Heroes of Healing
A group writing project

by Paula Kawal of Journey Inward Productions

Joseph Campbell – Finding Bliss

What each must seek in his life never was on land or sea. It is something out of his own unique potentiality for experience, something that never has been and never could have been experienced by anyone else. ~ JC

Joseph Campbell

Joseph Campbell was born in White Plains, New York to a Roman Catholic family.  His road to mythology began with an interest in Native American stories as a child, through which he found greater insight into his own faith and a doorway to many others.

Myth became his passion and as he studied it, he began to map out the cohesive story threads that are constant in world mythology and in essence through myth gained insight into the sense of spirit people wordwide share – that drives our human experience.

Joseph Campbell has taught me that ~

Following Your Spirit Allows You to Truly Experience Life

My first exposure to the work of Joseph Campbell came through George Lucas and the original Star Wars films when I was about 8 years old.  George Lucas based his script on Joe’s book The Hero’s with a Thousand Faces and Campbell was even a mentor regarding the shape and impact of the story.  This is one of the earliest films that I can remember touching something so deep within me that I could only describe it as my core.  Though I didn’t understand it at the time I would get another opportunity at the age of twelve.

When I was twelve, I ran into The Dragonlance Chronicles and once again my spirit started to stir in a way that was familiar.  Tracy Hickman (one of the co-writers and the lead designer of this fantasy world) also based these books on the Hero’s Journey model.  Two years later, I would begin my first hero’s quest – it would not however, be the last

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man. ~ JC (The Hero with a Thousand Faces)

The Hero’s Journey (Moving Beyond Your Small Self)

