I can absolutely guarantee that after a short orientation, you will be able to find yourself on the map illustrated above. Now, whether you build on that discovery and successfully find your way to the fulfilment of your human journey, also known as self-actualization, salvation, and the liberated life, is entirely your choice. You might decide that staying put and settling in where you currently happen to be is preferable to taking the risk of following the star of what’s possible.
Indeed, many of us have gotten into a habit of sacrificing fulfillment on the altar of security.
My map is designed to enable quick associations among its terms, as it charts the path from the primal depths of our animal nature to the communal heights of the human spirit. Terms of a shared class are displayed in similar font types and glow colors, so as to prevent them from melting into confusion.
A dynamic zig-zagging arrow through the middle marks our progress on this adventure of becoming more fully human. The present post will take us through this progression, interpreting its major dimensions according to their thematic clusters of terms. We will begin at the bottom and zig-zag our way to the top, where fulfillment awaits.
In a previous post, I designated as human “force fields” the primal, tribal, personal and communal dimensions of experience. The primal dimension is identified with the animal nature of our body and its primitive instincts. Experience here is centered in the lifeforce, generated and sustained through a syndrome of autonomic urgencies, metabolic activity, and compulsive drives. At this level of animal biology, humans have the same basic needs as all other vertebrate species of life on Earth: Survival, health, growth and reproduction are cardinal imperatives of life in the primal dimension.
The human adventure very soon involves our introduction to the tribal force field, where the complicated project of social engineering will go to work on those drives and impulses of animal instinct, gradually shaping our psychology and behavior to the values and expectations of our taller powers – parents, teachers, coaches, and other adults.
These values and expectations are focused, more or less, on the accepted standards and shared beliefs of our tribe regarding what constitutes “right action” (i.e., obedience) and what it means to be a “good person.” This shared understanding of what is right and good is what I call, objectively, the moral frame, and what we all experience, subjectively, as the (socially installed) inner voice of conscience.
Early stages of identity formation, referring to the formation of a relatively unique center of self-conscious personality (i.e., ego), are therefore under the influence of our tribe’s moral frame, as it trains our animal nature into a compliant, well-behaved member of civil society. On the map, however, ego appears to be leaving the force field of tribal morality for something more – more exciting, more alluring, tempting us away from the (comparatively) stale values and oppressive expectations of our elders.
This is the hero journey that, in world mythology, begins with what Joseph Campbell named the Call to Adventure. The urgent concern is no longer with following rules, but now fastens on the goal of finding the magic sword, eternal torch, secret treasure, or gold chalice containing the elixir of immortal life.
This growing tension and inevitable conflict between the conservative constraints of conscience and the progressive, even defiant, compulsions of ambition makes the hero journey such a fascinating – and restless – phase in our longer human adventure.
We desire success and fear failure, we desire love and fear rejection, we desire freedom and fear the exposure it brings – only to find ourselves pinned between these two opposing motives of desire and fear, trapped in a whirlpool of craving, anxiety, frustration, exhaustion, depression, and fresh expectancy.
While an authoritarian tribe will apply every trick and tool for inducing guilt, amplifying our confusion, and confirming the self-doubt we may feel within ourselves in negotiating the trials, perils, and monsters of the hero journey – all with the aim of retrieving us back into the fold, a healthier and more stable society will encourage our quest for the One Thing That Matters.
The purpose in such encouragement is to improve our chances of suffering a necessary disillusionment, which must precede the realization that there is in fact no ‘One Thing’ – out there, up there, over there; no object, possession, person, idol, or deity – that can save us and make us whole.
The other side of this disillusionment, of this clearing-away of illusion, is therefore a revelation known as spiritual awakening. Here our human adventure ascends to the fourth dimension and highest force field of communal wisdom.
At last, the butterfly of our human spirit emerges from its cocoon of personal identity, for an experience of transpersonal unity with others and all things. The wisdom we find here wasn’t exactly waiting for us, like a dusty library of ancient proverbs; rather, it is the higher consciousness of spiritual community itself.
The paradox of community, and also the core principle of its wisdom, lies in the complementarity of freedom and love. Our freedom as individuals is a function of occupying distinct centers of experience, out of which we can connect in bonds of love that in turn protect and nurture our individual freedom. Obviously, this isn’t the neurotic attachment and emotional codependency that too often get confused for authentic love in a ‘pre-awakened’ society.
Genuine community, where the human spirit flourishes, holds freedom and love in dynamic balance. Its higher wholeness is energized by their creative tension.
Having reached the climax of our human adventure in the liberated life (freedom) with others in community (love), it might seem as if the story is complete. But not yet, for our critical contribution as individuals to the longer course of human evolution involves serving now as agents of cultural enlightenment.
A dashed arrow, angling downward in my map from the communal force field to the tribal, traces a potential for societal transformation, frequently felt by the individual as a calling – not to some heroic achievement this time, but to courageous service in the interest of human liberation, wellbeing, and fulfillment. The arrow is dashed and not solid to leave open the option of refusing the call, or maybe of just getting caught up in other things.
“I have come,” said Jesus, “that they might have life, and more abundantly.”
Tracts of Revolution 