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Thought of the Week Archives
December 1997
December 8
... [hero] myths are not fictitious stories of imaginery
characters in nonexistent countries. Rather, the monomyth of the Hero's
Journey is an accurate description of the experiential territories visited
by people in visionary states during transformative crisis. And as the psychospiritual
crisis of transformation is a human experience that is universal, so is
myth.
Stanislav Groff, M.D.
(forward) The Call to Adventure: Brining the Hero's Journey
to Daily Life, by Paul Rebillot, with Melissa Kay.
Comment �
by Reg Harris
Understanding that the Hero's Journey myth is the universal
archetype for virtually all human experience is essential to being able
to use and apply the Hero's Journey pattern. The Journey describes in
metaphoric terms the "transformative crisis" which is the foundation for
growth and discovery.
It is this "transformative crisis" which is the subject
of great literature and film, so when students understand the Journey
archetype, they are better able to interpret, analyze and benefit from
the literature they read. They have a basis for understanding and comparison.
They have a standard by which to measure the truly good literature and
to discern between what is of value and what is not.
Furthermore, if students can understand the calls to
adventure in their own lives as calls to transformation, opportunities
to surrender to the flow and dynamics of the movement of human growth,
they can better understand their need to accept the calls, to embrace
change, transformation and growth.
This is where our job as teachers becomes important.
We can show them the map, guide them in their understanding and interpretation
of their experiences. We can also explain why we can't take the Journey
for them, that accepting the adventure on one's own is the only way to
true growth, change and self-discovery.
December 15
When you try to understand everything, you will understand
nothing. It is best to understand yourself, and then you will understand
everything.
~ Shunryu Suzuki ~
Comment �
by Reg Harris
I often begin seminars on the Hero's Journey with the
wonderful Taoist story about a poor farmer whose horse, his only posession
of value, breaks out of the corral and runs away. His neighbors console
him, telling him what an unlucky event this was. The farmer responds only,
"Unlucky? We'll see."
Several days later, the horse returns, bringing with
it several beautiful wild horses. The farmer's neighbors come over to
contratulate him on his good luck. The farmer responds only, "Lucky? We'll
see." A few days later, the farmer's only son is trying to break one of
the wild horses so that it can be sold. The boy is thrown and fractures
his leg. The neighbors come by to console the farmer on his terrible luck.
The farmer responds, "Unlucky? We'll see."
One evening a week or so later, there is a thundering
knock on the farmer's door. When he opens the door he finds a half dozen
imperial soldiers outside. It seems that there is to be a bloody war in
the north, and they are conscripting all young men for the battle. "You
have a son, and he must come with us," they tell the farmer. "I do have
a son," the farmer says, "but as you can see, he has a broken leg and
cannot walk." The soldiers leave without the son. In the morning, the
neighbors come by to congratulate the farmer on his good luck. "Lucky,"
the farmer says. "We'll see."
The point is that it is foolish to judge experiences
good, bad or otherwise. There really is no "meaning" to an experience.
Events just "are," and we supply their meaning from within ourselves,
based on the interpretations supplied by the "myths" we have chosen to
live, by the masks (or personna, as Jung would call them) we have
chosen to wear. Because what "happens to us" is, in this view, the result
of who we are, the better we understand ourselves, the better we will
be able to give constructive, life-enhancing meaning to our experiences.
Suzuki's words seem to capture the essense of this idea.
In a sense he is saying, "know thyself and you will know thy life." This,
to me, is an essential theme in the Heroic Journey: our quests are the
tracks of the ever-expanding outward spiral we create when we disolve
the bounderies of the self and incorporate experiences into an understanding
of life and of ourselves. Great literature and film provide us with the
maps to this expansion. They show the struggle of great minds to weave
a tapestry of understanding from the seemingly random fabric of life.
What's more, this struggle, this exploration, follows always the pattern
of the Journey.
Teach your students the pattern and you give them a map
to understanding both literature and their lives. We need not "understand
everything," as Suzuki says. We need only embrace the marvelous process
of understanding ourselves, and an "understanding" of life will follow
as naturally as day follows night.
December 22
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors
to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected
in common hours.
Henry David Thoreau
Walden
December 29
Conventional education makes independent thinking
extremely difficult. Conformity leads to mediocrity. To be different from
the group or to resist environment is not easy and is often risky as long
as we worship success. The urge to be successful, which is the pursuit
of reward whether in the material or in the so-called spiritual sphere,
the search for inward or outward security, the desire for comfort--this
whole process smothers discontent, puts an end to spontaneity and breeds
fear; and fear blocks the intelligent understanding of life. With increasing
age, dullness of mind and heart sets in.
In seeking comfort, we generally find a quiet corner
in life where there is a minimum of conflict, and then we are afraid to
step out of that seclusion. This fear of life, this fear of struggle and
of new experience, kills in us the spirit of adventure; our whole upbringing
and education have made us afraid to be different from our neighbour,
afraid to think contrary to the established pattern of society, falsely
respectful of authority and tradition.
- J. Krishnamurti
Education and the Significance of Life (p. 9-10)
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