Journeying into the Unknown

1. Call to Adventure
   The hero always receives a call to move into the adventure which he/she must answer.  This call represents the unconscious and suppressed impulses of the spirit – and an opportunity for an awakening.  Sometimes these impulses are represented mythically as a dark forest, babbling spring, a great tree, a magical quest, chasing after a magical animal, following unusual sounds, etc.  In my own life it has come through acting on dreams and following intuitive impulses that my spirit has given to me and sometimes I just got swept into the journey by life circumstances seemingly without my consent!
2. Refusal of the Call
   Sometimes the hero chooses to refuse the call.  When he does he usually really suffers and the call passes into its negative form unless he changes his mind.  Walls from which he can’t escape close in around him and he becomes a victim needing to be saved, having failed to activate his own internal power.
3. Helper
   After the hero starts by answering the call (consciously or unconsciously) he will at some point meet someone who gives him some vital item or knowledge that will help him on his quest.  This could be a wizard or sorceress, a little man of the wood, a unicorn, a fairy God-mother or other such supernatural presence.  It could be a magical item, a phrase, or some information about the challenge that lies ahead.  In my own experience many teachers have appeared at this stage – often in dreams and meditations and sometimes as chance meetings and encounters with people that are just too precise and unlikely to be ignored.
4. Threshold Crossing
   In crossing the threshold the hero leaves what is known to him and enters the realm of the unknown.  This is the point where everything changes and the hero encounters dangers that are also bestowers of power.  For me this has often been times in which we have physically moved to new and unfamiliar realms or in which I have faced deep fears. However, your first sexual experience, marriage, children and other rites of passage also qualify.
5. The Belly of the Whale
   This is the final separation of the hero’s known world and self fully into the unknown and is often represented as his or her lowest point.  The experience is often something dark and frightening.  The willingness of the hero to enter is symbolic of their willingness to die to their old self, and their openness toward embracing something new.  In my own life the belly of the whale has had many shapes and forms; depression, alcoholism, confronting abusing situations, being made to face fears, surrendering control, etc.
   The Initiations
6. Tests and Trials
   The hero must overcome a series of tests or trials, through which aid is received from his or her supernatural helpers.  This is an act in which the hero begins to understand and embrace his or her own true nature.  The battle is really with the ego and the defeat of the limited self which often leads to the discovery of hidden abilities or power.
7. Meeting with the Goddess
   The Goddess in the hero’s journey represents an encounter with the Divine Feminine - she is all that lives and all that dies.  From womb to tomb the whole round of existence lives within her.  This is often depicted by the sacred or mystical marriage – representing the hero’s mastery over life through uniting with the Divine Feminine aspect of his or her own nature.  This is when the cycle of rebirth and this ultimate truth comes into full consciousness. Through this cycle of living in a world of inadequacies – there is bliss to be achieved again and again.  I’ve had many impactful encounters with the Goddess, the birth of my children and the death of my grandmothers and a time when she came to me as the Crone to name a few.
8. The Temptress
   The woman as temptress in the hero’s journey represents the distractions of the hero’s own earthly self and the unconscious revulsion he holds toward the acts of life in contrast with what he perceives as his pure Soul.  his encounter with the temptress is an opportunity for him to transcend his own divided nature.  I consistently encounted a male version of the temptress many times in my dreams  until I healed my relationship with my own sexuality.
9. Atonement with the Father
   Atonement with the father really means (at-one-ment).  This is where the hero is required to die to his or her own infantile and immature self as they face the force that holds the most power over their lives, proving themselves worthy to then govern themselves and through these trials, receive the blessings of the world.  Honestly, I am currently moving through this one and it is a BIG transition!
10. Apotheosis
    In Apotheosis the hero recognizes fully the God within – having fully left his or her the attachments to the mother, been delivered up and initiated by the father, died to ego and reborn to spirit they have moved beyond all strife.  This also represents the womb-like period of rest and incubation that precedes the hero’s return.
11. The Ultimate Boon
    This is when the hero achieves the goal of the quest, having been purified by his or her trials, the hero now has the maturity to receive the gift as a proper custodian.
    The Return
12. The Refusal of the Return
    The refusal of the return comes when the hero decides to stay in the presence of the Gods rather than bring back what he has learned for the renewal of his community.
13. The Magic Flight
    The magical flight occurs when the hero has obtained the boon without the blessings of its guardians, a pursuit follows and the hero’s need to escape these supernatural forces initiates the return.
14. Rescue from Without
    Just as the hero needs assistance to get in, he often needs help to get out – or that is to say the world has to come and get him for who having cast off the world is in a hurry to return?  The rescue differs from the refusal in the sense that when the world comes knocking, he agrees to return - having merely been transfixed or delayed by his new found perfect state of being.
15. Return Threshold Crossing
    The return threshold is returning from the world of the divine into the human world, only to find that though they once seemed as opposite as night and day, or life and death only that these vastly different kingdoms are one.  The hero ventures out into darkness where he is beyond our physical sight, has his adventure and then returns from the dimension of the Gods to the world we know.  The hero’s challenge is then to retain and translate his experiences from the deep into something the world can use – for it is difficult to to communicate to people who insist on the exclusive evidence of their senses the message of the all-generating void!
16. Master of the Two Worlds
    The hero gains an equal level of comfort with both inner and outer worlds (represented in myth by figures like Jesus and Buddah) having given up completely all attachment to his personal limitations, idiosyncrasies, hopes and fears and no longer resisting the self-annihilation that is a prerequisite to rebirth in the realization of truth, he exists in a way that is relaxed into whatever may come to pass in him, both worlds living in him with his unreserved consent.
17. Freedom to Live
    As the hero is released from the fear of death through the understanding and experience of his own immortal nature – he is finally free to live without anticipating the future or remorsing the past – he can live fully in the joy of each moment.

What I (Paula Kawal) Learned from Joseph Campbell

I use the hero’s journey as a model for transcendence extracted from myth. I see it as a how-to guide for navigating this experience – passed on to us – through the stories of an earlier time – whispering to our Souls through subconscious imagery and understandings. Joseph Campbell helped me to navigate these experiences with his vast body of work and amazing teachings.

I don’t have to have faith, I have experience. ~ JC

Joseph’s work also gave me the permission I needed to remain on the outside of religion, relying instead on my own personal experiences of spirit as my highest and best authority.

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are. – JC

I gained the confidence to walk my own path, embracing all faiths I encounter along the way, noticing the beauty and truth of their teachings and using from them, whatever I am called toward, as my own.

Joseph Campbell was a man who understood being passionately alive, coining the phrase “Follow Your Bliss” and speaking tirelessly toward the unseen doors that lie there for us where before there were only walls. His willingness to say yes to the adventure and truly experience life is what makes him a Hero of Healing.