Tag: Joseph Campbell

Lessons From People: Joseph Campbell & Different Phases of Life 

Arshan Dhillon

Joseph Campbell was a world-renowned teacher and mythologist. He spent much of his life studying and dissecting myths from all over the world. It was his belief that myths can act as blueprints for our lives by acting as a navigational tool. In his book, Reflections on the Art of Living, Campbell gives his thoughts on various subjects, including the idea that as an individual, you need to adapt and change according to the new phase of life you are entering or exiting.

Lessons

Embrace The New You

The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come.

As we move through life, a different version of you is required. Give up old beliefs and values which served you well in the past, in order to build new ones more appropriate for the future you want. This includes habits, routines, traditions, and relationships. These often tether you to the old you, the one you are trying to change and improve. No permanent change comes without sacrifice, so you have to determine what is no longer valuable to you.

If we fix on the old, we get stuck. When we hang onto any form, we are in danger of putrefaction.

As Joseph Campbell says, by hanging onto an old form, you are in danger of decaying. You are forcing something old and irrelevant to still serve you instead of paying that form its proper respects and burying it.

So, as we transition from different phases of life, for example, from childhood to the workforce or from dependant living to independent living or from womanhood to motherhood, a different version of you is required in order to succeed fully in this new phase of life. Once you acknowledge this, then you can reflect on what needs to be purged, what parts of you need to be shed, and what new habits, ideas, routines, and so on need to be adopted.  

Destruction before creation.

Fully Commit

As you go the way of life, you will see a great chasm.

Jump.

It is not as wide as you think.

In order to embrace the life you want, there has to be a full commitment.

You can’t hold on to past desires and wants while you aim for new ones and try to make everything in your life work at the same time. Some old hopes and dreams need to be abandoned so you can fully commit to the openings that are available to you.

Often, we cling to the old ones because there is a glimmer of comfort there. You know if all else fails, you’ll have your comfort blanket waiting for you, but such commitment can cause your failure to begin with. So, it’s best to jump. To be active. To take chances because, through such actions, other doors open. Other avenues reveal themselves to you.

Through commitment, you make progress in your life. 

Suppose you have shed the serpent’s skin but want to leave some tagged on the end. This is a major problem. It is an anxiety that has to do with what’s back there. 

If you don’t fully commit, you also then leave the door open for guilt and shame. These feelings arise when you think about what else you could have done or wanted to do. Instead, acknowledge those wants belonging to a different version of you, one that no longer exists so you can move on to something more relevant.

Be A Great Servant

The first half of life we serve society—engagement. The second half of life we turn inward—disengagement.

Clearly understand what or who you are serving at the moment, so you can actively mold your life in order to be the best servant you can be.

Not every moment of your life is meant for your own service.

Your time is not yours alone. Whoever you allot that time to, make sure you are not cheating on them. This concept can be as simple as the time allotted to exercising where you are a servant to your physical body and attempt to do your best not to cheat on its needs or helping a friend move into a new apartment where your time is then given to your friend, to a more complicated allotment of time such as finding inner peace for yourself which may require countless hours of meditation and reflection and new experiences all of which you must do in order to serve yourself. 

Renouncing The Old You 

The recommended one is a gradual renunciation. That means getting quit of what you can in a decent, organic way. You can even take with you a few little responsibilities, with the understanding that they are terminal—you’re not going to add to them. The responsibilities that you add will be those of your own new condition, whatever that may be.

Transition to the new you may have to be gradual. Piece by piece. It is impossible really to wake up one day and decide to be a different version of you and achieve that by the time you go to sleep. Or wake up and have a completely different life.

But, once you narrow in on what you want your next few years to look like and what you want yourself to look like, then it becomes a matter of taking on the right responsibility. If you want to become someone who is more confident and can speak in public clearly, then taking on the responsibility and signing up for public speaking courses makes sense. As you take on responsibility suited for the new version of you, you balance that out with a slow and gradual transition away from the responsibilities that the old version needed, which, for the public speaking example, could be less time spent in solitude and more group activities where you are forced to interact publically.

