The Hero/Heroine’s Journey
Are you feeling a call to live a deeper life more aligned with your passions?
Is life throwing you a curve ball, blocks or confusion?
Our journey through life’s challenges can be so much easier when we have a map, support and embodied experiences of the Hero/Heroine’s Journey!
Join us as we journey into exciting realms of body, mind and spirit to return with power, insight and a fresh start.
Encoded within the great stories of humankind are patterns of growth and transformation which we can draw upon as incredible resources in our own life journeys. 60 years ago, Joseph Campbell published The Hero with a Thousand Faces which described the core pattern that is repeated in all the world’s great mythological stories across diverse cultures.
Then Maureen Murdock wrote The Heroine’s Journey about Woman’s quest to heal the deep wounding of her feminine nature on a personal, cultural, and spiritual level. She undertakes this spiritual and psychological journey also based on universal cultural myths and legend to become whole, integrating all parts of her nature.
The reason all these stories share the same pattern is because they describe a psychological process of growth and maturing which is embedded in our DNA, just as learning to walk or talk is in our DNA.
Ancient cultures understood the importance of these psychological growth processes and used story, ceremony and initiation rituals to help guide people through the various challenges and trials that life throws at them.
Nowadays we lack such guidance and tribal support and many people are left struggling to figure it out on their own. If only they knew that countless generations of people have faced their own versions of these challenges and left a map for us to follow – the distilled wisdom of the elders encoded into stories and myths.
The Hero/Heroine’s Journey is week long workshop where we de-code that ancient wisdom in a way that helps us overcome and triumph over our own trials and suffering through unlocking our own hidden inner (and outer) resources. As well as drawing on Joseph Cambell’s work, we also draw on Maureen Murdock’s The Heroine’s Journey.
What is the Hero/Heroine’s Journey?
The Journey goes through several stages before cycling back to the place where we started, in our own lives and communities, but transformed and bringing fresh gifts (resources). Those stages are different for the Masculine (Hero) and Feminine (Heroine):
- Hero: Starting Where We Are, in our ordinary everyday lives and The Call to Adventure. This may be an inner sense that something greater/deeper is calling us. Or it may be a response to a crisis which means that our old lives cannot continue in the same way. Heroine: Where Are We Now and Identification with the Masculine – achieving or attempting to achieve in a Masculine way in a Masculine world.
- Heroine: Awakening: Realizing the limitations of so-called success. The betrayal of self. Feelings of lostness, spiritual aridity or death. Meeting with the/an old wise woman(s). Hero: Fear and Bravado. When we first think about stepping into the unknown, many fears arise. What if we are not up to the challenge? Perhaps we can keep on keeping on the way things were a little bit longer? Meeting the Mentor(s) – one who has walked this path before and can help guide us on our journey. Both: Crossing the Threshold: The point of commitment when we are ready to let go of what we have known.
- Both Hero and Heroine: Tests, Allies, Struggles. Our commitment is immediately tested and we grow through a series of challenges, getting stronger and meeting new allies on the way.
- Hero: Approaching the Inmost Cave. This may represent our core issues/wounding. As we approach, old fears start to arise and we may need further time and resources for preparation. Heroine: Initiation and descent to the Goddess: crisis and realisation that the Masculine strategies have failed. Attempts to reconnect with the Feminine.
- Heroine: Reclamation: Healing the Mother/Daughter split. Reclaiming some of her initial values, skills or attributes (or those of others like her) but viewed from a new perspective. Healing the inner Wounded Masculine: Integration of masculine and feminine, to face the world or future with a new understanding of self and the world. Hero: The Ordeal. Bringing all our freshly won resources, allies and courage, we step into face the unknown that lies in the Inmost Cave. As we let go of our old avoidance strategies, core wounds emerge for healing and integration.
- Heroine: Seeing through the false binary “either/or” approaches and learning to interact with a world that includes us but is larger than our personal lifetime or geographical/cultural milieu. Hero: by being present through The Ordeal we are blessed with new gifts, clarity, insights, energy, ability to stay present and other resources. Both: Bringing our new treasures with us, we return to our relationships/communities to integrate and enrich them with what we have found.