(Part 1 – From Cold Mountain to Joseph Campbell: Navigating Unconditional Remembrance’s Inner Path https://scribehivepublishing.com/from-cold-mountain-to-joseph-campbell-navigating-unconditional-remembrances-inner-path/
Hearing (and acknowledging) this inner call brings you to a moment of choice. You can ignore it because you fear the change it may be asking you to undertake. Or you can heed it because the call is stronger than your fear. You can “get busy” and pretend you didn’t hear it. Yet it will return. It is persistent. It will call to you again and again, until you (finally) listen. Until you embark upon the journey…)
Ah, the journey.
This is the place where you battle with your own internal demons, personified in the dragons of the old stories. The purpose of these battles is to come to an “undistorted, direct experience,” of life, of your own connection with truth.
It begins with a kind of “withdrawal” from the world. This can mean going on a personal retreat, taking more time for inner quiet, as in meditation or contemplation, or asking yourself questions you never thought to ask before.
It does not mean you need to go off into the wilderness! Or to end your marriage. Or to leave your job.
But it might. This is a shift in your focus from outer world concerns to an exploration of your internal world. Not that you forget about your life–your job, family, ambitions and desires. You are leaving the land of duality, of either/or, and stepping into what will become a new way of being. As you begin to explore your inner universe, nothing will ever be the same again. As has often been said, once you turn the light on (become conscious), you cannot turn it off.
The Adventure
This is the adventure of self-exploration! It is inner research in service of Self-discovery. In order to move into direct experience, which is the land beyond separation from yourself–the place of remembrance–you may unearth limiting thoughts and beliefs. Inner research is where you take time for reflection and the process of self-questioning so that you can begin to know the patterns that limit you. It is how you develop your power of discernment in order to determine the true source of the call.
A Call to More
Is the call coming from a place within you that is passionate to know more? To uncover what has been hidden or invisible? Or are you questioning from a desire to please, with a laundry list of expectations about what you should do, and a desire for life to stay within the bounds of what you already know, rather than to try on something new?
Self-trust grows from allowing your discerning heart to show you what is true. It requires you to step into the unknown, because that is where you begin to unravel your own mystery. It is the sine qua nonof the Hero’s Journey.
So, heeding the call means that you initiate the quest. You cannot be passive! You know there is more to life and more to understand about yourself. In order to access that, you must be willing to leave what you know—or think you know – and set off for unknown lands without real knowledge of either the destination or the outcome. You become both the explorer and the researcher. Your field of research is yourself. You anchor into the essence of who you really are, living from a far bigger place than where you began.
Initiation
The journey culminates in Initiation: the act of receiving inner knowledge. It’s often a striking life change. Then, in your “return to the world,” it becomes something to be expressed and shared. This is the time in your life when you take what you’ve learned, and you bring forward your message or mission into the world.
The Hero’s Journey must, by definition, encompass a return to the outer world. This is where you find your mirrors, seeing yourself reflected as you move through life. Have you ever had a new acquaintance see you more clearly than an old friend? They see you as you are now, not as you used to be.
This becomes your arena where your talents and gifts — your particular genius — find their expression in who you are.
Self-mastery becomes a reality.
“What I think is that a good life is one hero journey after another. Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure, you are called to new horizons. Each time, there is the same problem: do I dare? And then if you do dare, the dangers are there, and the help also, and the fulfillment or the fiasco. There’s always the possibility of a fiasco.
But there’s also the possibility of bliss. – Joseph Campbell Pathways to Bliss