Renunciation is literally a death and a resurrection.

Lessons From Books: The Power Of Myth

Arshan Dhillon
 

Joseph Campbell was a world-renowned teacher and mythologist. He spent much of his life studying and dissecting myths from all over the world. It was his belief that myths can act as blueprints for our lives by acting as a navigational tool. In the book, The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell sat down with the journalist, Bill Moyers, and discussed everything from the importance of mythology to why one should follow their bliss, to the meaning of life, the purpose of life and even topics such as nature, sin, morality, marriage, rituals and many more practical topics.

The following are a few lessons picked from the book.

Lessons:

On The Importance of Myths

Myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life.

Myths typically have a beginning, middle, and end. This complete picture can then act as a guide for us to follow as the hero deals with many failures and struggles. These can be as relatable as having to leave home and finding your own path in life, to managing the ego, or understanding harmful relationships, or maturing from naïve thinking, and so on. 

A heroic journey teaches us what is possible. What sacrifices to make. How many obstacles and failures we must overcome in order to reach our goal. More importantly, how we aren’t alone in our struggle. We can avoid certain hardships and/or emulate heroic decisions in our own life.

Myth helps you to put your mind in touch with this experience of being divine.

Answers to most of our problems and concerns are already out there. It’s just a matter of finding them.

Stay Optimistic In The Darkest Of Times

One thing that comes out in myths is that at the bottom of the abyss comes the voice of salvation. The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light.

The transformation is only possible if we are willing to listen to the voice. We might not like what the voice has to say. The transformation might require us to confront our own issues, belief systems, ideologies, things that we have based our identity on.

Sometimes it is more comfortable to stay in the darkness. It may require a great struggle to move towards the light. This is where individual choice matters and personal ownership comes into play. 

Take Action

God must have known very well that man was going to eat the forbidden food. But it was by doing that that man became the initiator of his own life. Life really begins with that act of disobedience.

Our life begins when we take actions based on our own judgment. Our judgment may contradict the beliefs of other authority figures in our life however, this disobedience then allows us to claim both the success and failure in our life as our own and so creating our own way. 

One of the great challenges of life is to say “yeah” to that person or act or that condition which in your mind is the most abominable.

How To Live

Follow your passion:

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. Wherever you are — if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.

Nurture experiences:

People say that we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.

Find your internal meaning, rather than seeking external meaning for life:

There’s no meaning. What’s the meaning of the universe? What’s the meaning of a flea? It’s just there. That’s it. And your own meaning is that you’re there. We’re so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget that the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it’s all about.

How To Improve Your Character

Our life evokes our character. You find out more about yourself as you go on. That’s why it’s good to be able to put yourself in a situation that will evoke higher nature rather than your lower.

Situations that will evoke our higher nature are often those which make us uncomfortable. They challenge our beliefs, our relationships, our commitment, and our mental fortitude. 

Life also tests our character, but it does so on its own accord. At random. So, instead of waiting for life to create challenges for us, which we might fail, it’s best to take responsibility and seek situations that make us uncomfortable so our higher nature can get more repetitions and be ready for the randomness of life. 

Listen To Yourself

If the person insists on a certain program and doesn’t listen to the demands of his own heart, he’s going to risk a schizophrenic crackup. Such a person has put himself off-center. The world is full of people who have stopped listening to themselves or have listened to their neighbors to learn what they ought to do, how they ought to behave, and what the values are that they should be living for.

In order to be an individual, we have to listen to our own individual voice. This can be scary because that voice may go against what others have told us our entire life. However, it’s in the pursuit of our own individual needs do we come to live our own life. Otherwise, we are basically matching the steps of those who have come before us and living a life best suited for others. 

Different Parts Of Life Require A Different You

The tradition in India, for instance, of changing your whole way of dress, even changing your name, as you pass from one stage to another. When I retired from teaching, I knew that I had to create a new way of life, and I changed my manner of thinking about my life, just in terms of that notion — moving out of the sphere of achievement into the sphere of enjoyment and appreciation and relaxing to the wonder of it all.

