Exploring the Depths of the Hero's Journey

The Highest Hero's Journey - What It Means To Be Real Hero

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

In this profound episode by Actualized.org, Leo delves into the deeper, often overlooked aspects of the Hero's Journey, emphasizing its spiritual and non-dual dimensions. The Hero's Journey is not just a narrative framework for storytelling or career building, but a metaphorical path of self-discovery and spiritual awakening. By exploring personal demons, internal wars, and ultimately choosing truth over ego, the journey urges us to transcend the mundane and seek enlightenment. It's a call to reject external societal norms and inner fear to truly find and understand oneself.

Highlights

Leo explores the spiritual angle of the Hero's Journey. 🧘‍♂️
Understanding human psychology drives rich storytelling. 📚
The Hero's Journey is a metaphor for spiritual awakening. 🛤️
Inner battles are harder than fighting external enemies. 🐉
Real heroes pursue truth over ego or self-interest. ⚖️
Villains serve the status quo and represent selfishness. 😈
Society often pressures us to serve ego over truth. 🤹‍♂️
Accepting the call to adventure is the hardest step. 🚀
Real heroes are unsung spiritual seekers and paradigms. 🧙‍♀️
Most people prefer their comfort zone over real change. 💤

Key Takeaways

The Hero's Journey is more about inner transformation than outer battles. 🌟
Choosing truth over ego is the essence of becoming a hero. ⚖️
Most people refuse the call to adventure due to fear and comfort. 🚫
The true Holy Grail is enlightenment and self-discovery. 💡
Heroes are rare because breaking loyalty with the self is difficult. 🦸‍♂️
Society is a mass delusion that often keeps us focused on ego. 🌐
Spiritual heroes are the Zen masters, mystics, and saints, not celebrities. 🧘‍♂️
True understanding requires embarking on and committing to the inner journey. 🛤️
Societal pressure and intoxicants distract from the real journey. 🍻
The journey is about finding a purpose bigger than oneself. 🌌

Overview

In Leo's engaging episode, he revisits the well-known narrative of the Hero's Journey, contrasting it with its underlying spiritual dimensions. While often depicted in movies and books as a tale of physical quests and battles, Leo posits that the true Hero's Journey is an internal exploration of self, driven by a radical shift towards truth and away from ego.

Leo challenges the audience to rethink the traditional notion of a hero. True heroes are not the celebrated athletes or CEOs but those who embark on a profound spiritual journey - the Zen masters, yogis, and mystics who seek enlightenment. This journey requires confronting one's inner demons and transcending societal norms and pressures.

The essence of the Hero's Journey, according to Leo, is in its power to redefine one's life perspective. The ultimate prize, the 'Holy Grail,' is not material wealth or fame, but deep self-realization and spiritual enlightenment. Only by daring to depart from the familiar and comfort can one truly achieve a purposeful and enlightened life.

