Read this before your Journey

The film maker Dave Hills filmed me telling a story for a small group of people who are about to have a psychedelic experience and the idea of the story is to help them navigate their own upcoming adventure. You can simply watch the video at the end of the article but I wanted to also, perhaps more completely, organise my thoughts on paper for you to read.

This story is based on Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, which is a kind of blueprint that underlies hero’s adventure stories across time and across all cultures. I was very inspired by the Hero’s Journey and see a few powerful parallels with psychedelic experiences and healing adventures in general. This is the story of those insights. Note that my story will not at all do justice to the nuance and complexity of the Hero’s Journey. I simply take a few ideas from it that I find useful, use it loosely to inspire me and allow myself plenty of creative freedom to arrive at a coherent story of my own.

So the following are a few helpful ideas that I have learned from the Hero’s Journey that I feel might help you on your adventure:

My wife taught me this little prayer that Polish children used to say when a Ladybug lands on them. You say; “Ladybug, fly to the heavens and bring me back a piece of bread”.

I see in this simple little prayer the essence of the hero’s journey; asking the Ladybug to be your little hero to go out beyond our world, into the heavens where we cannot go, and bring back something valuable we need.

The Heroes Journey is a cycle; it starts at home. In classic fairy tales this 'home' is often a kingdom, it could be a family, a land or a galactic empire or many many different things depending on the story. I tend to think of it as some kind of community in the abstract sense and in many of my healing journeys it has been my own body. So the community or the home could be your body or something else that is unique to you. For this story, let me use the words home and community for this starting point.

Healthy communities tend to be able to deal with problems, when they get knocked out of balance the community finds a way to re-balance itself. This ensures its longevity. The problem, or the adventure, starts when the community lacks the internal resources to re-balance itself and starts to spiral towards its dissolution, towards its death. It will have to respond to this crisis by reaching out beyond its boundaries, send out an agent (the hero) to go out there and try to find the missing resource that can re-balance or heal the community.

Lets call this missing resource the symbolic 'grail'.

..in short; hero’s journeys often start with things being fine and then something goes horribly wrong; likely something that somehow only the hero can fix but they will have to leave their home community to do so.

Like The Fool from the Tarot, the hero may not seem very heroic at first. A short, homely young man with very hairy feet does not seem the strongest choice to carry the most dangerously powerful artifact across the known world inhabited by horse riding warrior tribes, axe wielding dwarves, dark orcs, immortal elves, ancient ents, divine wizards and evil magicians. The stupid step-sister that lives in the basement, dirty with the ashes from the cinders may not seem likely to be the one that will fit the glass slipper that the prince found at the royal ball. Or someone who trades away the family's only cow for a single bean may not seem the wisest choice to entrust the family fortune to.

It is not for the wisdom, skill or success they have that a hero is chosen, it is for who they áre deep inside. They are chosen because something unique in their deeper nature is exactly that which the adventure needs. This is what allows them to become the hero that can receive the grail.

So the adventure sends the hero away from home, out of the community. The first step is out of the known and into the wilderness. The wilderness is simply that which is truly beyond the home community; the unknown, the unfamiliar. This is crucial. The solution will not be coming from within. If it would, the home system would already have rebalanced and solved the problem. Joseph Campbell points towards a passage in one of the Arthurian legends where the knights of the round table decide to go out on the quest to find the grail. The legend then points out that they did not go together but they each entered the forest on their own, where it was darkest and there were no trails. Because the grail is never found within the reach of the community, it will not sit along a path or a trail where a hunter or someone gathering firewood would have found it long ago. You will need to go on a real adventure. And it needs to be your adventure. If you could follow someone else’s footsteps, they would have been the one to be sent to get the grail. But they were not; you are.

Surprise is a great sign to follow here and it may even be necessary. Surprise means that something new is happening, something beyond your habits and what you expect. At a Holotropic breathwork training the advice I got was; follow the breathing technique until you are surprised. If you are surprised you know you are on the right path, keep going. Now something new, now transformation can happen.

