Joseph Campbell's The Heroes Journey.

[Music] hey guys so on today's video we're gonna be discussing Joseph Campbell's the hero's journey now this is an extraordinary set of ideas that really allows us to see the map for navigating the contents of the unconscious mind stay tuned [Music] now I'm going to show you guys this diagram here this is a small diagram that represents the complete cycle of the hero's journey now the first thing I want to draw your attention to is this boundary that's labeled known and unknown and now this is a universal thing that we see within all great forms of myth and mythology and what this actually describes is in fact the boundary between the conscious world in the world of dreams now in old forms of mythology people would tell their tales about the hero venturing into some unknown land they would say all the hero went far into the land of the north or the hero went far into the land of the yeast right the hero would always go into some mysterious realm where no one had been because in those environments the imagination can run wild and free the contents of one's dreaming consciousness can be projected into those areas where the environment is unknown you know I remember being a kid and going on trips to the mountains and staring off into the woods right then out where I grew up there is a thick tree line and I'd stare into those trees you know just really wondering you know what's out there what's what's out there in those woods right and my imagination would fill it and you know there was some yearning to go into that space and I never understood why in fact a good friend of mine years later he said you know I don't understand why you go off on these hiking trips you know you you go for four days into the woods and there's nothing out there it's just sticks and trees and rocks you know and and I remember thinking I'm going you know what he's right it is just sticks and rocks you know there's nothing out there right so I had to ask myself I'm going you know why is it why is it that I go out into these unities places why do I go so far into the wilderness and I realized that it was a quest to discover the contents of the unconscious mind it was a metaphor for the world of dreams you can see someone staring into a very deep pool of water and they can have the same experience or perhaps staring up into the sky you know staring out among the stars you feel the emptiness between the stars with the contents of your imagination and dreams right so this serves as a canvas a kind of backdrop against which we can project the contents unconscious mind this is the foundation of all great myths and mythologies but it also reminds us and this is so important to understand that all great stories all great tales are not referring necessarily to physical realities historical reality sometimes myths stories and great quests are describing contents of our own mind the world of dreams so the great hero's journey always begins with an average individual somebody who's just leading life as they'd always let it before going to work every day doing their chores everything is boring and humdrum right but generally the hero will feel this calling to adventure it'll be an you know really unruly rebellious teenager you know an adult who doesn't seem to want to show up to work on time right this is somebody who just can't seem to fit with the status quo because they're not satisfied with life they're not satisfied with this programmatic life of just moving through a bunch of Hoops and raising a family they want something more some great adventure to be lived you have a problem with authority mr. Anderson you believe that you're special that somehow the rules do not apply to you obviously you are mistaken [Music] generally the hero will then be introduced to some kind of supernatural a this is obi-wan Kenobi this is Gandalf this is Morpheus right this will be some kind of figure who will come into the hero's life and introduce him to this world this this other dimension of reality this other dimension to life that the hero has never otherwise been introduced to this overseer this instructor will supply the ego with some kind of tools some kind of weapon fathers like religion occupies this role as well it occupies the role of the sage right so people come to religion and they think it's all about morality do's and don'ts but really the morals the beliefs the symbols the sacraments these are all tools that the religious organization is equipping the ego with so that it can go out there into the world and face these powers of darkness and survive because it now knows it has now recognized the path to illumination the path to the transcendent the path to the self archetype the force the force is what gives a Jedi his path it's an energy field created by all living things it surrounds us penetrates us it binds the Galaxy together decided to represent some of this in a particular set of diagrams and here you guys can see there is this picture of water and land and I want to draw your attention to that surface of the water this is again a representation for the boundary between waking awareness and the contents of the unconscious mind I'm also going to overlay over this the symbol of a house now the reason I've done this is because quite often in dreams you will see the psyche represented as a whole where consciousness lives on the upper floors and the various