What has helped us in the past may not help us in the present and could be outdated for the future. Actions, habits, belief systems, and relationships all fall in this realm of thinking.

We must constantly die one way or another to the selfhood already achieved.

The very thing that has had a direct impact on our past success can become the new barrier. 

To evolve out of this psychological immaturity to the courage of self-responsibility and assurance requires a death and resurrection. That’s the basic motif of the universal hero’s journey — leaving one condition and finding the source of life to bring you forth into a richer or mature condition.

Have A Private Place

This is an absolute necessity for anybody today. You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.

A place to decompress. A place to organize our thoughts. A place to plan future actions. A place to unpack experiences. A place that can keep us sane. Too often we delve into our phones, or computers when it is time to take a break. Instead, we need to deep dive into our own minds and spend some time observing ourselves. Through such a measure, maturity and growth can be achieved. 

How To Read

Sit in a room and read — and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time. This realization of life can be a constant realization in your living. When you find an author who really grabs you, read everything he has done. Don’t say, “Oh, I want to know what So-and-so did” — and don’t bother at all with the best-seller list. Just read what this one author has to give you. And then you can go read what he had read. And the world opens up in a way that is consistent with a certain point of view. But when you go from one author to another, you may be able to tell us the date when each wrote such and such poem — but he hasn’t said anything to you.

Commit to a line of thinking and let go. Every now and then we have to allow another person to lead us. Allow their words and thought processes to influence our own. This is a way to go deeper and find true value instead of staying on the surface and jumping from one line of thinking to another, from one writer to the next, and being unable to recall anything of substance. 

How To Become An Individual

[In Thus Spoke Zarathustra] Nietzsche describes what he calls the three transformations of the spirit. The first is that of the camel, of childhood and youth. The camel gets down on his knees and says, “put a load on me.” This is the season for obedience, receiving instruction and the information your society requires of you in order to live a responsible life.

But when the camel is well loaded, it struggles to its feet and runs out into the desert, where it is transformed into a lion — the heavier the load that has been carried, the stronger the lion will be. Now, the task of the lion is to kill a dragon, and the name of the dragon is “Thou Shalt.” On every scale of this scaly beast, a “Thou Shalt” is imprinted: some from four thousand years ago; others from this morning’s headlines. Whereas the camel, the child, had to submit to the “Thou Shalts,” the lion, the youth, is to throw them off and come to his own realization.

And so, when the dragon is throughly dead, with all its “Thou Shalts” overcome, the lion is transformed into a child moving out of its own nature, like a wheel impelled from its own hub. No more rules to obey. No more rules derived from the historical needs and tasks of the local society, but the pure impulse to living of a life in flower.

Accept Fate or Chance

This is a matter of being able to accept chance. The ultimate backing of life is chance — the chance that your parents met, for example! Chance, or what might seem to be chance, is the means through which life is realized. The problem is not to blame or explain but to handle the life that arises. Another war has been declared somewhere, and you are drafted into an army, and there go five or six years of your life with a whole new set of chance events. The best advice is to take it all as if it had been of your intention — with that, you evoke the participation of your will.

Life can be absurd and random. It can feel as if we have no control over it. However, the perspective of acting as if what happens in our life is what we intended can give us a sense of control. We don’t have to dwell on the pitfalls, instead we can make the best of a bad situation. We can bounce back into forward motion quickly instead of questioning fate or chance which will keep us stagnant. 

Also, by accepting fate, we get to live in the present. Instead of fighting the present moment because it doesn’t align with our past hopes, we can experience life as it is and live with awareness and attention.  

Think Positive

Ramakrishna once said that if all you think of are your sins, then you are a sinner. And when I read that, I thought of my boyhood, going to confession on Saturdays, meditating on all the little sins that I had committed during the week. Now I think one should go and say, “bless me, Father, for I have been great, these are the good things I have done this week.” Identify your notion of yourself with the positive, rather than with the negative.

Our internal dialogue influences our state of being. We can be overly self-critical and live with too much shame or guilt depending on how we talk to ourselves. This darkens the experience of life. Instead, self love needs to be administered. Ultimately we need a balance so we don’t become delusional or inflate our ego too much. But often we lean further towards the negative than we do towards the positive. 

