As I said at the end of this video making this was a Hero's Journey for me. I really faced a paralyzing crisis while making this becuase this dream is so personal. I find most people's dreams to be incredibly boring. I had to overcome and purge a lot of personal blocks.
This week has been rough. First, as I discussed in my blog on Monday when I went to the Learning Light Center I felt really drained. I love being around people who are into spirituality as much as I am but the need of so many who visit that place is just too much. When I contemplated making this video and how to do it I had a little crisis of self-doubt. I worried that these videos will never amount to much as they don't seem to be becoming popular. Meanwhile, I distinctly don't want to become to popular while making them because that would freak me out and put a ton of pressure on me bringing out my inner critic. I'd probably be struck dumb with fear. What's the point of making them, I wondered? What am I really trying to accomplish here? What's with this contradiction in thinking and how can I resolve this? The answer came to me in an couple of ways. First, I had a dream explaining that each effort was a little ripple and that little ripples can make big waves. I will effect certain people who will go out and effect others. I also know, based on another dream, that these videos are not meant for masses of people who are just now waking up. These are meant more for the advanced spiritual person...that I've been about 10 years ahead of the bell curve of these events. Then as I was working on the slides for this video I was listening to a YouTube video on the Moore Show, where the host, Kevin, asked the same question to a channeler named Douglas Ballard and was told the same answer. Here is that video: https://youtu.be/YjstImu3coc For some reason I resonate a lot with Kevin Moore. Edgar Cacye popped up for him when channeling. Edgar Cacye pops up as one of my guides, kind of like Aswana that I describe in the video, but only when I'm really being challenged in life (mostly when I've been suicidal). There's an earnestness to him that I adore and his videos have been a major inspiriation for me during the roughest patch in my life since my daughter, Lilith-Ann, passed in 2014. So, it doesn't surprise me that a message he asked so clearly answered a quesiton I needed to hear...it was in a video published a few weeks ago that I couldn't find the time to watch...yet, the timing when I finally got to listen to it was perfect. In the end, this little crisis with negative energy was helpful. I did put into context the more bizarre and frightening mystical experiences that I had which I have been questioning for a long time. I wrote a blog based on this epiphany, "A Strange Little Ghost Story," which I will publish on Monday. I seem to be purging some major patterns that have occured over multiple lives which is fascinating. The amount of Karma I'm balancing in this life is fascinating and the Path of the Seeker continues to become more surprising. Each time I think I'm reaching the end of it I find something new. Also, I had been thinking for a couple of weeks, because so many videos post on Monday that I needed to change the day that I post my videos. Being inundated with videos on Monday of YouTube channels I follow I realized mine might not get as much attention from my subscribesrs (11 so far which is one of my favorite numbers). Also, my work schedule changed. I was off on most Mondays but now my days off are changing every week. Posting on Friday allows me to utilize whatever week day I'm off to work on my video. There was one thing that I did not mention in this video that I noticed when editing. Interestingly, in the interperted version of Joseph Campbells Hero's Journey for writing they chnaged Atonement with the Father to Crisis. I think this is very interesting, since Atonement is the heart of the Initiation part of the cycle Campbell identified. Do most people face a crisis when dealing with Atonment? Next week, I think I'll do a Traveler's Notes video on Atonment. That one is exciting and totally inspired by the work of Edgar Cacye so that's going to be fun. The next step on Maps of the Pscyhe is going to be Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. This is so exciting because I love bringing an actual concept I learned when earning my Bachelors in the Science of Psychology to bear on this information. I think it totally validates what I'm talking about. I also found it really interesting in Campbell's book Pathways To Bliss he talks about Maslow's hierarchy of needs and associates it with the chakras!! What a perfect little validation of my own concept..although, his view was not flattering and I disagree with him a little. I look forward to including his opinon during the next set of videos. Thank you everyone who is reading this blog and watching these videos. Creating them brings me a lot of joy and happiness.
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90is book was absolutely amazing.
