expression of this living planet we call Earth. I am the Earth thinking, doing, living. I am the Earth confused, destroying itself. I am the Earth noticing, protecting itself.
Everything about me – thoughts, emotions, impulses, choices, life – has infinite causes going back to the beginning of time (if there is a beginning) and the widest extent of existence (if there is a widest extent).
It all comes from somewhere else.
NOTICING WHAT I AM
For me, the quote also has to do with noticing what I already am.
At one level, I am this human self in the world. That’s not wrong. It’s what my passport says, how most others see me, and what my thoughts may tell me.
And yet, when I look more closely, I find something else.
I find I am what the world, as it appears to me, happens within and as.
I am what this field of experience – anything related to this human self or the wider world and any content of experience – happens within and as.
I am this awake space it all happens within and as.
Even more fundamentally, I am capacity for all of it.
I am capacity for this awake space and every experience it makes itself into.
In a very rough sense, the pointer becoming who I truly am also points to this.
And it’s not really becoming anything and it doesn’t have to do with who I truly am.
It’s about noticing what’s already here, noticing what I fundamentally am.
ALLOWING MY HUMAN SELF AND LIFE TO BE TRANSFORMED WITHIN THAT
This also has to do with allowing my human self and life to be transformed within that noticing.
A lot of my human self and life was formed within separation consciousness, the perception that I most fundamentally am this human being. It operates from wounds, unexamined thoughts held – somewhere in my system – as true, unfelt feelings, unloved parts of me, hangups, traumas, and so on.
How is it to invite more of me to align with the oneness I more fundamentally am?
How is it to invite in healing for these parts?
How is it to allow, and even embrace, when life brings up what’s unexamined, unloved, and painful in me?
THE PRIVILEGE OF A LIFETIME
This is all, as Joseph Campbell says, the privilege of a lifetime.
It’s a privilege to find myself in this process, to have curiosity about it, to have passion for it, to have time and opportunity to explore, and so on.
It’s all a privilege.
It’s all a gift. It all comes from somewhere else.
A NOTE ON THE QUOTE
I initially saw this misquoted as becoming who you truly are and wrote the article above based on that.
It seems that the actual quote is being who you truly are which has a different emphasis, although the essence is the same.
Becoming has an emphasis on the transformative and dynamic aspect of it, which I like.
Being emphasizes that we already are it, which is important but perhaps less interesting.
The quote is often (mis)attributed to Jung, but it seems it’s from Joseph Campbell in A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living, although I can’t find a specific page reference.
BEING WHO YOU TRULY ARE
The privilege of a lifetime is being who you truly are.
– Joseph Campbell in “A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living”
Of course, we already are who – and what – we truly are.
As a human self, we already are as rich as the world. We are living from that richness, whether we notice or not. And we are consciously unfamiliar with most of it, even if we actively explore our richness.
We also inevitably are what we already are. We already are this awake space that the field of experience – including this human self and the wider world – happens within and as. Whether we notice or not is another thing.
The privilege is that we already are who and what we are… whether we notice or not.
This is obviously important. For me, the richness comes in the becoming of it, the dynamics, bringing it into awareness and more consciously living from and as it, allowing our human self and life transform within it.