levels of the unconscious mind go down in succession into the basement of the home and so these are all metaphors to describe the contents of our unconscious now the ego really has set itself up as the king it's the ruler at least in its own estimation of the psycheon of the world around it and the ego always stands as the representative of some kind of system government society or civilization and this is really the civil Asian that would civilization that we occupy it is essentially egocentric you look at government officials these are incarnations of pure ego consciousness but I'm leading in every poll by a lot it looks like I'm going to win my whole life has been about winning discerning discriminating dividing defining states of consciousness this discerning discriminating quality of ego consciousness is always represented by in some way or another by some kind of weapon and generally the sword is the most popular and the reason for this is because what does a sword do a sword divides right this is the essential quality of the ego the ego splits and divides saying this is good and this is evil now essentially the religious path is in an attempt to transcend this egocentric thinking but this egocentric thinking of dividing good from evil right from wrong and the ability to discriminate is an essential tool of ego consciousness and it's necessary for the psyche a mature ego can always be recognized by the ability to make a definitive choice decision-making power is really the essence of what it means to possess a sword a sword divides and says I'm going this way and not that I'm going to take this path and not that path this is the discriminating power of ego consciousness and we see it represented in the myths by a sword and sometimes like in the myths of King Arthur the unconscious will present this power of discrimination to the ego and the ego receives this magical bill ability of wisdom to discriminate and decide and this is the essential quality that the ego must possess before it begins the hero's journey this is really what's meant when we say you must have an ego before you can overcome you know if egoism if the dissolving of the ego was the whole goal of the hero's journey then you would be finished the journey as a little infant child right children have no ego so it's not so much about just erasing the ego so much as it's about bringing the ego into cooperation with the other powers of the subconscious mind so the teacher the guru obi-wan Kenobi he'll present the ego with this discriminating power and by the way guys in some sense that's what I'm doing right now I'm in the role of the old wise man who is now teaching the disciple teaching the pupil teaching the student on how to navigate the contents of the unconscious mind so if you're saying to yourselves I really wish I could find some sort of obi-wan Kenobi for my life while congratulations you've just found it that's the role that I'm in right now in making this video so the ego will then be faced with the threshold crossing and this will be represented in a number of different ways in various different myths sometimes it'll be represented by crossing the surface of the lake sometimes it'll be represented by crossing a river [Music] have you ever had a dream neo that you were so sure was real what if you were unable to wake from that dream how would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world this can't be what the real you can see the threshold crossing represented here in the major arcana by the high priest she stands between Boaz and yo Hakeem these were the pillars that stood on the outside of Solomon's Temple and the high priestess has above her the fruits of the pomegranate which was the fruit of the underworld so this represents the fact that the ego is crossing into the world of dreams and here below the High Priestesses foot is the crescent moon another symbol of the dreaming life right as soon as the ego steps across that's that threshold there's no going back this is a point of no return and the ego is then confronted with the powers of the shadow archetype so the first thing the ego comes up against is the contents of his own repressed and suppressed mind a trio has two faces true self so what that won't be too hard for him that's what everyone thinks that kind people find that they are cruel brave men discover that they are really cowards confronted with their true selves most men run away screaming what's in there only what you take with you [Music] [Music] [Music] and this in fact describes most people's experiences of dreaming when you when you start to approach the contents of Dreams the first thing you're confronted with or all of those repress memories that you've tried to escape I recently did this with my wife you know she's recently pregnant so pregnant women tend to dream a lot and so we've been working with her dreams and her very first dream called up a memory of bombers that she had seen when she was in Sudan these planes would come over and she said she was only maybe two three years old so young that she could barely remember it but the planes would come in and they would start dropping bombs and she heard the planes but she was so little if she couldn't speak yet and so she went running to her mother going to make the sounds of the planes and that was how her mother knew that the war planes were coming and so she grabbed her and they went off