I highly recommend Pathways to Bliss From a touching story where Joseph Campbell shares what it was like when George Lucas took him to Skywalker Ranch and showed him Star Wars...to his different reflections on how to define your own personal myth this book is well worth reading more than once. Here are some quotes: "There lives in us...a life wisdom. We are all manifestations of a mystic power; the power of life, which has shaped all life, and which has shaped us all in our mother's womb. And this knid of wisdom lives in us, and it represents the force of this power, this energy, pouring into the field of time and space. But it's a transcendent energy. It's an energy that comes from a realm beyond our powers of knowledge. And that energy becomes bound in each of us- in this body- to a certain commitment. Now, the mind that thnks, the eyes that see, they can become so involved in concepts and local, temporal tasks that we become bound up and don't let this energy flow through. And then we become sick. The energy is blocked, and we are thrown off center; this idea is very similar to the tenets of traditional Chinese and Indian medicene. So the psychological problem, the way to keep from becoming blocked, is to make yourself- and her is the phrase- transparent to the transcendent. It's as easy as that." pg XVII "Of of the problems in our biblical tradtion is that the universe is present in one posited by the Sumerians five thousand years ago; we've had two universe models since then." Pg. 7 "Now, the hierarchy of values that Maslow names corresponds to the these bottom cakras (chakras). These are values that we share with the animals. We have an animal body, though of course it's not the body of a dog or a gazelle, but the body of a human animal. And we live the animal life in the human mode..." Pg. 90" In any case, when I'd finished my lecture up in Seattle, one young lady came up to me, and she said, very seriously, "Oh, Mr. Campbell, you just don't know about the modern generation. We go directly from infancy to wisdom." I said, "That is great. All you've missed is life." pg. 108 "Now, theres the way a rite works- there's something about that business of identifying yourself with something that's happening. There is a story- you may have heard me tell it before- of a samurai. His overlord had been killed, and his vow was, of course, absolute loyal to this lord. And it was his duty now to kill the killer. Well, after considerable difficulties, he finally backs this fellow in a corner, and he is about to slay him with his katana, his sword, which is the symbol of his honor. And the chap in the corner is angry and terrified and he spits ont he samurai, who sheathes his sword and walks away. Now why did he do that? He did that because this action made him angry, and it would have been a personal act to have killed that man in anger, and that would have destroyed the whole event. It is veyr much like this hunting at of the Pygmy. This is a mythological attitude. You are actiong not in the terms of yhour individual, peresonal life but with the sense of yourself as the priest, so to say, of a cosmic power which is operating through you, which we all are in circumstances, and the problem is to balance yourself against that and have a personality at the same time." Pg. 139 There are many more then these but I strongly suggest you read the book for yourself. You can buy Pathways to Bliss at Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
I'm learning so much as I make these videos.
I really didn't have a clue how perfectly the Hero's Journey works with a Spiritual Awakening. I didn't comprehend it so much before I sat down and wrote what I thought was going to be one video. Upon working on that one video, however, I realized I needed to make at least three videos on the subject. I bought Pathways to Bliss by Joseph Campbell along with several other books for my Birthday. Little did I know that it would be the perfect book to read because in his later life Campbell equated the different stages of the Hero's Journey with other concepts. For example, he explained how the Meeting the Goddess is the mystical marriage. That is a concept I will have to return to, maybe in a Travelrs Notes video, but I want to read a few books by Carl Jung before I work on that video. Jung, it seems, had a lot to say on that subject. I didn't really think about how much Initiation ties in with my own experiences until I worked on this video. I thought that my own personal journey would end somewhere in the middle of this part. I realized, however, that during my most recent 'Awakening' I completed this stage. In the ones prior to 2014 I don't think I did...and I don't thin many people do. At the end of Initiation I think a person becomes Self-Actualized. I don't know if I made it clear in this video but I think we go through this cycle often throughout our lives. We dont' go off and that's it...some people might but for most people it happens more then once. For me, I can say it happened three times and I don't doubt there will be another cycle...just hopefully not as dramatic. I did my best to maket his one relateable...or at least sketch out how it would work. I think a lot of people get to the Dark Night and then back off. They don't have what it takes to get through the road of trials. Well, we have one more video to go...the Return. Then I will recap this series and explain how I had a dream that pretty much matches this entire story. When I realized that one of my mountain top dreams so precisely matched this as I crafted this video I was absolutely shocked. I'm so excited about this information and my prayer is that it will help a lot of people.
