The Hero's Journey: A resource for educators, teachers, and students

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Thought of the Week Archives
June 1998

June 1

I have always found the notion that we share with all other human beings certain common ways of thinking, feeling, and imagining something rather easy to understand and accept. Indeed, how could it be otherwise? Do we not all have mothers and fathers? Do we not all have experience of birth, childhood, aging, and ultimately death? Are there not certain constants that go beyond individual experience and culture, beyond time and place, which make us human and which we, therefore, share with all other humans? These patterns make up the archetypes of the collective unconscious, some of which are experienced in personal form, in figures such as the wise old man, the trickster, the maiden, the eternal child, as well as the gods, goddesses, demons, and angels of mythology and theology. But many archetypes of the collective unconscious are not figures at all but are instead typical situations and experiences--growing up, experiencing wholeness, being caught in an unresolvable conflict, losing our innocence, achieving ecstatic union with God--and it may be these "situational" archetypes which synchronistic occurrences bring to our awareness as well.

~ Robert H. Hopcke ~
There Are No Accidents
Riverhead Books (1997)

Comment:

One of these "situational archetypes" is the Heroic Journey. It is a pattern of experience we share in common with all humans from all times. It is the pattern of growth, of adjusting to meet the challenges and mysteries of the environment. Synchronistic events are often a part of the Journey. They take the shape of an unsettling combination of coincidences which generate the Call. They are the helpers who show up at just the right time with just the right form of aid. They are they ironies in our lives, those strange justapositions which give us sudden, often painful, insight into our condition and ourselves.

If you are interested in synchronicity, I recommend Mr. Hopcke's book. It provides a great deal of insight into the nature of our Calls to Adventure and the directions of our Journeys.

Reg Harris

June 8

We don't give up our cherished goals lightly. . . . we use our cherished goals as bulwarks against depression. If the present isn't as sweet as we might wish, we can always write off today's pain as a necessary step on the way toward tomorrow's delight. Remove the prospect of tomorrow's reward and today's sacrifice becomes pointless. Today's pain is bearable if it holds some promise of a better tomorrow, it it has some meaning, namely, as a sacrifice in the present for the sake of some goal in the future. But once that promist is broken or removed, once the goal of deferred gratification is taken away, then today's pain is pointless . . . and depression sets in.

~ James Ogilvy ~
Living without a Goal
(Doubleday, 1995)

June 15, 1998

. . . For most of us, a world view is a lived truth, something we just take for granted and seldom try to describe. Indeed, there is normally motivation to do so only if something goes wrong, if in some way our world view is inadequate or is changing. Only then do we become self-conscious about it.

At the most personal level, a world view is a theme running through a life, a thread that draws apparently disparate pieces together and joins them into a coherent whole. Each of us has, or at least strives to acquire, one. We search for the pattern in terms of which the decisions that we make or the actions we carry out make sense. . .

If, at this personal level, one fails to sense some coherent world view, then life itself fragments. We say that such a person has "lost his sense of direction" or "doesn't know who he is." The alienation suffered at this level is alienation from the self.

by Reg Harris

For those of you interested in the connections between quantum physics and human consciousness, The Quantum Self is a clear and fascinating analysis.

In the quote above, Zohar hits on three important elements of the Hero's Journey. In paragraph one, she could be describing the Call to Adventure. As long as our world view, the framework on which we hang experiences to give them coherence and meaning, functions, we have no need to question it or our values. However, when something goes wrong, when the scope of our world view or values is not large enough to incorporate an experience (that is, the experence does not fit on he framework because we have not created a place for it), we are called to enlarge our world view and re-examine our values. This is the call to the adventure of redefining our self or expanding our understanding to incorporate the new experience.

The second paragraph of the quote could be describing our personal myth. Carol Pearson, in The Hero Within, wrote, "Our experience quite literally is defined by our assumptions about life. We make stories aboout the world and to a large degree live out their plots. What our lives are like depends to a great extent on the script we consciously, or more likely, unconsciously, have adopted."

Sam Keen and Ann Valley-Fox describe the same process in Your Mythic Journey. They write, "A myth creates the plotline that organizes the diverse experiences of a person or a community into a single story."

When Zohar writes, "a world view is a theme running through a life, a thread that draws apparently disparate pieces together and joins them into a coherent whole," she is, essentially, describing the personal myth. The personal myth is the framework I spoke of earlier. It is the organizing structure on which we hang experience to give it coherence and "meaning."

Our personal myth or world view also gives us a sense of security in that it removes much of the unknown from experience. The danger in this, however, is that the personal myth also makes it difficult for us to grow and expand our understanding because to learn means admitting that our understanding is inadequate. This is both threatening and painful.

As Keen and Valley-Fox write (ibid), "...in the same measure that myth gives us security and identity, it also creates selective blindness, narrowness, and rigidity. . . As long as no radical change is necessary for survival, the status quo remains sacred, the myth and ritual are unquestioned and the patterns of life, like the seasons of the year, repeat themselves. But when crisis comes . . . the mythic mind is at a loss to deal with novelty."

This idea leads us to the last paragraph quoted above. Zohar writes, "If, at this personal level, one fails to sense some coherent world view, then life itself fragments." This is the crisis of the Call Refused, and is one of the great themes of literature. The Hamlets, the Willlie Lomans, the Kurtzs that people the great works of literature all face this crisis and all fail to readjust their personal myths to incorporate the new experience and grow from it. The result, as with most cases of refusing the call, is tragedy.

June 22, 1998

I wish I had done a better job of communicating with my people. If people understand the why, they will work for it. I never got that idea across.
~ Roger Smith ~
former chairman of General Motors

Comment: Are our students any different when it comes to what they must study or why we impose on them the rules we do?

June 29, 1998

The Muddy Road Tanzan and Ekido were once traveling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was still falling.
Coming around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection.
"Come on, girl," said Tanzan at once. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud.
Ekido did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he no longer could rstrain himself. "We monks don't go near females," he told Tanzan, "especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?"
"I left the girl there," said Tanzan. "Are you still carrying her?"