The Mythology of You

There’s a part of you that really wants to be somebody special. Admit it. We all do – at least all of us did for a good part of our life. It’s the Hero Journey that figures so prominently in world mythology, which Joseph Campbell interpreted brilliantly in his seminal work The Hero With a Thousand Faces.

Realizing that the Hero is not just some heroic figure of myth or history but a personified metaphor of what in each of us is on the adventure of becoming somebody special, and then eventually getting over ourselves, helps “crack the code” of mythic meaning and human fulfillment.

But here’s the thing: We have to see ourselves in the Hero and understand that the Hero is really us, or more precisely, what in each of us is on the Journey to a fully awakened and liberated life.

It seems fitting, then, to title this post The Mythology of You.

To help orient us in the Hero Journey, I offer the illustration above. At its base is your essential nature as a human being; not who you are quite yet, but what you are: a human manifestation of being. You are a member of a highly evolved animal species informally named human – etymologically “upon, or from, the ground” (i.e., not indigenous to the sky or sea but to dry land).

Some early myths trace human origins to this ground (humus), which in the Beginning a god clutched and fashioned into our first ancestor, Adam (“from the earth”).

Relative to the separate center of self-conscious personal identity (ego) – which, since we are tracing the course of your journey through time beginning at birth, is not yet in our picture – your essential nature as a human being is the ground (or grounding mystery) that supports your Hero adventure from underneath.

This communion of body-and-soul is the essential mystery that ego breaks from, immediately forgets but remembers nostalgically while off on its adventure, and longs to return home to at Journey’s end.

We need to take another moment here and clarify that, as a human manifestation of being, your body is the extroverted counterpart of an introverted soul; the one outwardly engaged in the web of life, and the other inwardly reposed in being. Being here is not another word for an entity, object, or thing, but refers instead to the generative power-to-be (be-ing) that is presently manifesting as human, tree, bird, star (and so on), across the vast universe.

The circuit of your Hero Journey takes its departure from the body, undergoes its adventure of becoming somebody special (the ordeal of trials and temptations that Campbell expertly lays out), and eventually returns home, but now with the boons of an awakened and liberated life.

While myth provides the pattern of a full-circle successful Hero Journey, however, your (and my) destiny is not so certain.

In this post we will identify a few of the common complications that keep the Hero from completing the entire Journey.

The circuit of the Hero Journey (back to my diagram) is traced by a circular arrow divided into three segments, with each segment color-coded according to the primary energy driving it. A black arc drives outward from the body and into the early formation of a self-conscious personal identity (ego). At this stage, the principal work of socialization was in training you to develop self-conscious restraint over some very natural urges, impulses, and reflex responses to your environment.

Clamping an urge long enough to get to the toilet, waiting your turn by standing in line, curbing the impulse to retaliate against another’s offense, and (at a higher, more sophisticated level) adjusting your behavior into compliance with the social expectations around an assigned role – all are examples of the same principle of self-restraint. The objective is to pull back and redirect, or in some cases push down (suppress), the natural inclinations of the body in the interest of constructing a well-adjusted personal identity.

The primary motivation for submitting to all this social discipline is to fit in: to be accepted, to be loved (however conditional that love might be on your obedient behavior), and to belong.

Your apex concern on this Hero Journey is ultimately to stand out and be recognized as somebody special. You should be able to feel a tension between these two motivational needs of fitting in (belonging) and standing out (recognition): it is one of the profound complications that every Hero must negotiate.

Fit in too much and you dissolve into anonymity; stand out too far and you risk alienation. Becoming somebody special must somehow balance these two competing, yet creatively complementary, drives.

For some, the early home environment was not a safe or loving place, making them chronically anxious and insecure. Nevertheless, still being vulnerable and dependent as infants and young children, their persistent need for safety and love compelled a neurotic attachment to their taller powers, which in turn complicated (or completely undermined) the formation of a centered personal identity.

A desperate drive to fit in overpowered the complementary but opposite drive to stand out, trapping them in chronic anxiety, fear, and self-doubt.

Standing out is about getting recognized for who you are, what you can do, and for your value to the tribe or team, company or organization to which you belong. Developing and using your talents for the good of the group goes a long way in ensuring your place in the social order.

The developmental achievement of what’s known as “ego strength” carries your inner sense of security into a self-confident expression of personal power, creative authority, responsible risk-taking, and productive fulfillment.

On the other hand, chronic social anxiety and a nagging self-doubt might drive the Hero to so over-identify with a role that their entire supply of self-esteem is expected from there, generating further frustration and anxiety over not being good enough or better than someone else. The challenge now is to prove their worth by being perfect or the best at what they do. Until then, nothing counts. Instead of positive recognition, they feel in constant danger of exposure, of getting called out for not being good enough.

Farther on your Journey, and having played many roles along the way, you reach a point – a threshold in human transformation – where the drive to be somebody special loses urgency and you understand how much of your life so far has been about playing roles, managing a personal identity, and living up to the demands and expectations of others.

These ‘others’ may be living or dead, nearby or far away, real or imaginary, up in heaven or in the grave – it doesn’t really matter. The voices inside you (the inner parent, inner coach, inner critic, inner demon, or inner god) always had something to say, but now they’re not as loud or don’t seem to matter as much as before.

Crossing this threshold of transformation is a fairly rare event, actually, due to a combined effect of your tribe’s success in convincing you that you are the role, the suit, the mask – the somebody special on the performance stage you’ve worried over and worked so hard to become; that along with your own insecure attachment to their acceptance, validation, and approval.

But you have made it here and are now ready to take that decisive step across the threshold.

This is the invitation for the Hero to let go, just as we might imagine a butterfly responding to the call of Nature to leave its cocoon and take wing. For our Hero, the critical move is to drop all attachments to personal identity (contracts, roles, suits and masks) and allow consciousness to return home to the grounding mystery of body-and-soul.

The difference now, however – and the true inner aim of the Hero Journey itself – is that you are a fully awakened and liberated butterfly, no longer the sleepy caterpillar that curled up inside its cocoon of personal identity way back when.

You became somebody special so that you can now get over yourself. Welcome home!