The Hero's Journey

Campbell tells the common story of the hero. As Campbell outlines in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, the hero's journey consists of three parts - the departure, the initiation, and the return. Each of the three stages can also be divided further (see Table 1). Figure 1 shows graphically the hero's journey. Each of the stages are explained in the following section.

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The above exerpt is from my page The Intercultural Sojourn as the Hero's Journey. The article is an excellent outline and guide to help us better understand the stages of the hero/heroine journey.

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And from The Hero with a Thousand Faces
"Freud has suggested that all moments of anxiety reproduce the painful feelings of the first separation from the mother - the tightening of the breath, congestion of the blood, etc., of the crisis of the birth. Conversely, ALL moments of separation and new birth produce anxiety. Whether it be the king's child about to be taken from the felicity of her established dual-unity with Danny King, or God's daughter Eve, now ripe to depart from the idyl of the Garden, or again, the supremely concentrated Future Buddha breaking past the last horizons of the created world, the same archetypal images are activated, symbolizing danger, reassurance, trial, passage, and the strange holiness of the mysteries of birth ~ Joseph Campbell

Powerful stuff.

Gerard

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Gerard,

Thank you so much for posting this. I have been looking for something that explores the similarities between the hero's journey and the traveller's journey. Having just returned from my long-awaited adventure or period of Becoming, it really resounds within me and I see and feel many parallels. I feel that I came back with many gifts including the ultimate boon for me - direction in my life for once, career-wise and destination-wise.


Isa

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Isa,
Thanks for sharing your personal experiences. Your long awaited adventure, with the knowledge you were on that adventure, will produce abundance for many years to come. I look back on my first test, my long awaited adventure {1994} and revel in the fact there were indeed helping hands all along the way. And the best thing, something I realize every day, they still continue to 'help, to guide, and to entice me to continue on.

I posted this in mind that so many are unaware of the mythical journey of the hero cycle and how that journey fits into everyday life. This not an ego trip, it is an inner journey. With society {social duty} being so demanding on our time and strength it is often impossible to realize the inner because of the outer. Thus a lack of balance and harmony, on the part of the individual, and our society as a whole. The goal is to slay the ego, and to resurrect the soul as the governing agent in the life. Once that undertaking is begun, there is no turning back {Refusal of the Call}. It either captures you, or destroys you. You either become Luke Skywalker of Darth Vader.

For you and I the choice is in the light.

An old Buddhist saying that I hold to dearly. Something Campbell has quoted often. It is the essence of the Hero's Adventure

Nirvana is the condition that comes when you are not compelled by desire, fear or social commitments.

In other words, you let go the ego and let the Force {god} lead.

Gerard

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Isa,
I should have stated, "with the knowledge you ARE on that adventure". Once you begin it never ends. In fact in Buddhism it continues into the next life. Of course it may be best to focus on one life at a time.

Gerard

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