The Heroe's Journey Home

Your sacred space is where you find yourself again and again.
-Joseph Campbell

Monomyth?

I am fascinated with the wisdom of Joseph Campbell.  I have been watching him on Netflix, in a series of interviews with Bill Moyers, Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth. It is amazing to watch this wise "legend" speak and share what he has learned from studying mythology all over the world. It doesn't matter if the myth is based on Hinduism or Catholicism ...it all connects somehow. All myth shows the hero's ( you and I) journey home.  It emphasizes the mystical beneath the  practical, the invisible support system beneath the visible. It takes us "home" to who we really are.

Going Home?

I open up to ACIM today and the first line I read in Lesson 182 is , "This world you seem to live in is not home to you." In all myth, is that not the hero's primary quest?  To find home or return home after a great adventure in some strange  and foreign land? In all religion, is the  primary quest for us to return to a place where we find our Self be it heaven, or Nirvana.  This place is sacred...our search is sacred. Is it not?

Where is home?

Where is home?  What is home? Where is the hero going and what is he seeking?  Ultimately what the hero longs for is inner awareness, enlightenment and peace.  He struggles in the "darkest and most inner cave" to find "atonement" and this awareness so he can bring it back to others. Campbell often refers to the story of the Buddha and the ancient Yogic  teachings to explain this.  The hero's journey, though written in metaphor a world lost in physicality can understand, is an inner one.  The battling and struggling to overcome obstacles occurs in the "the cave".  That cave is the mind. It is in the mind the hero goes, it is the mind the hero learns to over come and it is this mental control the hero brings back to others .

"All the gods, all the heavens, all the hells are  within you." Joseph Campbell.  That in many western religions would be considered blasphemous?  Why?  Because we over identify and get stuck on the"metaphor"...the words, the visual images, the "idea"  that religious mythology is using as a pointer to experiencing the journey of life.

How Do We Get There?

So really, how do we undertake the hero's journey? We  first must be  willing to set our own path...be willing listen to the Voice within, to what lies beyond the visible veil we have over identified with.  We seek to get past our ego and "mental modifications".  We become still and find the Heaven within.

When you are still an instant, when the world recedes from you, when valueless ideas cease to have value in your restless mind, then will you hear His Voice.
-ACIM,W-182: 8:1

Then we experience life in a way that can not be understood or explained with words or images. Once we experience that, we bring it back to others. Basically Joseph Campbell's explanation of myth echoes the teachings of a ACIM.

Wow!  There is so much whirling around in my head right now, I cannot adequately put it down.  so I will end here.

All is well in my world.