This is by far one of my more ambitious blogs. I hope you enjoy this concept and it brings a little bit of illumination.
Now, we know the meaning of life is to experience. We know that we are learning to create on a minute level. We understand the role of the Dark and Light experiences (positive or negative) giving depth to those creations. Can we know learn anymore about the purpose of this life journey? The Hero's Journey is the story that humanity keeps retelling itself. Now, I believe that each of us are living our own story and our soul is the narrator just as we are the characters in the story. This is why when we go back to a painful experience in our past we can redefine it and see how it led us to new knowledge. The Hero's Journey is the story of the soul. The soul starts off in the Spirit Realm, it hears the call to adventure...and off to Earth we go to play the Game of Life. To better understand this ride we have chosen let's look closely at the Hero's Journey... The Hero's Journey In 1949 Joseph Campbell shared a revolutionary concept in a book titled The Hero With A Thousand Faces. He studied the myths and stories of many cultures. He discovered that humanity seemed to resonate and repeat one story with many different characters. He dubbed this story the Hero's Journey. From The Hobbit to Star Wars we can discover that this Hero's Journey applies to them all. I believe it is important to note that Joseph Campbell had a direct influence on Star Wars. We can easily sum the Hero's Journey up by dividing it up into four sections. Those sections are Departure, Initiation, Crisis and Return. However, Campbell has three sections consisting of seventeen parts. The hero departs from the world that they know into the world of the unknown. In that unknown world there is usually an initiation (sometimes with a mentor), then there is a Crisis the hero must overcome and then they Return to the life they formerly knew with some sort of boon they share with others. Campbell's Seventeen Elements The above four steps are an abbreviation of Campbell's version of the hero's journey. Here are the seventeen stages that appear in most stories. Part One, Departure, Contains Five Elements: 1. There is the call to Adventure. We see Gandalf visiting the Shire and talking to Bilbo about a great adventure or in the case of Luke Skywalker the two mysterious droids appear. 2. There is a refusal to the call. The hero fails to heed the call because of some duty, obligation, fear or insecurity. Bilbo states that Hobbits don't approve of adventures and Luke states that his Uncle Owen needs him to stay on the farm. Campbell described this as, "...the subject loses the power of the significant affirmative action and becomes a victim to be saved." 3. For those who don't refuse the call the first encounter is with a protective figure that will offer them teachings or talismans they will later use in their adventure. Campbell says, "...such a figure represents the benign, protecting power of destiny." 4. Crossing the threshold, is where the character cross into the unknown realm. "The usual person is more than content, he is even proud, to remain within the indicated bounds...the adventure is always and everywhere a passage beyond the veil...for anyone with competence and courage the danger fades." 5. Belly of the Whale: This is where the hero goes into a situation where there is a rebirth. This can be symbolically represented literally by the belly of the Whale (as in Pinocchio or Jonah). Campbell says, "The idea of the passage of the magical threshold is a transit into the sphere of rebirth...the interior of the temple." Part Two, Initiation, Contains Six Parts 6. The Road of Trials. The road consists of a series of tests, often in threes, that the person must undergo during their transformation. "The hero is covertly aided by the advice, amulets or secret agents of the mentor or he discovers here...for the first time...a benign power everywhere supporting him in his superhuman passage." 7. Meeting The Goddess. This is the point where the person experiences a love that has power and significance of the unconditional love an infant experiences with it's mother. According to Campbell, "The ultimate adventure, when all the barriers and ogres have been overcome is represented by a mystical marriage of triumphant hero-soul with the Queen Goddess of the world and if the adventurer be a maid, she is the one who, by her qualities, her beauty, her yearning, is fit to become consort of an immortal. The heavenly husband descends to her...if she has shunned him the scales fall from her eyes or if she sought him her desire finds peace." 8. Woman as Temptress. The hero faces temptations of a physical or pleasurable nature, that may lead him or her to abandon or stray from their quest. "The crux of the curious difficulty lies in the fact that our conscious views of what life ought to be seldom correspond to what life really is..the seeker of life beyond life must press beyond (the woman), surpass the temptations of her call, and soar to the immaculate ether beyond." 