and they hidden the bunkers that were around the village and that was how they saved their life but this memory she had long since suppressed and forgotten and it came up for her in a dream she approached a river and when she stepped into a river okay stepped into the river and again this is a metaphor for stepping into the contents of the unconscious mind she was confronted with this massive propeller that was moving through the air and cutting off people's heads as it flew through the dream and it took a while we had to talk about the dream but then all of a sudden ding this memory came up and she goes oh my god she says I forgot all about this you see that's the that's the shadow archetype and you've got to bring those contents up you've got to bring it into consciousness was to integrate it into ego consciousness so this upper layer of the unconscious the personal unconscious is represented by a personality the shadow archetype now the shadow archetype will always appear in dreams as an individual associated with the color black he'll be a black individual the black hair or a black suit or even black skin right this is somebody who comes to represent all of the repressed and suppressed contents of the unconscious mind but the shadow also represents all of those suppressed instincts so there's this fascinating dynamic that exists between ego and we're really the shadow in the ego or in many respects the two sides of the same coin you know I introduce people to the concept of the shadow archetype and they're always inclined to thinking that it's something they must overcome they must defeat but ultimately the power of the shadow draws from the power of the ego so if the ego seeks to overcome the shadow the ego must inherently overcome itself this is always best represented in those dreams you'll have where you go to strike somebody you'll put up your fists and you'll go to hit that person and then you know your arm will slowly move you know you can't it's like you can't hit them or you'll try to injure somebody and it's like as soon as you go to injure them you lose all power your hand is stopped or the weapon goes right through them it could come in a number of different ways but essentially you cannot defeat the shadow archetype with violence because the power of the shadow archetype is hatred and fear and malice and all of these negative disturbing emotions so as soon as the ego tries to use those emotional powers to conquer the shadow the ego immediately becomes powerless because it cannot defeat hate with hate it cannot defeat anger with anger it cannot defeat fear with fear you must defeat anger with compassion you must defeat fear with courage you have to face the shadow with the contents of your own ego of consciousness now this represents a real crisis for the ego because what that means is that the only way to overpower the shadow is to surrender to it and this is where the role of faith comes in the ego must have faith in some greater power other than itself in mythology this this shadow archetype often comes through in the form of the trickster and the trickster appears in all aboriginal mythologies i mean you can find tricksters in Australia Africa the Americas they exist all around the world it's a universal mythological theme and the trickster always represents somebody who is chaotic emotional intuitive he has no intellect that's to say he has no ego right in European history these are those Devils that have the bodies of animals right they this is the devil that represents all of the unruly instincts of the unconscious mind which the ego must suppress but there's another side to this there's another dynamic power at work here and that's the ego as devil and you'll see this represented as well there are really two ways you can represent Satan right you can represent Satan as the half-man half-goat beast eale unruly undisciplined desires of the unconscious mind that's to represent him as the shadow or you could represent Satan in a suit in a tux and a tie high and lofty powerful sophisticated hmm yes right this comes through in the Matrix movies as the Merovingian right he he says speaking French is like wiping your ass with silk right this is the sophisticated one right these are the two dynamics of ego and shadow and the bigger ego becomes the bigger the shadow becomes and so it becomes like a teeter-totter where the psyche constantly has to compensate for the arrogance of the ego consciousness this dynamic of ego versus shadow is something that we really like to play with in a lot of films and movies and it comes through in the villain you all oftentimes see a great evil villain the ego that is accompanied by some fool as his assistant the brain you speak it's the brain one it's a genius he doesn't say so brain is the brain right he's the intellect he's the ego and he's trying to take over the world this is ego consciousness and his dynamic counterpart is pinky the fool the trickster who often serves as his conscience and the source of intuitive insight so the ego will cross the threshold he'll come over that point of no return he'll confront the shadow which is in fact the other side of himself and then begins a process of trials and tribulations and generally within our stories within our myths this is everyone's favorite part of the book [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] right this is where the hero fights and