In his 2016 lecture Mythological Elements of the Life Story — and Initiation (at 58:39) Jordan Peterson speaks about the path of initiation, and more generally about improving oneself and growing up in life, and he cautions, “it’s not follow your bliss”.
This is a direct counter to another modern champion of mythology and archetypes, Joseph Campbell. From Campbell one can get the impression that if only we would “follow our bliss”, our life journey would be a fun and exciting process, a garden of delights. In other words, we’d be pursuing what inspires us, doing work that we naturally enjoy working hard at, and experiencing more aliveness and engagement in our daily life. It makes a lot of sense. So why isn’t everybody doing this?
Because, from an archetypal perspective, says Peterson, there are dragons.
There are many dragons which we dare not confront, and which confine our life to a small territory. Dragons that can devour us if we get too close. And they are not a metaphor for external obstacles. They are that which lurk
within and obstruct our way. External obstacles, by contrast, merely awaken the dragons inside us. And we’re full of them. We’re full of dragons which dictate our lives, but quietly… so long as we keep a low profile. However, we become ever more viscerally aware of them when we dare to venture out of our comfortable world, toward whatever new territory our “bliss” is calling us into. And the “virgin” the dragon guards (virgin territory) will never be ours until we defeat it.
Maybe defeat isn’t the best word. Perhaps it’s more appropriate to say, as Jung might suggest, that our task is to integrate them. This makes sense. In order to have access to the whole new realm of possibilities that was guarded by the dragon, we ourselves must have a whole new way of being. That way of being is exactly what the dragon is, albeit in a repressed and pathological form. Put another way, dragons are the shadow of virtue that we have failed to realize in ourselves.
Sometimes the dragon wins. When that happens, we become the dragon, or a slave to it. We lose our identity to it (fear, addiction, lust, pride, etc.). Usually, however, we try to avoid our dragons. In which case, they will still dominates us from afar, limiting us to our small world, while also emerging from time to time to wreak havoc and remind us of their presence. But every dragon that we successfully face down is assimilated into us. Then, as part of us (and not the other way around), we become master of all its strength and territory.
Back to the typical strategy of avoidance. In general, most people can manage to get through life without facing their dragons. It’s not a great life, and yet we tolerate it. But how many unrealized dreams have perished in this manner? The earth is littered with the bones of those who never activated the bold daring visions lying dormant within; those who spent a life circling their dreams from a distance, “orbiting their bliss” perhaps, but never fully actualizing it. The dragons live unconquered, and the treasures of possibility lie unclaimed at their feet.
“Follow your bliss”, seen from this perspective, appears to be the advice of a trickster, taking us down a primrose path straight into the dark dragon filled cave of the unconscious; the underworld of our own shadow. Who knows what we’ll encounter as we venture forward into the darkness of the unknown, towards the hope of treasure? The ominous unstated requirement of “follow your bliss” is “conquer your dragons”. Because it will involve great challenge, difficulty, and fear. As it must. It has to be all these things in order to wake us up to our full potential, to make it a true hero’s journey, to transform our being, and to make the treasure real and meaningful.
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The Philosophy of Psychology 
January 28, 2025 at 11:10 am
Joseph Campbell himself on dragons and following your bliss
January 28, 2025 at 11:10 am
Joseph Campbell himself on dragons and following your bliss