Role of Faith in the Hero's Journey

"Thought of the Week" for March 21, 2005

Faith and security in the heroic journey process

by Reg Harris

Copyright © 2005 by Reg Harris. All rights reserved. Revised October 7, 2007.

A personal mythology is the story we tell ourselves about ourselves. It influences how we view and interpret our experiences, and it filters the experiences that will enter our consciousness by selecting those events that relate to our myth. The personal myth shapes our lives and can exert either a positive or negative influence on our growth, on how we encounter our journeys. Positively, it functions as a guide and recourse for growth. Negatively, it becomes fixed, a sedimented narrative of who we are. As a sedimented narrative, it seeks to protect itself, influencing us to avoid risks and, thus, the journeys that might change our self perception. It forces us to live in our past rather than helping us open ourselves to the potentials in your present. Gestalt therapy offers an interesting insight into the impact our personal mythology can have on our lives. This excerpt from Gestalt Therapy: History, Theory and Practice (ed. Ansel Woldt and Sarah Toman), offers a valuable perspective on whether we live in our past or present. [The concept of "background" in Gestalt is too complicated to discuss here, so I take the liberty of defining it in terms of the journey as the "personal mythology," or the background of self from which and through which we engage life.]

[Paul] Goodman (1994) posed a Faith-Security differentiation in referring to how the person lives in the present, either alive to the present in its fullness or repeating the past--the already achieved. "Accepting his concern and the object [challenge], and exercising the aggression [initiative, will], the creatively impartial man is excited by the conflict and grows by means of it, win or lose; he is not attached to what might be lost, for he knows he is changing and already identifies with what he will become. With this attitude goes an emotion that is the opposite of the sense of security, namely faith: absorbed in the actual activity, he does not protect the background [his personal mythology] but draws energy from it, he has faith that it will prove adequate" (p. 134). In psychoanalysis, Ferenczi proposed a comparable idea in his "magical omnipotence"; T. Benedek called it "confidence"' E. Erikson referred to this as "basic trust"' and I've called it "confident expectation." (pp. 24-25)

There are several ideas in this excerpt that are important in the context of the journey.

"...how the person lives in the present, either alive to the present in its fullness or repeating the past―the already achieved." If we are tied to our past, holding on to what we have accumulated, accomplished or achieved, we cannot be open to the opportunities available to us in our present. We are, essentially, doomed to protecting and repeating the past, our personal myth, and we are unable or unwilling to take the journeys in our present. Such an attachment might trigger the call to the journey, a call which compels us embrace our future rather than to cling to our past.
"...the creatively impartial man is excited by the conflict and grows by means of it, win or lose...". In a sense, we are excited by the challenges in our lives because we realize they exist because of a weakness or lack in ourselves, so we see them as opportunities to grow. If we function in faith (faith that we can handle the journey and redefine ourselves through it), we will embrace the challenge because we know that, win or lose, we will benefit from it.
"he is not attached to what might be lost, for he knows he is changing and already identifies with what he will become..." Perhaps the most important point in the excerpt, this emphasizes that the creative person does not fear what might be lost because he or she knows that the self is not a "thing," but a process, an unending journey of adaptation and growth. With this attitude, we do not feel attachment to what we are or have because we can identify with our potential, with what we will become. Our choices affirm the lives we are living and can live rather than protecting the lives we have lived and what we become.
"...absorbed in the actual activity, he does not protect the background [personal mythology] but draws energy from it, he has faith that it will prove adequate." With faith in our capacity to meet the challenges, we can absorb ourselves in them. Our personal myth, rather than being a self we must protect by any means, becomes a valuable resource of skills and experience, and we enter the journey with the faith that whatever happens, we will grow. Winning or losing are not part of the equation. We cross the threshold, embracing our potentials and being what we have become. We refuse to live our lives "looking in a rear-view mirror."