Now the hero finds themselves outside the community and in the wilderness, probably feeling quite lost. They may not realise it but they are faced with an impossible task. They are a product of their community; they were raised there, they are adapted to that place, they know its rules and ethics, how to stay safe and be successful there. And yet the hero needs to be the one who can do what the community is unable to achieve?! Well, they can't; ..not yét. They will need to change, to be transformed. That is the adventure. The adventure is the response to the cry for help. The adventure is the way that the hero can change into the one that is able to receive the grail. The wilderness is the place where that change can happen.

The wilderness is a sacred but also a chaotic, dangerous place full of surprises. Especially in the old fairy tales you will find that the heroes experience all kinds of bizarre and confusing things during their adventure out in the wilderness that often really don’t seem to make much sense for the story. In the 2021 Green Knight movie, when Gawain leaves the court of Camelot a young man offers helpful directions to the Green Chapel. But then, just a little down the road, the same young man ambushes him together with some thugs, robs him and leaves him for dead... Should Gawain not have trusted the young man? Did he fail a test? Why did he lose his weapon, his armour and his horse?

One of the people I worked with was struggling with depression and intended to confront the demons that were haunting them. Instead, they spent hours laughing and giggling.. no demon in sight. Did we fail? What about those demons?

The adventure will confront the hero with a series of challenges that will help them release all that prevents them from receiving the grail. It will put all kinds of enemies on your path; because you need them. The adventure will also provide all the support and help that will give them what they lack. It will put supportive friends on your path, let them help you. A hermit may give a magic weapon, an old crone a protective amulet, a little toad may give invaluable directions. I find that female heroes often get help directly from nature, birds give advice, ants and mice help with sorting out impossible tasks.

It is not the job of the hero to make sense of this process. They will never be able to. They will need to let go of expectation, of control, of safety. They need to be surprised, allow the adventure with all its challenges and all its support to do its work.

In some fairy tales the knight symbolically lets go of the reins of their horse. They acknowledge that wherever they think they should go is based on unhelpful ideas from the past. Instead they let their horse guide them. Here the horse, a very sensitive and intuitive creature, symbolises the heroes' connection to their deeper nature, to the adventure. The knight’s duty is to be guided and live their adventure. And who knows what that will look like?! If you are given some friendly advice by a young man, who knows if you need to trust him or not. You may be beaten up and robbed. You may need to run away. You may need to outsmart him. But you will not be able to know beforehand. And you do not have to. This is not your job as the hero. It is your job to be true to your deeper nature, follow the adventure and allow it to change you. This may be rough. In the movie, it is not clear if Gawain even survives the attack or not. The wilderness is not always a gentle place. And it is not always easy to avoid falling into old habits, to stay true to that deeper self and your adventure. But if you can, it will transform you into who you need to be to receive the grail.

Now every threshold has its guardian. Let me call the final challenge of the wilderness the symbolic 'dragon'. As before, these symbolic dragons come in all shapes and sizes depending on the story and who knows what you need to do to pass this step. In most classic fairy tales the young prince slays the dragon and gets the gold or the princess. One of my teachers pointed out that if you are faced with a dragon you may want to consider not killing it. If you can, it may pay to befriend it. If you are like Simba of the Lion King or like Jason the Argonaut and you have to face an evil uncle at home who has stolen the throne that is rightfully yours... That confrontation may go a little better for you if you show up with a dragon at your side. Who knows? Female heroes seem to be better at this approach, like Belle when she is confronted with her Beast and does not respond by chopping off his head.

It may not be possible to even recognise the dragon until you look back. I think of Lord of the Rings and Frodo’s dragon. As you follow poor Frodo along his adventure carrying that horrible ring, this evil thing that weighs him down, just gets heavier and with every page its seductive power just grows and grows as they get closer to Mount Doom. I could barely imagine how he could even reach that mountain let alone muster the unbelievable willpower that must be required to overcome the might of Sauron's One Ring?! A clear and truly formidable final challenge!

