October 27, 2005

The Blue Flame

During my run today I was listening to Keith Ferrazzi’s Never Eat Alone (highly recommended by the way!). He talks about the concept of the “blue flame” which he defines as “a convergence of mission and passion founded on a realistic self-assessment of your abilities.” He goes on to talk about Joseph Campbell’s blue flame.

After graduation, (Campbell) moved into a cabin in Woodstock, New York, where he did nothing but read from nine in the morning until six or seven each night for five years.

Ferrazzi goes on to quote Campbell himself:

“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.”

Campbell was an amazing man. You can find all of Campbell’s audio books and DVDs on our Joseph Campbell Author Page. I watched the video series Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth a year ago and throughly enjoyed it. I’m sure you will too!

By the way, I listened to Never Eat Alone on the “Faster” setting today on my iPod which increases the speed by about 20%. It sounds a bit different but not as bad as I thought it would. Considering that you could get through a 10 hour book in about 8 hours, it’s something that I’ll probably be doing a lot more of in the future. Definitely good when you’ve got a book that’s heavy on information that you want to crank through.