Or we acquire skills or develop aspects of ourselves previously ignored. Our ego and our fear have loosened its grip upon us enough so that we are already leaving behind who we were and opening up to what awaits. We cross the threshold into unfamiliar territory, and there is no looking back. Our higher self is supporting us, and the universe will protect us as we become willing to take the leap into the unknown. We read the right book or a dream inspires us. But for those of us that answer the call, our life will not be the same.Īt this point, the universe offers some help. Some people refuse this call and their life stagnates. Some form of crisis or suffering impels us out of our comfort zone. The birth of a child or death of a parent. Or, more importantly, think of your own life and watch the metaphor unfold in your personal life journey. “A hero ventures forth from the world of the common day into a region of supernatural wonder fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”Īs we trace the steps of this hero’s journey in more detail, think of an iconic story like The Wizard of Oz. The basic storyline that Campbell describes in his Hero with a 1000 Faces is this: You might think of the novel The Alchemist, where the hero returns home to find the treasure buried right where he began. We go out and seek, so that we can discover that the seeker is itself the mystery which the seeker seeks to know. The Hero’s Journey is a quest for self-transformation, for creative rebirth.
HEROS JOURNEY HOW TO
Myths show us our inner story on an outer level, helping us to navigate our lives through the power of metaphor, and teaching us how to cross the thresholds and face our dragons. These same energies and symbols show up in our dreams, helping us to recognize these qualities within ourselves. For Jung, it was the collective unconscious. That’s why there is such unity across all cultures and time periods, in what Joseph Campbell called the monomyth. The demons, dragons, and allies that show up in myths are the projections of our own inner energies. Joseph Campbell and the Hero’s Journey gave us a map to guide us, and signposts along the way, as we take our journey.īefore we explore the Hero’s Journey, we might remember that fairy tales and myths are not presented as historical truth, but are important as psychological truth. Just as the heroes and heroines in that saga overcome fear and attachment to the familiar and rise up to be of real service to the Universe, we are each doing the same thing in our own universe.Įach of us is rising above our self-imposed limitations and outer challenges to expand our sense of self and walk our path of destiny. George Lucas, struggling for years to create a film his heart had been calling him to write, was able to finish the Star Wars story while reading Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a 1000 Faces, which lays out the basic bones of the human story. This death and rebirth motif shows up in stories and myths all over the world is at the heart of some of our great religions and animates our most powerful films. Each of us slaying inner dragons and facing outer obstacles, to be reborn in a new version of ourselves, more true to who we are. This shows up in our own lifecycle, and then in the countless ways that we are called to leave what is familiar to us and venture into the unfamiliar. And yet, when we take a step back and look at it from a larger perspective, that geography, and our life journey, is not so different from the basic story that humankind has been playing out since the beginning.
On this life journey, we are each discovering the geography of our own inner world. The river knows where it’s going, but we on the boat do not. And I was left with the sense that our life is like the journey in a fairy tale, a small vessel following the currents, passing through different terrains, in search of what’s around the next corner.
It struck me at the time as a metaphor for my life. It depicted a river wending its way through soft mountains, with a small sailboat in the distance floating down the river. When I was in my early 20s and my father was dying, a friend gave me a painting.
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