learns and you know cha-cha-cha this is this is where he fights all the powers of the unconscious he fights all the demons of those Diamond haunted worlds and he has to confront them and overcome them and learn the courage to face these terrifying and frightening truths and as he overcomes more and more of these evil powers of the psyche he slowly draws near to the great crisis the great moment where in which the hero is going to be confronted with the ultimate duel where he faces off and squares directly off against the incarnation of his own shadow archetype this battle between the ego and the shadow will sometimes involve massive powers the world of shake the mountains will fall the sky will burn right it's this great climactic battle between ego and shadow as they square off to annihilate and destroy one another this is the apocalyptic vision which refers to the psyche it's the whole psyche now that's involved in this great dynamic battle where the powers of good and evil have squared off with one another and they're fighting and slashing and cutting and tearing and you could experience this in your life I mean when I was a pickup artist and I was studying Eastern philosophy there was this terrible internal conflict where at one moment I'd be moved and compelled by really virtuous feelings and then in the very next moment I was compelled to act in horrible ways and I was constantly torn you know between these powers of the of the psyche which with with which I was wrestling trying to bring out of it something meaningful you know I would go into my dreams and I would see my anima fighting these demons of narcissism you know if you'd come down into the basement faced these demons and then be ripped to shreds her whole body be thrown on the floor right this is the internal battle that's taking place where the ego is trying to find something it can hold on to and the dark side the shadow archetypes saying don't you know don't look for the light give up give it into the darkness come to the dark side right this is the lure of wickedness saying come to the dark side that's where all the power is and once you have the power you can conquer the world so the ego eventually recognizes that in fact the shadow is in dominance that the shadow has basically consumed the world everything has been shrouded in darkness and there's just no hope for goodness anymore right this is the moment where in which the hero says there's no hope there's no chance of us ever winning and the hero confronted with the alternative of going over to the dark side or confronting death we'll choose death [Music] it is useless to resist don't let yourself be destroyed as obi-wan didn't [Music] [Music] escape don't make me destroy you you can destroy the Emperor he has foreseen this it is your destiny join me and together we can rule the galaxy as father and son [Music] come with me it is the only way [Music] I was certain to the secret fire wielder of the flame LaVon the shadow fools in the tarot cards we see this represented in the case of the hanged man so the hanged man represents Christ crucified right and was at what happens to Christ crucified death right that's the next car to the Tarot and what is the what is the virtue that the Eagle must possess in order to survive this temperance because he has to face off with the dark powers the world and overcome and there he confronts the devil the powers of evil that have basically taken over the world and the ultimate end the ultimate result is the destruction of everything he loses it all everything is dissolved there's no hope the world comes to an end and this is the beginning of the great climax of the story where in which the ego the hero will die and rise again so this comes through in many different myths in many different ways but essentially the ego will always be brought into a position of hopelessness there's no hope left in the world everything has been consumed by darkness the world is dissolving the skies rolled up like a scroll and the earth is melted with fire right there's no hope for salvation and the ego says you know what if there's no hope of salvation if there's no hope of goodness in the world that I don't want to live and the Eagle identifying entirely with the goodness with the abstract notion of goodness in the world regardless of what the ego sees external to itself resigns itself to death and this is where the intervention of the self archetype God the mystery the transcendent mystery source will swoop in and capture the ego you see I'm not a queen or a modest I'm the goddess of death what were you the god of again [Music] this too late she's already taken as guard house cut is not the place never was this could be a skirt tell me brother what were you that god of again [Music] [Music] now at this level there are four distinct forms of boon that the hero can receive these are the sort of gifts or the the goal of the hero's journey in the most superficial sense the hero will acquire some object this is probably the shallowest form of the hero's journey this refers to Prometheus stealing fire from the gods and then relay racing running back in order to bring this gift this boon to humanity alternatively the hero can be married he can he can recognize what's called the anima archetype and then there comes a goddess marriage and usually in great myths the woman in this case will be an ethereal woman an elf or a fairy