Bob Walter is on a mission—to preserve, protect, and perpetuate the work of Joseph Campbell. As an author, lecturer, and leading figure in philosophies surrounding mythology, Campbell is best known for his seminal book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Released in 1949, the premise blends insights of modern psychology with Campbell’s revolutionary understanding of comparative mythology. Campbell outlines the Hero’s Journey, a universal concept of adventure and its transformative power that is present in virtually all of the world’s mythic traditions. He also explores the Cosmogonic Cycle as well as the mythic pattern of world creation and destruction. But what his philosophy ultimately points to is fulfilling life’s bliss.

Find out what you like to do; do more of it. Do it with joy. Do it with joy in the face of the pain that’s all around you.

Following your bliss, as Joseph Campbell saw it, isn’t merely doing whatever you like, or simply doing as you are told. It is identifying that pursuit which you are truly passionate about and attempting to give yourself absolutely to it. In so doing, you will find your fullest potential and serve your community to the greatest possible extent. It’s a philosophy that regained the spotlight after Campbell was interviewed by popular PBS host Bill Moyers. Although Campbell never lived to see the broadcast, the result was a resurgence of interest in his work and the publication of the best seller The Power of Myth based on those interviews. Numerous films, books, and other media based upon his work have been created since that broadcast.

Walter has been an effective steward in keeping Campbell’s mythic vision alive. To date, the Joseph Campbell Foundation has published sixteen hardcover books, multiple digital works, over seventy audio lectures, and more than seventeen hours of video.

Walter had his own hero’s journey toward leading the foundation, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. “When people ask me, ‘what taught you the most?’ I say, when I lost everything, that’s when I really learned so much about myself. It is sort of an interesting thing in our lives that we can hopefully choose the Hero’s Journey and the path with that.” He adds, “If I hadn’t suffered through the dissolution, of having to let go of all of these projects I’d nurtured for years and fold a company into which I’d invested everything, we never would’ve had the Joseph Campbell Foundation. None of that would’ve happened.”

Take the hero’s journey. Find your bliss. Bob Walter did.