Falling in Love with the World

Whether all is really lost or not depends entirely on whether or not I am lost. —Vaclav Havel

The late mythologist, Joseph Campbell, brought to the world’s attention that we each live out what he called The Hero’s Journey. A story in which we have the course of our lives spectacularly interrupted by an uncompromisingly epic ordeal. One we are uncertain we can survive.

The intent of which is garner our consent. Our surrender. To be become irrevocably changed. After which, we are to rejoin our community and its acknowledging witness to the differences we embody—our change in the direction of the good, true and beautiful.

The ordeal is given us by the Mystery. By Life itself irrespective of where we, ourselves, project blame or responsibility. As good representatives of our upbringing and training we fail to recognize the relevance and validity of this initiatory spiritual process. As such most of us try to abort the process desperate to recover normalcy. To ostensibly feel better again.

Some of us are changed. Some not. Life offers no promises.

Is the story of The Hero’s Journey also allegorical?

Might these circumstances
• Countless refugees
• Political and economic dramas
• Wealth disparities
• covid-19
• Global warming
• Prospects of governments using limited nuclear weapons
be ordeals of epic proportions be bent on irrevocably changing us in the direction of the good, true and beautiful?

Tell me now — Are you lost?

P.S. Given that Life, Earth, the Cosmos and the Mystery are feminine, I invite you to look at the stages of The Heroine’s Journey by Maureen Murdock as the model is fittingly relevant and necessary.

P.S.S. The color black contains all colors. White is the absence of color. They are opposites. Giant Panda embodies the alignment of opposites: Wholeness.