The Hero's Journey:
the Pattern of Human Experience

"To find your own way is to follow your own bliss. This involves analysis, watching yourself and seeing where the real deep bliss is -- not the quick little excitement, but the real, deep, life-filling bliss."

Joseph Campbell

Most of us were introduced to the Heroic Journey through mythology. Mythological heroes take great journeys: to slay Medusa, to kill the minotaur, to find the golden fleece. But The Hero's Journey isn't just a pattern from myth. It's the pattern of life, growth and experience -- for all of us. We see it reflected everywhere, from a television comedy to the great works of literature to the experiences in our own lives.

A Mirror of the Rites of Passage

The Hero's Journey duplicates the stages of the Rites of Passage. First the initiate faces separation from his own, familiar world. Once separated, he undergoes initiation and transformation, where the old ways of thinking and acting are altered or destroyed, opening the way to a new level of awareness, skill and freedom. After successfully meeting the challenges of the initiation, the initiate takes the journey's final step, the return to his world. When he does, he will find that he is more confident, perceptive and capable, and he will discover that his community now treats him as an adult, with all of the respect, rights and privileges which
that status implies.

A Map to Experience

Why study The Hero's Journey? Why learn a pattern that dates from before recorded history? The answer is simple: we should study it because it's the pattern of human experience, of our experience, and we will live it for the rest of our lives.
In a sense, every challenge or change we face in life is a Journey: every love found, every love lost, every birth or death, every move to a new job, school or city: every situation which confronts us with something new or which forces us to re-evaluate our thinking, behaviour or perspective.
The journey is a process of self-discovery and self-integration, of maintaining balance and harmony in our lives. As with any process of growth and change, a journey can be confusing and painful, but it brings opportunities to develop confidence, perspective and understanding.
Understanding the Journey pattern can help us understand the literature us read, the movies us see, and the experiences which shape your life. By recognizing the Journey's stages and how they function, we will develop a sense of the flow of our own experience and be better able to make decisions and solve problems. More importantly, we will begin to recognize our own points of passage and respect the significance they have for us.

Eight-step transformation

We usually divide the Journey into eight steps, but you must remember that the journey is a single process and an individual adventure towards growth and transformation. As such, the sequence of elements and the duration of the experiences will vary from one person to another. Remember that the journey is a process of separation, transformation, and return. Each stage must be completed successfully if we are to become Heroic. To turn back is to reject our innate need to grow, and unless we set out again, we severely suffer.

The Call

The Call invites us into the adventure, offers us the opportunity to face the unknown and gain something of physical or spiritual value. We may choose willingly to undertake the quest, or we may be dragged into it unwillingly. The Call may come boldly as a "transformative crisis," a sudden, often traumatic change in our lives. Or it can sneak up on us gradually, with our first perception of it being a vague sense of discontent, imbalance or incongruity in our lives. Within this range the Call can take many forms:
-we have had something taken from us, our family, our society; our quest is to reclaim it,
-we sense that there is something lacking in our life and we must find what is missing,
-we want to save or restore honour of our own, our family's, or our country's.
-we realize that something is not permitted to members of our society, and we must win these rights for our people.
On a psychological level, the call might be an awareness of a shift in our spiritual or emotional "centre of gravity." We discover that we have outgrown the roles we are playing or the environment in which we live.

The Threshold

Once called to the adventure, we must pass over the Threshold. The Threshold is the "jumping off point" for the adventure. It is the interface between the known and the unknown. In the known world, we feel secure because we know the landscape and the rules. Once past the threshold, however, we enter the unknown, a world filled with challenges and dangers. Often at the threshold, we encounter people, beings, or situations which block our passage. These "threshold guardians" have two functions. They protect us by keeping us from taking journeys for which we are unready or unprepared. However, once we are ready to meet the challenge, they step aside and point the way. More importantly, to pass the guardian is to make a commitment, to say: "I'm ready. I can do this."

Early in our lives, our parents function as our threshold guardians. They try to keep us from doing things which would cause us harm. As we get older, our parents' job becomes more difficult. They must both protect and push, measuring our capabilities against the challenges we must face. As adults, our threshold guardians are much more insidious. They are our fears, our doubts, our ineffective thought and behaviour patterns. In fact, they may be the ‘dragon in disguise’, our greatest fear, the catalyst for the journey, taunting and threatening, daring us to face him in the abyss. Also at the threshold (and very often later in the journey), we will encounter a helper (or helpers).

Helpers provide assistance or direction. Often they bring us a divine gift, such as a talisman, which will help our through the ordeal ahead.
The most important of these helpers is the mentor or guide. The mentor keeps us focused on our goal and gives us stability, a psychological foundation for when the danger is greatest. Helpers and guides may appear throughout the journey. Fortunately, they tend to appear at the most opportune moments. The Swiss psychologist called these "meaningful coincidences" synchronicity. We need to understand, too, that the journey is ours. Our mentor and helpers can assist and point the way, but they cannot take the journey for us. The challenge is ours, must be ours if we are to benefit from it and grow.