queen or something of this kind right the less physical the woman is the better because it will serve to represent the fact that she is a psychic reality in a reality of the unconscious mind [Music] last [Music] she's an elf so the anima is this goddess image that exists within the male psyche by the way for women watching this if you want to understand the difference between the male hero journey and the female hero journey all you've got to do is flip the genders of these powers instead of the anima you have the animus but this image of the ideal woman or the ideal man again depending on if we're dealing with a woman or a man will come up it usually clothed in white and this this white clothing will express the fact that she is working in cooperation with the self archetype right and so this goddess will appear and is in a kind of rescuing capacity right when the hero's being brought to the point of death she'll swoop in and rescue him and this is the marriage with a fairy goddess on the next level we have atonement with the father now this boon this achievement within the psyche refers to the ego coming into direct confrontation with a self archetype usually represented by a father figure kind of God type who will come up and and the ego will demand of the self archetype you know why have you allowed evil in the world or why has this happen right there will be some great demanding for wisdom on the egos part and the self archetype will reveal to the ego that this was the purpose this was the plan all along that the ego must recognize that the dynamic mystery of life is bigger than just what you want and don't want this is where the ego has to put aside the sword of discrimination and learn to see the world as a totality we're both good and evil right and wrong life and death left and right up and down tomorrow and yesterday cotton cold all these dynamic dualities must be seen as occupying a whole a totality a wholeness over which the self archetype rules and it's not the egos business to come into the depths of the unconscious and tell the self archetype well everything up there should be this way and not that the self archetype will humble the ego and remind the ego that ultimately the mystery of life transcends human desires fears and longing [Music] hello Neil who are you I am the architect I created the matrix I've been waiting for you the matrix is older than you know I prefer counting from the emergence of one integral anomaly to the emergence of the next in which case this is the sixth version or the ego comes to the very highest form of revelations and this this is what joseph campbell referred to as apotheosis and usually you will only see this in great forms of mythology great religions and what this refers to is when the ego is entirely dissolved there is no ego anymore and the ego realizes that it was in fact the self archetype all along that it was the transcendent that was looking out on the world and it carries the truth of God in his own heart and so the hero will then be raised from the dead he'll come out of the spirit world he'll sit up and the shadow will be standing there going home you know you can't be low you can't be alive I just killed you right and the ego stands up in the ego sees everything the ego has become the self the ego has realized the Atman that transcendent truth of the heart that now dwells within his body and he now crushes the shadow archetype and the shadow archetype can do nothing right it's entirely powerless because now the ego recognizes that the real power of the psyche is God the self archetype [Music] [Music] get up [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] at this point the ego will then begin the process of return he'll take the boon and begin his journey back to the world of waking awareness and this will usually be described as a relay race you know there will be all these powers of the unconscious these demons chasing after the ego come back here with the boon if you come back here with the prize and they'll chase the ego down and the ego will slip through the boundary over the threshold and bring the gift to humanity and this restores the world and brings life to civilization now I particularly love the movies The Matrix and I'm not sure if the Wachowski brothers did this on purpose or not but in the Matrix movies you will see all three levels of those final boons in the first movie neo comes and has the sacred marriage with the goddess Trinity which by the way Trinity probably refers to the Tri Devi this is a reference more unlikely to the Hindu goddesses right because when neo dies it's then the Trinity says you see you can't be dead because you hear me I love you [Music] and thereby is neo resurrected right so it's with his marriage with the anima it's this new birthright and it's a spiritual birth not a physical birth just like what Christ describes he says unless a man is born again he cannot see the kingdom of heaven you have to go into a death and a resurrection in order to come into the realization of this transcendent life in the second movie we see the hero journey touching on atonement with the father this comes through in the image of the architect and I really enjoy the scene because many of you might not know this but in fact Keanu Reeves played in a movie portraying the Buddha the Little Buddha and when he faces off with Yama the Lord of death he refers to him as the