Great Lines or Quotes:

You have to learn to recognize your own depth.

When you follow the path of your desire and enthusiasm and emotion, keep your mind in control, and don’t let it pull you compulsively into disaster.

You don’t understand death, you learn to acquiesce in death.

Freud tells us to blame our parents for all the shortcomings of our life, and Marx tell us to blame the upperclass of our society. But the only one to blame is oneself. That’s the helpful thing about the Indian idea of karma. Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself.

I don’t think there is any such thing as an ordinary mortal. Everybody has his own possibility of rapture in the experience of life.

Love is the burning point of life, and since all life is sorrowful, so is love. The stronger the love, the more the pain.

Going through a ritual day after day keeps you on the line

When you get to be older, and the concerns of the day have all been attended to, and you turn to the inner life — well, if you don’t know where it is or what it is, you’ll be sorry.

Do not pluck the mote from your enemy’s eyes, but pluck the beam from your own. No one is in a position to disqualify his enemy’s way of life.

Why Read Mythology

Arshan Dhillon

The individual has to find an aspect of myth that relates to his own life. Myth basically serves four functions. The first is the mystical function—realizing what a wonder the universe is, and what a wonder you are, and experiencing awe before this mystery […] The second is a cosmological dimension, the dimension with which science is concerned—showing you what the shape of the universe is, but showing it in such a way that the mystery again comes through […] The third function is a sociological one—supporting and validating a certain social order […] But there is a fourth function of myth, and this is the one that I think everyone must try today to relate to—and that is pedagogical function, of how to live a human lifetime under any circumstances. Myth can teach you that. (Joseph Campbell)

It’s the ‘How to live’ function of the myth which interests me. Life can be difficult to navigate. It’s unknown and random which can bring about unexpected situations. How to deal with these hardships and struggles? Or what’s the best way to improve yourself? How to build a strong character? One which is courageous and active. Or how to get connected with your spiritual side, your feminine or masculine side? Questions like these and others like it are always at the forefront of my mind.

One way myths can set you down the right path is by understanding that you’re not unique in these thoughts. These questions and troubles have been thought of before you. The fact that other people have had them and have dealt with them and have immortalized possible solutions in the format of stories and myths is an important reason why these myths should be studied.

When the story is in your mind, then you see its relevance to something happening in your own life. It gives you perspective on what’s happening to you. With the loss of that, we’ve really lost something because we don’t have a comparable literature to take its place. These bits of information from ancient times, which have to do with the themes that have supported human life, built civilizations, and informed religions over the millennia, have to do with deep inner problems, inner mysteries, inner thresholds of passage, and if you don’t know what the guide-signs are along the way, you have to work it out yourself.

Instead of blindly trying to get through life and only relying on your own experiences to come up with some manageable way to solve your problems, you can instead lean on past stories for support.

You may find comfort in Odysseus‘ struggle to get home. The repeated obstacles he has to somehow overcome in order to get back to his family. The story may give you hope that there is a way to achieve your goal if you keep facing your own obstacles with grace and a calm mind. In modern-day such a story is exemplified in Rocky where the character is repeatedly beaten down but refuses to stay down, each time he gets back up and it’s the value of that simple motif which can allow you to keep facing your own troubles, as it did for the former navy seal and ultramarathon competitor, David Goggins.

Or understand the negative effects of greed can have on a family through the story of King Midas. Or even see how the overabundance of fatherly love can be harmful to your children, as shown in Balzac’s Old Goriot.

These simple stories can guide you into being a better parent, a more cohesive family unit or simply to accept the continuous struggles of life.

Mythology is littered with the idea of death and rebirth, but in the sense that in order to move up in life, to transition from one phase of your life to the next, you must sacrifice something.

Mythology has a great deal to do with the stages of life, the initiation ceremonies as you move from childhood to adult responsibilities, from the unmarried state into the married state. All of those rituals are mythological rites. they have to do with your recognition of the new role that you’re in, the process of throwing off the old one and coming out in the new, and entering into a responsible profession.