The Initiation /The Challenges

Once past the Threshold, we begin the journey into the unknown. The voyage can be outward into a physical unknown or inward to a psychological unknown. Whichever direction the voyage takes, our adventure puts us more and more at risk, emotionally and physically. On our quest, we faces a series of challenges or temptations. The early challenges are relatively easy. By meeting them successfully, we build maturity, skill and confidence. As our journey progresses, the challenges become more and more difficult, testing us to the utmost, forcing us to change and grow.
One of our greatest tests on the journey is to differentiate real helpers from ‘tempters’. Tempters try to pull us away from our path. They use fear, doubt or distraction. They may pretend to be a friend or counselor in an effort to divert our energy to their own needs, uses or beliefs. We must rely on our sense of purpose and judgment and the advise of our mentor to help us recognize true helpers. Whatever the challenges we face, they always seem to strike our greatest weakness: our poorest skill, our shakiest knowledge, our most vulnerable emotions. Furthermore, the challenges always reflect needs and fears, for it is only by directly facing these weaknesses that we can acknowledge and incorporate them, turn them from demons to gods. If we can't do this, the adventure ends and we must turn back.

Into the Abyss

When we reach the Abyss, we face the greatest challenge of the journey. The challenge is so great at this point that we must surrender ourselves completely to the adventure and become one with it. In the Abyss we must face our greatest fear, and we must face it alone. Here is where he must ‘slay the dragon’, which often takes the shape of something we dread, or have repressed or need to resolve. There is always the possibility that, because we are unprepared or have a flaw in our character, the challenge beats us. Or perhaps we can't surrender ourselves to it and must retreat. In any case, unless we set off to try again, our life becomes a bitter shadow of what it could have been.

Transformation and Revelation

As we conquer the Abyss and overcome our fears, our transformation becomes complete. The final step in the process is a moment of death and rebirth: a part of us dies so that a new part can be born. Fear must die to make way for courage. Ignorance must die for the birth of enlightenment. Dependency and irresponsibility must die so that independence and power can grow. Part of the Transformation process is a Revelation, a sudden, dramatic change in the way we think or view life. This change in thinking is crucial because it makes us truly a different person. (The Revelation usually occurs during or after the Abyss, but sometimes it may actually lead us into the Abyss.)

The Atonement

After we have been transformed, we go on to achieve Atonement, that is we are "at-one" with our new self. We have incorporated the changes caused by the Journey and we are fully "reborn." In a spiritual sense, the Transformation has brought us into harmony with life and the world. The imbalance which sent us on the journey has been corrected -- until the next call.

The Return

After Transformation and Atonement, we face the final stage of our journey: our Return to everyday life. Upon our return, we discover our gift, which has been bestowed upon us based on our new level of skill and awareness. We may become richer or stronger, we may become a great leader, or we may become enlightened spiritually. The essence of the return is to begin contributing to our society. In mythology, some heroes return to save or renew their community in some way. Other mythological heroes return to create a city, nation or religion.
Sometimes, however, things don't go smoothly. For example, we may return with a great spiritual message, but find that our message is rejected. We are ostracized or even killed our for our ideal. We also run the risk of losing our new understanding, having it corrupted by putting ourselves back in the same situation or environment we left earlier. In some cases, the hero discover that her new level of awareness and understanding is far greater than the people around her. She may then become disillusioned or frustrated and leave society to be on her own. On the other hand, many great heroes such as Buddha and Jesus have sacrificed the bliss of enlightenment or heaven to remain in the world and teach others.

The Journey is a Map

While the story of the Journey first manifested itself in the ancient myths and legends, it is still around us today. It is the basis for almost all of the books and plays we read. We see it in television programs such as "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman", "The Adventures of Lois and Clark", and (believe it or not) in "The Simpsons." Even the movies we enjoy -- Forrest, Gump, Groundhog Day, Labyrinth, Field of Dreams, Matrix, The Lion King -- are fictional depiction's of the Hero's Journey.
The Journey gives you a means for understanding and benefiting from these fictional adventures. Even if the characters aren't real, the journeys they take and challenges they face are reflections of the real journeys and challenges we all face in life. As you watch them move through their quests, you can learn from their experiences. Perhaps most importantly, though, the Journey is the pattern that we follow in our own lives as we face challenges and move from child to teenager, from teenager to adult, from adult to old age, and from old age into death.
The adventures we face will be challenging and exciting. They can open the doors to knowledge and understanding. If we understand the Journey pattern, we will be better able to face difficulties and use our experiences to become stronger and more capable. Understanding the pattern can help us achieve wisdom, growth, and independence, and taking our Journeys helps us become the people we want to be.

Reg Harris