THE MYTHIC JOURNEY

The hero must venture forth from the world of commonsense consciousness into a region of supernatural wonder. There he encounters fabulous forces – demons and angels, dragons and helping spirits. After a fierce battle, he wins a decisive victory over the powers of darkness. Then he returns from his mysterious adventure with the gift of knowledge or fire, which he bestows on his fellow man.

Joseph Campbell

On the heroic journey, gender is irrelevant.

Most of us live our lives in the walking sleep of un-reflected-upon beliefs, assumptions, prejudices and habits. Our reality is formed by agreement. We are taught what reality is by our parents and in the church and the schoolyard. Once in a while something happens to us, though, that destroys our comfortable world and forces us into an emotional landscape where what we knew is exploded. Suddenly our tidy and safe Tower is brought crashing down by an onslaught of energy that changes everything we know as solid and real. This might be the death of a parent or loved one, a physical injury or illness, sudden new information or entry into our lives of someone who causes us to question our assumptions and world view, or a vision quest or other rite of passage.

Remembering childhood traumas like sexual abuse or incest during the process of therapy or transformational bodywork can trigger emotions and reactions and we can find ourselves stumbling through our shadowy unconscious, both personal and colletive. Picking our way through ruins of what we have denied or hidden, we find obstacles that seem to threaten our survival even more. In the wreckage of our life’s meaning we find our deepest fears, demons, joys and satisfaction. We also discover teachers where they are least expected.

The hero’s journey, the discovery of your own personal mythology, and beliefs that are borne of experience and struggle allow you to live up to what you want to be. The hero goes about the incorporation of the qualities of the gods in order to finally live up to her own inner standards. Fighting the inner wars on the battleground of her fears and prejudices gives her confidence and builds unassailable self-esteem that will do what a true belief system should do – prepare the wanderer, the hero, for her own death, and in so dong train him or her to appreciate and live in the present moment. It takes courage to go where there is so little agreement beyond the comfort zone. And it takes courage to question things that everyone else seems to take for granted.

The hero struggles through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and slowly, through trial and error, determination and faith, learns to deal with the demons and fears by recognizing that she live within herself. This is where they arise and this is the ground upon which they are overcome. The hero is a veteran of the Internal Wars. The path out of the Valley is earned. No one else makes the ascent for her. And the path, once trodden, lives within the hero’s psyche forever.

What are your beliefs? What are your assumptions? Where do you come from and where are you going? What is sacred to you? What are you doing here?

The Shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge, and it therefore, as a rule meets with considerable resistance.

C. G. Jung