9. Atonement with the Father. The person must confront and be initiated by whatever holds the ultimate power in his or her life. In many myths and stories this is the father, or a father figure who has life and death power. Everything in this story leads to this moment and away from it. "Atonement consists of no more than the abandonment of that self-generated double monster- the dragon tho to be god (superego) and the dragon thought to be Sin (repressed Id). This requires an abandonment of the attachment to ego itself, and that is what is difficult. It is in this ordeal that the hero may derive hope and assurance from the female figure, by who's magic he is protected from the father's ego-shattering initiation...only to find that the father and mother reflect each other and are in essence the same." 10. Apotheosis. When someone dies a physical death or dies to the self to live in spirit, he or she moves beyond the pairs of opposites to a state of divine knowledge, love, compassion and bliss. "Those who know, not only that the Everlasting lies in them, but that what they, and all things, really are is the Everlasting, dwell in the groves of the wish fulfilling trees, drink the brew of immortality, and listen everywhere to the unheard music of eternal concord." 11. The Ultimate Boon. The achievement of the goal of the quest. All the previous steps serve to prepare and purify the person for this step, since in many myths the boon is something transcendent like the elixir of life itself or a plant that supplies immortality or the holy grail. "The gods and goddesses then are to be understood as embodiment's and custodians of the elixir of Imperishable Being but not themselves the Ultimate in it's primary state...it's guardians dare release it only to the duly proven." Part Three, The Return, Has Six Elements 12. Refusal to Return. Having found bliss and enlightenment in the other world, the hero may not want to return to the ordinary world to bestow this boon onto his fellow man. "The hero must return with his life-transmuting trophy but this has been frequently refused. Even Gautama Buddha, after his triumph, doubted whether the message of realization could be communicated and saints are reported to have died while in supernal ecstasy." 13. The Magic Flight. Sometimes the hero has to escape with the boon. This can be adventurous and dangerous. 14. Rescue From Without. Sometimes the hero has powerful guides and rescuers to bring them back with their boon especially if the person has been wounded or weakened by the experience. 15. The Crossing of the Return Threshold. The biggest trick is to integrate the wisdom learned during the journey back into normal life. Trying to share the wisdom with the rest of the world. 16. Master of Two Worlds. This is usually represented by transcendental heroes such as Jesus or Gautama Buddha. For the human hero it is a balance between the material and spiritual. 17. Freedom to Live. Mastery leads to freedom from the fear of death, which in turn is the freedom to live. Campbell, "The hero is the champion of things becoming, not of things become, because he is." Conclusion I could, perhaps, write a blog on each level of the seventeen steps that Joseph Campbell shows. I may do that one day. However, right now we are like rocks skipping over the surface of the information I want to penetrate deeply into so that I may get to that which is occupying my mind currently. I have been familiar with and have adored the Hero's Journey for twenty years. I apologize if this is almost a callous treatment of this subject and I will develop this further. However, upon embarking on investigating the two oldest Hero's Journey's that I know I came across a startling idea that has currently shocked me into wanting to discuss that subject. For now, I will say meditate on the idea that the Hero's Journey is not just a pattern writers plot device that can be used to really speak to the masses. Instead, think of it as the story of the human soul. Each of us hear the call of this world, we turn to it and decide to descend because the wisdom we gain is worth the toil. While here, we hear the call of our immortal soul and we have the choice to depart on the Spiritual Journey. Some ignore the call and become victims. We are seeing this separation of people into those who consider themselves victims and those who seek to rise above this mortal coil for the bigger picture on a global scale right now. The Spiritual Journey then, is laid out in this template that mankind has been reinforcing to itself for years in the form of stories. Anyone can follow it once they see it for what it is and understand that it is ultimately a journey within oneself. |
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Brave Soul! May Your Journey On The Path Of The Seeker Bring You Joy and Peace! I'm currently posting every Saturday. With a new addition the family I have pre-scheduled most posts through December 2022. Full Moon Posts will contain up-to-date content when I can get to them. Thank you so much for your support and understanding! This is a place where you can encounter new spiritual ideas that have helped me develop as an Individual On The Path of the Seeker. Take or Leave this information as you see fit. Archives
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