We all have spent many years establishing a conditioned view of life, only to arrive at a conclusion that life either offends me or pleases me. We tend to spend our whole life trying to avoid all that brings pain, noticing the objects, people or situations and pursuing all that which brings pleasure.

Without exception, we all do this. We remain separated from areas of our life, looking at it, analyzing it, judging it, seeking to answer the questions. What am I going to get out of it ? Is it going to give me pleasure or should I avoid the situation altogether ?

We do this constantly and just below the surface of this dilemma, one is experiencing fear, pain and anxiety.

Going Within

 By going within, we have the opportunity to explore our responses to people and environmental situations. Also, to inquire into where and how I am holding and blocking my energy from negative past circustances which develops into repression and censoring of uncomfortable feelings. Through this experience, I can establish a firmer understanding of doubt, distrust, confusion or whatever the issue that has drained our ability to remain focused and balanced.

Hero’s Journey

  “The usual hero adventure begins with someone from whom something has been taken, or who feels there’s something lacking in the normal experiences available or permitted to the members of his society. This person then takes off on a series of adventures beyond the ordinary, either  to recover what has been lost or to discover some life giving elixir”

“But the structure and something of the spiritual sense of this adventure can be seen already anticipated in the puberty or initiation rituals of early tribal societies, through which a child is compelled to give up its childhood and become an adult – to die, you might say, to its infantile personality and psyche and come back as a responsible adult”

‘To evolve out of this position of psychological immaturity to the courage of self-responsibility and assurance requires a death and a resurrection. That’s the basic motif of the Universal Hero’s Journey and transformation of consciousness into the Transcendence”

“This is an essential experience of any mystical realisation. You die to your flesh and are born into spirit”

The Power of Myth

                                                                                                     Joseph Campbell

The Art of Dying

“There”ll come a time when all your hopes are fading

When things that seemed so very plain, become an awful pain

Searching for the Truth among the lying and answered when

you’ve learned the Art of Dying”

                                                                                                             George Harrison 

 Just one example of this is quite evident within the educational system where we are presented with a number of gold stars according to how well we have done in our grades. To the recipients of those that have been granted the maximum amount of stars is that they feel good and the general message is that I must become competitive and stay in front to receive that praise. This appears to be a positive outcome but, in turn my self worth and sense of self becomes dependent on external conditions and circumstances.

 To the under achievers who fall short of receiving those stars for their grades, their intepretation of themselves could be that I am not enough and I have no value as I am. In turn, I am exposed to feeling inadequate and self-esteem has to some degree, taken a dive. From this position, loss of authenticity takes place and I have now also become dependent on external circumstances to secure a sense of self worth.

Our departure from childhood innocence and being whole and unique has now commenced. What has grown in its place is to compare myself to others and formulate strategies and ideas to secure a sense of self.

The outcome of this early childhood process of reward and praise becomes evident as I grow older within society, as I am defined quite often by the position held in society such as career, social status, physical appearance, special abilities followed by an extensive inventory of possessions that evaluates my success in life. Since the ego is a derived sense of self, it needs to identify with external things. It also needs to be both defended and fed constantly from the external world in the hope that one will heal and become whole again.  

This is the programme that we respond to from early childhood development of which we had no choice but to participate.

The difficulty posed by this situation is that this inbred competitiveness, which is ego driven, has reared a society that measures their self worth by amounts of accumulated material and in turn, lives in fear and distrust of each other. This in turn has caused such a division in society that to bring about a revolution of brotherhood would almost seemingly be impossible.

All matters of the heart disappear under the weight of this system that we all breath life into. 

This is a compelling situation. What if we spent our entire life chasing after these symbols of success and aspiring to live up to the ego’s mantra that more is good to define our identity ?

If this is our situation, then it would seem quite evident that if my 

  identity is aligned to what I have and I loose what I possess, 

then by all reasons, my identity will also be lost.

“Thoroughly unprepared, we take the step into the afternoon of life,

worse still, we take this step with the false assumption

that our truths and ideals will serve us as hitherto.

But we cannot live the afternoon of life according 

to the programme of life’s morning, for what was  

  great in the morning will be little at evening,

and what in the morning was true will    

at evening have become a lie”

From the stages of life.

Carl Jung