The rituals of primitive initiation ceremonies are all mythologically grounded and have to do with killing the infantile ego and bringing forth an adult.

Once again we see the importance of initiation and sacrifice in the Odyssey. Telemachus, the son of Odysseus, is a boy who is simply hoping that one day his father returns restores stability and order in his life. However, Athena comes and gives the boy advice in which she tells him to set out and seek his father. It’s action that Athena advises. And by undertaking this action, Telemachus has to sacrifice the comforts of his own home and by doing so, he begins his transition from boyhood to manhood.

Many of us cling on to things from our past as we attempt to grow into the individual we wish to be. It’s usually the things we enjoy the most, the ones which bring us the most comfort, that need to be abandoned in order to grow and enter the next phase of life. It’s this letting go that is hard, which is why we may see grown adults behaving like children. Because these people haven’t made the right sacrifices. Unlike Bilbo, who gave up the comforts of the Shire in order to venture out into the world and face challenges, these people hold on to the comfort and, in doing so, remain the same while their bodies grow older.

This theme of embracing what is uncomfortable runs throughout the myths. Of how long-lasting character growth only comes by facing hardship and struggle.

All these different mythologies give us the same essential quest. You leave the world that you’re in and go into a depth or into a distance or up to a height. There you come to what was missing in your consciousness in the world you formerly inhabited.

And what all the myths have to deal with is transformations of consciousness of one kind or another. You have been thinking one way, you now have to think a different way […] Either by trials themselves or by illuminating revelations. Trials and revelations are what it’s all about.

Think about Hercules’ 12 labors or Buddha’s revelations through stillness. It’s going beyond your comfort zone that myths embody. Self-growth and self-improvement are the goal of many people, but it’s difficult to know how to go about achieving these aims. The myths tell us the embrace trials or to go into a depth or height which we are avoiding. It’s what we consciously avoid that may be the exact thing we need to get better.

Whether it be a relationship that we aren’t happy in, or a job that we dislike, or an opportunity that scares us or an activity that intimidates us, it’s only in facing these trials and figuring out how to overcome them do we experience transformation in our consciousness.

Our life evokes our character. You find out more about yourself as you go on. That’s why it’s good to be able to put yourself in situations that will evoke your higher nature rather than your lower.

Your higher nature is often revealed when you tackle something that is difficult. When you have to make difficult choices and decisions. While the lower nature is when you constantly expose yourself to immediate pleasure and comfort. At least that’s what the myths which have stood the test of time tell us. The heroic quest doesn’t start and end with you avoiding engagement with life. Rather, it starts when you embrace of experience of life, which includes failures and disappointments. Just understanding that life is full of obstacles may be enough reason why you should read the ancient Heroic tales. It can brace you for the inevitable and, if you care enough, it can also guide you through these universal troubles.

Book referenced: The Power Of the Myth By Joseph Campbell

Youtube: Learned Living

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/learned_living/

Poem: The Many Yous

Article: Stoic Lesson: Aim For Internal Growth

Short Story: Everything Work’s Itself Out

Hero’s Journey: Understanding The Return

Arshan Dhillon

The first step of the journey is The Departure, then comes The Initiation stage, and the journey is completed by The Return of the hero.

When the hero-quest has been accomplished, through penetration to the source, or through the grace of some male or female, human or animal personification, the adventurer still must return with his life-transmuting trophy. The full round, the norm of the monomyth, requires that the hero shall now begin the labor of bringing the runes of wisdom, the Golden Fleece, or his sleeping princess back into the kingdom of humanity, where the boon may redound to the renewing of the community, the nation, the planet, or the ten thousand worlds. (Joseph Campbell).

The Return stage six parts: Refusal of the Return, The Magic Flight, Rescue from Without, The Crossing of the Return Threshold, Master of the Two Worlds, and Freedom to Live.

First, The Refusal of the Return. Who can turn their back on everlasting bliss? The fables are full of heroes who stayed in paradise rather than returning to the human world. A world full of turmoil and struggle.

