The archetypal Hero's Journey ... always begins with a process of separation or alienation from the tribe, followed by a series of difficult challenges that the hero must meet alone. The journey culminates in a descent in to the abyss of self-doubt and a loss of faith in the Divine, but then results in a vital transformation and renewal of trust, which in turn leads to a revelation of some new knowledge, insight, or wisdom. The hero then returns to the tribe and imparts this insight -- or tries to, since heroes, like prophets, are not always welcome in their hometown. Their presence unsettles us and makes us aware that other truths and lives exist beyond our physical routines. Yet we fear the disruption that pursuing our divine potential would create, even through our everyday comfort will be disrupted if it is standing in the way of our Contract.
- Caroline Myss, Sacred Contracts, pp 65-66.
When I left Seattle in 2012, I left behind a close-knit team of colleagues--among the best I've ever had--in order to write, adventure, and rest after a whirlwind of intensity. I had a dramatic break with my spiritual community over my desire to remain within it, while traveling and living abroad. I learned the hard lesson that one can stay, or one can go, but one cannot do both.
When you become conscious of your Contract, as opposed to living it in an unconscious way, you go through a painful process of severance, similar to the Hero's Journey, because you are no longer part of the tribal mind. ... You have broken away from the general mind-set, and the group is likely to perceive your individuation--like anything new or different from the status quo--as a fundamental threat to its own unity.
- Caroline Myss, Sacred Contracts, p 66.
Then followed a few years of wandering. Highlights include confronting ghosts and aswang in the Philippines, overcoming a fear of accidentally decimating the earth if I come into my own power, clearing some entrenched despair from Korea, recording more of my book, Collective Guidance, in the amplified energies of the Andes near a sacred site down in Vilcabamba, Ecuador, meeting wonderful leaders and luminaries who are working to change the world, establishing a global psychic network of healers, studying the subtleties of chi with a lovely tai chi group in Santa Monica, CA, battling inter-dimensional entities and swarms of earth-energy-devouring beings while headquartered in Los Angeles, sorting through a fog of alien weirdness in Las Vegas, enjoying the healing energy vortices in Sedona, AZ, returning to Seattle agreeing to command a global cadre guardians of the earth protecting us from off-world entities, and most recently, joining the ongoing defense of our universe from other universes.
It sounds insane, I know. Clearly, for those who knew me before, I have died to what I used to be.
It sounds insane, I know. Clearly, for those who knew me before, I have died to what I used to be.
"For whosoever will save his life shall lose it." - Jesus
I have either gone off the deep end and am certifiably insane (one of these days I'm going to devote an entire post to the documented stages of awakening consciousness) -- or I have accessed an extreme end of the range of what it means to be human and have become quite strange. I vote for the latter.
The odd part is, I still feel very human, and hold a very mundane day job. I see how what I am experiencing is accessible to all of us, on the other side of an awakening in consciousness, perhaps after a few more life cycles of reincarnation. I still fall in love and get my heart broken sometimes. I still struggle with the daily ordeal of figuring out what to eat (or not eat!) and what to wear. I chit-chat with my neighbors and my co-workers. I push papers around a bureaucracy and send email around. On the surface, I lead a very normal life. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
The odd part is, I still feel very human, and hold a very mundane day job. I see how what I am experiencing is accessible to all of us, on the other side of an awakening in consciousness, perhaps after a few more life cycles of reincarnation. I still fall in love and get my heart broken sometimes. I still struggle with the daily ordeal of figuring out what to eat (or not eat!) and what to wear. I chit-chat with my neighbors and my co-workers. I push papers around a bureaucracy and send email around. On the surface, I lead a very normal life. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
Ironically, as in the case of these great teachers, severance from one's personal tribe can lead to something beneficial to the survival of the universal human tribe. The great mystics--Abraham, Moses, the Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad--all shared a common fate of abandonment and separation from their tribe early in their mission, and this alienation or exclusion was essential to the completion of their Contract.
- Caroline Myss, Sacred Contracts, p 66.
I hope that I have returned home with something of benefit to the human tribe. I am still figuring out how best to share it or present it. For now I am enjoying blogging about my adventures. I think there are more books emerging too. Perhaps a collection of stories from my adventures after my enlightenment (which is an ongoing process, by the way, with no end in sight, and I suspect I am near the beginning of it). Or perhaps a collection of healing stories from those I've helped in recent years (with permission, of course). I think there is some inherent benefit in describing or cataloging the elements of consciousness at this level, which is something beyond being a seeker, and yet somewhat less than complete dissolution of self into the Infinite Self.
The battles have been epic. I've barely survived many of them. I can barely begin to describe what I've seen or done, as some of it happened too fast for conscious thought, in split seconds where I could not see or register everything. Like soldiers who've served in recent wars, I have fought on behalf of people who don't know anything about what I have faced or gone up against. And I have waded through morally ambiguous territory, trying to best figure out how to protect my tribe, humanity.
The battles have been epic. I've barely survived many of them. I can barely begin to describe what I've seen or done, as some of it happened too fast for conscious thought, in split seconds where I could not see or register everything. Like soldiers who've served in recent wars, I have fought on behalf of people who don't know anything about what I have faced or gone up against. And I have waded through morally ambiguous territory, trying to best figure out how to protect my tribe, humanity.