But then, as they get there at the edge of that burning pit... Gollum does that impossible task for him by taking the ring and falling into the fire. Frodo did not have to overcome the ring at all. Looking back, his dragon may not have been to destroy the ring. It may have been that he needed to find compassion for Gollum, this being that is so hard to have any compassion for, and allow this miserable creature to accompany him to the end. But we can only see this looking back. All Frodo needed to do was to be himself.

If all goes well the hero will achieve the grail. Here I chose to call it a grail but it is typically something rejuvenating, life giving. When Tristan kills the dragon, it is its tongue that can heal any wound or illness, that thing right at the heart of the deadly mouth of the dragon. For Vasilisa the brave it was fire or a torch of a burning skull. In many classic fairy tales the grail is a prince or a princess (a partner to start a family with, that will keep on living for you beyond your end), often it is gold, it can be a throne or kingship (as kings and queens were symbolically connected to the vitality of the land). In the very oldest, stone age stories, it is life giving water or rain, often guarded by a snake-dragon.

But when you reach the grail, I recommend not celebrating too soon. Remember; the Hero’s Journey is circular. So once the hero has left their community, passed through the wilderness, was transformed, overcome the dragon and received the grail.. they are only half way through the journey. The point of the hero is to find the grail to heal the home community, so they still need to return home and somehow heal it with this grail. Do not underestimate the return. More mountaineers have accidents on their way down from a summit than on the way up. I think of great artists; sensitive people who dive deep into their subconscious mind, somehow find the universal there and with great effort bring it up to the surface where they manage to express it into their artworks... only to be misunderstood, dismissed and end penniless. And then, perhaps a hundred years later, their work is sold for millions, praised as transformative and inspiring changes that have lifted their culture up to greater heights.

The hero has undergone powerful transformations, they have seen and experienced things that they may not be able to explain. They are no longer so adapted to their community and those changes often provide all kinds of challenges as they return. You may have an amazing, blissful, mind expanding, life changing adventure but how do you use it to heal your life when you return home ..to bills on the doormat, laundry and piles of dirty dishes, a smelly litterbox, perhaps a demanding partner and people who do not listen to you very well?

Integration will be a challenge in itself.

The hero’s journey is not over till the home community is healed.

Let me step back here and summarise a few take-away ideas that may help guide you when you go on your adventure.

• On your adventure; do not rely on the things you bring from the past, your knowledge, skills, successes. They will only hold you back.

• On your adventure, rely on your own deeper nature. As the only one who can be you.

• Psychedelic states are very powerful wildernesses. Do not be tempted to make sense of what is happening. It will not help you and it is not your role as the hero of this adventure.

• Show up, respond from your deeper nature, follow your adventure and allow it to change you into who you need to become.

• Are you confused, out of your depth, lost? Good; you are exactly in the right place! You are in the wilderness, keep going, be surprised.

• Do you feel comfortably in control, recognise the characters and meaning of the events.. Maybe you need to get lost a little more to find your adventure.

• There will be help in the wilderness. Trust the help. You cannot do this yourself, that is the point.

• You will also experience difficult challenges, trust the changes they bring you. This is your adventure.

• And Finally; when you reach the grail, know that you are only half way. Do not underestimate the return journey. The hero’s journey is not over till the community is healed.

..Good luck my dear adventurer and may this story be my small gift to help you along your adventure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vCstTw3bY4

A common (and obvious) question I get when I tell this story is; “what about the female hero?”. 

I try to tell my story in a way that any person is able to recognise themselves in it and perhaps to help approach any kind of healing adventure. But then again.. I am a white European man in my mid forties.

There has been some wonderful work done to outline the specifically feminine perspective and the Heroine Journey that I recommend exploring if you want to learn about this approach. I do not know of any Hero’s Journey framework specifically for people outside the male and female genders. But I am sure that will be very rich territory.

Another aspect of this question is that we are talking about symbolism. And symbolism, by its very nature, is infinite. Symbolically you can see the world in a grain of sand and that means you can see it in anything, in the Hero, the Grail, the Dragon. And we can fit any story, good and bad into the symbology of Heroes Journey if you take it far enough. So I really trust that, regardless of who you are, symbolically your story will be somewhere in there too.