Even Buddha contemplated if returning to mankind was worth it. Whether people will truly understand his experiences and wisdom. Yet, the hero must return. He must attempt to impart his knowledge. He must try to help his fellow man.

There can almost be this addictive feeling associated with reaching the ultimate goal. You want to stay in that place for as long as you possibly can. But if there is anything the journey has taught you is that you must always seek out the new adventure, the new challenge. So, by refusing to return, you are in some ways forgetting the lessons of your trials and tribulations.

The second stage in the Return is The Magic Flight.

If the Hero in his triumph wins the blessing of the goddess or the god and is then explicitly commissioned to return to the world with some elixir for the restoration of society, the final stage of his adventure is supported by all the powers of his supernatural patron. On the other hand, if the trophy has been attained against the opposition of its guardian, or if the hero’s wish to return to the world has been resented by the gods or demons, then the last stage of the mythological round becomes a lively, often comical, pursuit. This flight may be complicated by marvels of magical obstruction and evasion. (Joseph Campbell).

This is evident in the story of Odysseus. The boon gained from the victory against the Trojans is obstructed repeatedly as Odysseus attempts to go home. Another example can be seen in the Lord of the Rings. After the adventure is seemingly over and the ring is destroyed, the hobbits return to Hobbiton only to find Saruman is still alive and has corrupted the minds of the people back home. Before the hobbits can officially bring back their knowledge, they must put it to use and defeat Saruman.

Even in everyday life, such a thing is bound to happen. Think of the apprentice who wants to start their own business or work but finds their path obstructed by their former boss. This boss could feel cheated and wronged by the apprentices’ decision.

The third stage is the Rescue from Without.

The hero may have to be brought back from his supernatural adventure by assistance from without. That is to say, the world may have to come and get him. For the bliss of the deep abode is not lightly abandoned in favor of the self-scattering of the wakened state. (Joseph Campbell).

When the conscious you willingly stays in paradise and refuses to return back home, the unconscious will come and take you back. The unconscious can be some outside force, or it may be something inside of the hero that triggers him to return home.

An outside source like Gollum who aids Frodo in destroying the ring by attacking him. This pulls Frodo out of his possessed state, which had given in to the power of the ring.

Often times in life people can get trapped in hell as well and not just paradise. The hell of self-doubt, depression, anger, and things of that nature. And sometimes an outsider, a stranger, can snap them out of their prison by some simple gesture like a touch or a smile. This notion was explored by Hermann Hesse in his novel Siddhartha where a strange monk and a ferryboat operator helped Siddhartha out of his depressive state which was caused by his son leaving him.

After the Rescue from Without comes The Crossing of the Return Threshold.

This brings us to the final crisis of the round, to which the whole miraculous excursion has been but a prelude–that, namely, of the paradoxical, supremely difficult threshold-crossing of the hero’s return from the mystic realm into the land of common day. Whether rescued from without, driven from within, or gently carried along by the guiding divinities, he has yet to re-enter with his boon the long-forgotten atmosphere where men who are fractions imagine themselves to be complete. He has yet to confront society with his ego-shattering, life-redeeming elixir, and take the return blow of reasonable queries, hard resentment, and good people at a loss to comprehend. (Joseph Campbell).

Perhaps the most difficult thing to understand is the fact that the hero hasn’t found anything new or unique. Often times, the lessons learned are known before, which have either gone out of style or have been forgotten. So, the task becomes how can the hero teach his fellow man things that they think they already know or they don’t care about. Or perhaps they can’t comprehend without experiencing what the hero has experienced.

This latter idea is explored in Siddhartha who refuses to follow the Buddha’s way in order to find his own path because, after all, that is what Buddha did. Buddha had to go his own way in order to become Buddha.

The returning hero is in danger as well. If he doesn’t correctly balance his new understandings and the ego of the fellow man he could be physically harmed or ostracized from the community he is trying to help.

This concept is intriguing because it shows that in a way, there is no end. There are always obstacles, always some struggle that needs to be overcome. Even though the hero has slain the dragon he still doesn’t find himself on a smooth path.