architect [Music] yoo-hoo go where no one else will dare will you be my god architect finally I have met you you will not rebuild your house again but I am your house and you live in me O Lord of my own ego you are pure illusion you do not exist [Music] the earth is my witness [Music] so I think that Keanu Reeves had a hand in doing this where he was trying to communicate through both of these movies that essentially the message of the matrix is in many ways and in many respects similar to the message of the Buddha but in that scene Neel comes into the room of the architect and the architect explains to him that there is this much bigger mystery of which he is a part and it's not just a simple matter of crushing the powers of darkness he has to recognize that he plays an essential role in the cyclic existence of beings all beings who occupy the matrix and if he does not restore the matrix everyone will die this is an extraordinary dynamic where in which the the self archetype is expressed as this father figure and the ego is then called to a higher level of realization and the final movie Matrix Revolutions we see neo merging with Smith and in that merging the ego and the shadow have come together as one and it explodes and a power of creativity right and this is the direct result of something which took place earlier in the movie so there's this this whole apotheosis that takes place neo transcends himself and even in those final images we see neo stretched out and he's surrounded by a cross of light right this expresses that the ego has sacrificed itself for the restoration of the world this is apotheosis the highest level of spiritual realization and enlightenment this is it this is the yet we're laying right there it's like that I stand here right here I'm supposed to say something [Music] what would I just say rights can be right get away from him what are you afraid of all right you always write [Music] [Music] here's it over [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] and I remember kind of coming out of the light and looking around and once again there was this emptiness this darkness that was all around me and I felt as if again there was no depth I couldn't tell he was so dark that I couldn't even tell if it was deep and I leaned forward and as soon as I did that this star appeared it was this bright star like Venus on the on the horizon you know just before the Sun rises her scent and it was the same kind of light that's here in this world it was not that divine like it was a world worldly light [Music] Fantasia has totally disappeared yes so everything's been in vain no it hasn't Fantasia can arise in you from your dreams that was she's best you how [Music] what are you going to wish for [Music] I don't know and there will be no Phantasia anymore i know i should do i get as many as you want and the more wishes you'll make more magnificent Fantasia will become really try it my first wish is [Music] [Music] so the essential message here is that all great mythologies communicate these universal truths their truths which refer to the reality of the psyche and you know I couldn't I have confronted these things these things become unbelievably real as soon as you step across that threshold into the world of dreams and suddenly you look around and the content of your waking life starts reflecting the content of your dreams and you feel as if you're being carried along by this invisible hand and more often than not in the great myths and the really really great myths the self archetype will never be seen there are many levels to the hero's journey and honestly I feel like we could make this video 10 times longer but really it's something that there's an enormous amount to learn about and I really wanted to take you guys through this to introduce you to this this amazing adventure which can take place in the contents of your own unconscious mind and I want to let all of you know that you are the the hero of your own life and I would encourage each and every one of you to find a religious practice to find a guru to find a teacher to go out and find that sage that will give you the methods you need to navigate the contents of the unconscious mind I know you're out there I can feel you I know that you're afraid you're afraid of us you're afraid of change I don't know the future I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end I came here to tell you how it's going to begin I'm going to hang up this phone and then I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see I'm going to show them a world without you a world without rules and controls Without Borders or boundaries a world where anything is possible where we go from there is a choice I leave to you [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Enlighten

Views: 24,717

Rating: 4.6157207 out of 5

Keywords: dreams come true, dreams are real, dreams and visions, is god in control, is god real, is god all knowing, joseph campbell the hero's journey, joseph campbell mythos, joseph campbell, joseph campbell and the power of myth, joseph campbell bliss, joseph campbell monomyth, joseph campbell and the myth of the hero's journey, joseph campbell a hero's journey, joseph campbell consciousness, monomyth, which religion is true, Carl Jung, Individuation, Self Realization

Id: XIY7eexaGCo

Length: 51min 39sec (3099 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 10 2018