Last week Ellen and I re-watched the Joseph Campbell / Bill Moyer PBS special “The Power of Myth.” I first saw this almost 30 years ago and the basic message has stuck with me ever since. Joseph Campbell studied the cultural myths all over the world and found certain themes were common to every culture. The hero’s journey is one of them. It is universal because it is the fundamental story we all face in order to grow up. We all face the challenge to move from the dependency of childhood in which we cling to all that is familiar and live out the values and lifestyle taught to us by our parents to the journey to discover who we really are and what we truly find to be meaningful to us. In taking this journey, we move from being driven by external motivators and fears to developing independence of thought and action by learning to take responsibility for our own life and happiness.
A hero is an individual who is able to let go of the comfortable life of self serving self interest to discover a larger truth that exists in a life in service to some greater good. That greater good does not need to be anything that grabs the attention of others, in fact heroes generally avoid the spotlight. Being a good parent is a heroic mission. The heroism lies in the inner battle one goes through to overcome one’s fears and desires. The real heroic act is the overcoming of one’s own ego.
What does overcoming ego look like? In a simple view. Our ego is that portion of our self awareness that is in charge of seeing to it we get our survival needs met. It connects our basal reptilian brain where our basic instincts live to our logical planning mind that is able to imagine future outcomes. Imagining the future is very difficult as so many variables are unknown. Consequently this brain process carries some significant limitations. The chief limitation is the inability to deal with the biggest variable – that the people around you don’t have the same agenda as you, the same operating beliefs, the same desires or fears, and so on. So our ego simply ignores this reality and marches ahead with the false belief that it is entitled to have its way in the world. As a lone hunter-gatherer our ego based mind gave us a huge survival advantage over other animals. In the modern world crowded with fellow humans it fails us.
The hero’s journey these days is about the journey to overcome our egocentric perspective of life and realize we are all in this together. Everything we do affects everyone else. We must journey from the childish beliefs in our self importance and false expectations that others should abandon their own needs and take care of ours, to the embracing of our responsibility to be independent and yet fully connected to the rest of humanity.
The first challenge is grasping the hard reality that we are really invisible to everyone until we shine out with some expression of our inner self. A universal mistake we make as children is assuming that everyone knows what we are thinking and feeling simply because it is so obvious to us. Sorry, we re not mind readers. To be seen you have to shine. The hero’s journey is about learning how to shine in a way that also respects all life. While it is our job to put our needs first as a personal responsibility, we also understand that it is not the job of anyone else to put us first. We negotiate balanced exchanges with others to help us all get our needs met.
How do we know when we are on the right path? We have an automatic inner feedback system called joy. Joy is the feeling when our brain is able to function without inhibition, without fear. This is no small task. From the day we are born, most every brain connection we make is inhibitory in nature. We lose 10,000 to 50,000 nerve cells every day we are alive, and what is left forms more connections. Creating connections that allow the energy to flow uninhibited is very pleasurable, joyful. These connections are the ones that are built when we learn ways to shine out with who we are in ways that also respect and support those around us. Most of the time respect is more about inhibiting our natural impulses because our natural impulse comes from our survival basal brain which has no regard for others. Disregard for others produces separation or negative participation – not the formula for joy. So any time we are able to figure out how to both shine out ourselves and respect/support others, it feels really good.
The desire for joy, for that feeling of freedom from inhibition, drives many sorts of behaviors that shortcut or bypass the hard work of finding that balance between our needs and other’s needs. People love chemicals, drugs, and behaviors that block the awareness of separation and promote the illusion of self expression. Cocaine and amphetamines pump up the illusion of self expression feelings while alcohol and depressants suppress our awareness of negative feedback loops internally and externally. Various behaviors do the same thing. So the payoff feels similar to joy, but is not actually due to that positive uninhibited flow of energy through the brain created by a functional set of positive brain links.
What actually works is love. Acting from love builds positive connections in our brain as well as in our life. Love starts with the goal of connection. Good connection is inherently two sided. We have to present who we are without fear and embrace life as it is. There is no connection when someone has shut themselves down. So inhibiting ourselves to let others have their way is not a path to connection and not an act of love. I know lots of religions teach that self sacrifice is an act of love, but the average person does not understand that the self sacrifice called for is the sacrifice of our ego, not our truth, our light, or our shining.
Ego is self centered by nature and is without real love. Ego confuses passionate desire for love. Love needs mutual respect to exist. Passionate desire demands behaviors and outcomes that match the ego’s image of right. There is zero respect for others having different images of right and desires for different outcomes. Ego seeks the uninhibited state of doing whatever it wants without regard for anyone else. This would feel great if it weren’t for the negative feedback from all the people trampled on by the ego driven individual. Ego ultimately seeks the self fulfillment feeling that comes from self manifestation. We are designed to fulfill our potential, to fully manifest our truth. This is a good thing, but the challenge is to be able to do this while meeting the heart’s needs for connection and oneness. Ego frequently fails this test by confusing connected oneness as sameness, and tries to make others be like itself. This is completely disrespectful and only creates separation.
So how do we solve this dilemma? The answer is the same one – love. Love is all. Every spiritual teacher throughout time has told us this. Love, love, love. Love dis-inhibits the brain by providing the feeling blueprint for win-win mutually beneficial relationships. When you treat others and yourself with the same respect and the same support, it works. Competition does not work because it produces losers and losers feel separate. Separation equals failure for the heart. To win the game everyone has to win. This is what produces the dis-inhibited state in the brain sometimes known as the “brain on fire” or more poetically known as love. To keep it from being confused with the ego idea of love as passionate desire, I am calling it joy.
We all want joy. We are innately driven by our desire for joy. Our own hero’s journey is about our quest for joy. Joseph Campbell referred to it as following your bliss. The journey takes us from the ego centered view of life we develop as a child to the mature grownup view of the interconnectedness of all things. We develop the courage to shine out our true self and the even greater courage to embrace the differences in others. We do this through love, for the joy and the result is bliss.