The relationship between the parent and child is a clear example of this stage. The parents have gone through their trials and learned their lessons, and they attempt to teach their children what they learned. However, often these lessons fall on deaf ears. The appreciation of these parental lessons comes later in life, once the child has experienced his own struggle and comes to understand what his parents understood.

Master of the Two Worlds is another step in the Return journey.

Freedom to pass back and forth across the world division, from the perspective of the apparitions of time to that of the casual deep and back–not contaminating the principles of the one with those of the other, yet permitting the mind to know the one by virtue of the other–is the talent of the master. (Joseph Campbell).

If the hero can master himself and master the crossing of the return threshold then he is granted this unique position where he belongs to two worlds. One of which he shares with his fellow man and the other is the bliss he has found within himself which he can access at any time.

The conclusion to most movies represents this idea. The peasant made into a king or an apprentice who becomes a master. But additionally, you can even look at someone like an Alcoholics Anonymous counselor as an individual in this position. Someone who has overcome their addiction and has gained the trust of others to help them through their addiction. Here is an individual who is a master of the two worlds.

The last step of the Return journey is the Freedom to Live.

The hero is the champion of things becoming, not of thing become, because he is. He does not mistake apparent changelessness in time for the permanence of Being, not is he fearful of the next moment.

The insight gained from this whole experience is that life is finite and life is about action. Through such an understanding, the hero is free to pursue what he wishes. Whether that is to go over the seas like Frodo did or take on the responsibility of the crown as Aragon did. Both are done with the acknowledgment of a choice. These are willing actions.

With this freedom comes the experience of being alive because you are now in control of your own life. You experience the good such as the accomplishments and success’ of your hard work but also the bad which is associated with being free like the anxieties and fears. However, that’s the cost of freedom, the cost of being alive.

Your anxieties are your own. Your fears are your own. Your failures are your own. But, so is your growth. Your choices. Your experiences and finally, your life is also yours through the completion of this journey.

The Hero’s Journey: Understanding The Initiation

Arshan Dhillon

The initiation phase of the Hero’s Journey can be broken down into six sections. The Road of Trials, The Meeting with the Goddess, Woman as the Temptress, Atonement with the Father, Apotheosis and The Ultimate Boon.

First, The Road of Trials:

This is a favorite phase of the myth-adventure. It has produced a world literature of miraculous tests and ordeals. The hero is covertly aided by the advice, amulets, and secret agents of the supernatural helper whom he met before his entrance into this region. Or it may be that he here discovers for the first time that there is a benign power everywhere supporting him in his superhuman passage.

Story and conflict go hand in hand. A story that lacks conflict isn’t a story at all. No one wants to read a story about someone who went through his day, comfortably and peacefully.

What would Rocky be if he won every fight in the first minute of the first round?

A story needs struggle. A great story shows the transformation of the character as he deals with conflict over and over again. Which is why The Roads of Trials is considered to be the “favorite phase” of the myth adventure.

An example of such a road of trials can be seen in the popular television show Game of Thrones. Specifically, in the character Jon Snow. In his development, Jon Snow has everything from his loyalty, to love, to his beliefs tested as he travels beyond the wall. He comes into contact with the wildings which he was raised to hate. Not only does he make friends with the wildings but also falls in love with a wilding woman. His trials are both physical, as he literally has to fight for his life, but also mental as he has to change his belief system. He sees the mistaken beliefs he possessed and how, by letting go of what wasn’t right, he comes to formulate his own beliefs and build his character. Not only does he then gain loyalty from the wildlings but others also flock to him which eventually leads to him being crowned the King in the North.

The hero, whether god or goddess, man or woman, the figure in a myth or the dreamer of a dream, discovers and assimilates his opposite (his own unsuspected self) either by swallowing it or by being swallowed. One by one the resistances are broken. He must put aside his pride, his virtue, beauty and life, and bow or submit to the absolutely intolerable. Then he finds that he and his opposite are not of differing species, but one flesh.

What follows either after The Road of Trials or during is The Meeting with the Goddess

Woman, in the picture language of mythology, represents the totality of what can be known. The hero is the one who comes to know. As he progresses in the slow initiation which is life, the form of the goddess undergoes for him a series of transfigurations: she can never be greater than himself, though she can always promise more than he is yet capable of comprehending.

