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Week4_TheHero.pptThe Hero:
Symbolic Vitality
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. It's not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
(Coach Carter)
The Adventure
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 the mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man (J. Campbell, H1K, 30)
Separation:
In the call and separation, the hero’s activity must be directed toward some goal outside him/herself to lead to his/her authentic wholeness.
The Call:
“The journey always begins here. The call is to leave a certain social situation, move into your loneliness and find the jewel, the center that’s impossible to find when you are socially engaged” (J. Campbell)
We are off center in the social. We define ourselves through external criteria, expectations, contexts.
Initiation:
The Battles.
The passage over and through these thresholds is a kind of self-annihilation, either inward or outward, a contest between contradictory forces within the self which the hero must face before he can perform his life renewing act.
The Temptations at the Threshold
Jesus
- Economic: power over others
- Political: power over others
- Spiritual (when ideology becomes dogma): power over God.
Buddha
- Lust (desire): personal
- Fear: personal
- Social Duty (do what you are told): social
In these struggles, the hero comes to wholeness and a new relationship to the world and is made suitable for his role within the culture.
These struggles/trials/temptations are where to gain yourself, you must lose the self you have come to cling to as “yourself.”
This is the giving up of what you planned for yourself in order to embrace what has been waiting for you.
“Psychologically, it’s a shift into the unconsciousness, otherwise, it’s a move into the filed of action of which you know nothing.” (J. Campbell)
The result of these trials may be favorable or unfavorable. It depends on your reasons/your purpose.
The Return:
“The Hero has died a modern man; but as eternal man—perfected, unspecific, universal man—he has been reborn. His second solemn task and deed therefore is to return to us, transfigured, and teach the lessons he has learned of life renewed.”
(J. Campbell, H1K, 20)
The hero winds up where he/she began, but is transfigured and posses boons to bestow upon his fellowman.
In Sum:
“Where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.”
(J. Campbell, H1K, 25)
The Rite of Transformation
- At its heart, this is what the Hero’s Journey is all about. “The quest and the return are two halves of the same circle. They comprise the empowerment process or journey of beginning that joins the participants with the ideal realm of their deities.”
- Seperation→Initiation→Return
- The way we want to look at this is in the context of symbol. So, we can begin with the idea that the heroic journey is a symbol of our own transformation.
- Campbell: The hero is a model of behavior. And the heroic act is one of transformation.
- In this perspective, the journey or trip is a manifestation of his or her own nature. The adventure is the experience of life that leads to a change in consciousness.
What is the goal? Follow your Bliss
- The hero is a symbol of our vitality. The influence of a vital person is to vitalize.
- This is done going through life looking for those symbols that evokes our vital character. We get to know ourselves as we go along. We have to pay attention and choose symbols and situations that reveal the best—not the worst.
Dragons: The Worst
- Our greed and our ego. It is also our shame. It is the manifestation of that thing that which would prevent us from achieving our true potential.
- The dragon is a symbol of stagnation and futility. Not the symbol of vitality.
- The hero, as symbol, and the journey, as symbol, leads to a reversal of existence. What we thought was strength is a weakness. What we thought was our weakness is our strength.
- We look to those symbols that raise our consciousness by changing the field. They infuse all life with that significance. When we can have that feeling of sanctity always—we have transformed our life.