This figure can sometimes be seen as a motherly figure. Who can either represent an obstacle to overcome or act as another guide to aid the hero in his adventure.

In the Odyssey by Homer, Athena aids while Calypso is an obstacle. Frodo meeting the high elf Galadriel can be viewed as an example of Meeting with the Goddess. Galadriel not only imparts gifts upon the fellowship, gifts which come to be very useful in their adventure, but she also shows Frodo what would the future look like if he were to fail.

Woman as the Temptress is another phase in the initiation journey.

No longer can the hero rest in innocence with the goddess of the flesh; for she is become the queen of sin.

This phase is largely defined by temptation. Something that can derail the adventure, stop the hero from going all the way. This can come in the form of a human being, as seen in the story of Jon Snow. At one point, Jon Snow must decide whether he wishes to perform his duty, which is to return to his brothers at the wall and prepare for battle or run away with his love. Even though that love was pure it can still be a temptation because it would have pulled Jon Snow away from his goal.

Additionally, temptations can manifest inside the hero’s mind. Frodo was tempted to give the ring to Sam. That moment of weakness can seem like an eternity because if you give in, it redirects the way your life had been going.

After the Goddess comes the father, specifically the Atonement with the Father.

When the child outgrows the popular idyl of the mother breast and turns to face the world of specialized adult action, it passes, spiritually, into the sphere of the father […] And just as, formerly, the mother represented the “good” and “evil,” so now does he, but with this complication—that there is a new element of rivalry in the picture: the son against the father for the mastery of the universe.

By overcoming the father, the son becomes a man. Either this father figure is defeated in battle or is persuaded through different means but the hero must confront the father one way or another.

This is a confrontation of someone in power. Without such confrontation, the hero can’t fully realize his potential. In Dune, for Paul Atreides to become Muad’Dib, he has to confront the all-powerful emperor.

Another example, this one much more literal than normal, happens to be one of the most iconic scenes in cinema history. It is when Luke Skywalker discovers that Darth Vader is his father. It is the realization that the peace that Luke desires can only come by confronting and defeating his own father.

Apotheosis follows this confrontation.

Like the Buddha himself, this godlike being is a pattern of the divine state to which the human hero attains who has gone beyond the last terrors of ignorance. “when the envelopment of consciousness has been annihilated, then he becomes free of all fear, beyond the reach of change.” This is the release potential within us all, and which anyone can attain—through herohood.

This comes through a form of self-sacrifice. Sacrificing the old you, completely. The transformation of Gandalf the Grey into Gandalf the White is one of apotheosis. Such transformation was only possible after Gandalf willingly acted in a self-sacrificing manner, by committing his life to save those of the other Fellowship members. By doing so, he was rewarded by being reborn.

The Jedi Masters, Obi-Wan, and Yoda, also achieve this state when they both sacrifice themselves.

The last phase in the Initiation part of the Monomyth is the Ultimate Boon.

The agony of breaking through personal limitations is the agony of spiritual growth. Art, literature, myth and cult, philosophy, and ascetic disciplines are instruments to help the individual past his limiting horizon into spheres of ever-expanding realization. As he crosses threshold after threshold, conquering dragon after dragon, the stature of the divinity that he summons to his highest wish increases, until it subsumes the cosmos.

The climax of the story, the ring is destroyed, Aragon takes the throne. What comes with this accomplishment is the transformation of the individual. He has become what he wished to be at the beginning of the adventure. That personal transformation is the ultimate reward, regardless of the riches that might come.

Rocky is a champion, Neo is the one, Harry Potter fulfills the prophecy, Simba gets his revenge, and so on.

It is this personal transformation that attracts me towards the monomyths and mythologies in general. The stories of struggle and overcoming fears, choosing to face conflicts, purposely being uncomfortable, and through it all, the transformation of their character for the better.

That’s what I take away from the monomyth. The attitude that one should have where you seek the unknown, the uncomfortable, the road less traveled.

 

Reference: The Hero With A Thousand Faces