Chapters

00:00 - 01:00: Introduction This chapter introduces the concept of the 'Hero's Journey,' a narrative framework explored by Leo in this episode of actualized.org. The speaker swiftly mentions the goal of understanding the pinnacle of this journey, indicating an in-depth discussion of its complexities and significance.
01:00 - 05:00: Understanding The Hero's Journey The chapter "Understanding The Hero's Journey" explores how the framework of the hero's journey can be applied beyond storytelling to practical aspects of life, such as building a career, business, or finding personal purpose. It emphasizes making a societal impact and contributing to the world using this narrative structure. The discussion shifts from a theoretical understanding to practical implementation in one’s life path.
05:00 - 09:00: Spiritual Journey and Non-duality The chapter discusses the concept of spirituality and non-duality, focusing on their relationship with the hero's journey. Before starting his website actualized.org, the speaker was exploring his life purpose and considering various career paths, including becoming a science fiction writer.
09:00 - 13:00: Research and Inspiration from Star Wars The writer discusses their exploration of storytelling by studying narrative structures, common themes in drama, character development, and the psychology behind dictators and villains.
13:00 - 20:00: Joseph Campbell's Influence This chapter explores the influence of Joseph Campbell on character development, particularly in crafting compelling villains. The speaker reflects on the importance of understanding the psychology behind dictators and similar figures of power to create a nuanced and psychologically rich antagonist. They argue that a hero's strength and appeal are intrinsically linked to the complexity of the villain they oppose, pointing out a perceived lack of depth in villains found in many movies and books.
20:00 - 27:00: Facing The Call To Adventure In this chapter titled 'Facing The Call To Adventure', the narrator discusses their journey into becoming a better storyteller. They explore the importance of understanding human psychology to effectively craft stories. As they delve deeper into this field, they find themselves drawn into personal development. This exploration allows them to connect the psychological aspects of villains, heroes, and themselves, ultimately contemplating their own role within these narratives.
27:00 - 34:00: Truth vs. Ego: The Inner Battle The chapter begins with the speaker reflecting on their interest in science fiction, specifically how the creation of the original Star Wars influenced their desire to become a science fiction writer. They delve into how they started studying the development of Star Wars by reading about it, watching interviews, and examining source materials. The speaker contrasts the creative processes involved in this with broader themes of truth and ego, suggesting an inner battle one might face when pursuing such ambitions.
34:00 - 42:00: Overcoming Self and Achieving Enlightenment George Lucas was inspired by Flash Gordon Comics when creating Star Wars.
42:00 - 47:00: The Holy Grail: Symbolic and Literal Meaning The chapter titled 'The Holy Grail: Symbolic and Literal Meaning' explores the influence and inspiration drawn from Valyrian comics and Star Wars. It highlights how certain design elements in Star Wars were directly taken from these comics, which carry a unique 70s, 60s, and 50s styling blended with a European French touch. The author expresses fascination with these comics, likening the experience of reading them to a form of time travel, and acknowledges their enduring appeal.
47:00 - 54:00: Struggles of a Hero In the chapter titled "Struggles of a Hero," the narrative begins by encouraging the reader to purchase a recommended book series on Amazon, highlighting their entertainment value. The narrative then shifts focus to the influential work of Joseph Campbell, an American mythologist and scholar of comparative religion. Campbell is credited as one of the inspirations for the creation of Star Wars. The chapter underscores Campbell's role in popularizing the concept of the "hero's journey," a framework that, although not originally his creation, was articulated and brought to the forefront of modern consciousness by him.
54:00 - 61:00: Society vs. Hero's Journey The chapter titled 'Society vs. Hero's Journey' begins with an analysis of the concept of the 'hero's journey,' a universally familiar storytelling framework. The narrative delves into the last 50 years of this model to lay a foundation for understanding its relevance and utility. The chapter emphasizes understanding the hero's journey as a fundamental aspect of human life, albeit presented in a stylized and schematic fashion. This exploration serves as a precursor to further commentary relating the hero's journey to spirituality, hinting at its significance in deeper existential inquiries.
61:00 - 71:00: The Mentor and The Journey's End In the chapter titled 'The Mentor and The Journey's End,' the narrative begins by illustrating how the hero's journey is relatable to one's everyday life. It depicts the hero in their mundane, ordinary existence, living contently among their tribe or community in their village or town. At this stage, the hero is not yet a figure of heroism but merely an average person. Their life, although comfortable, is characterized by its dull and predictable nature.
71:00 - 80:00: Practical Takeaways from the Hero's Journey In this chapter, the discussion centers around the initial stages of the Hero's Journey—a widely-recognized narrative structure in storytelling. It begins with the hero, who is often portrayed as an ordinary individual not distinguished by any exceptional qualities. However, the plot develops as the hero encounters a 'call to action'—a pivotal moment that presents them with a new opportunity. This opportunity becomes a crucial test of their willingness to embark on a transformative adventure. The narrative questions whether the hero will step up and accept this challenge, setting the stage for further development in their journey.
80:00 - 87:00: Conclusion and Reflection The chapter titled 'Conclusion and Reflection' discusses the intrinsic nature of the human psyche, highlighting its intrinsic laziness and preference for homeostasis. The text elaborates on the psyche's tendency to avoid risks and its inherent fearfulness when faced with unfamiliar propositions. An analogy is used where an individual is invited to join a rocket trip to battle dragons on a new planet. This scenario underscores the hesitation and reluctance the human mind often exhibits in stepping outside its comfort zone, despite the allure of unprecedented adventures.

The Highest Hero's Journey - What It Means To Be Real Hero Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 hey this is Leo for actualized.org and in this episode I'm going to be talking about understanding the highest Heroes [Music] Journey
00:30 - 01:00 I've spoken about the hero's journey before in my life purpose Course and there I speak about it from a certain angle and the angle I come at it from there is a very practical one where I show you how to take this framework of the hero's journey and apply it to build your career to build your business to find your sense of purpose and the kind of impact you want to have with your life on society how do you want to contribute to the world and so we talk a lot about that there but what I want to
01:00 - 01:30 talk about here is I want to cover it from a different angle and this is the perhaps even more important angle of spirituality and non-duality so what is the interconnection between the hero's journey spirituality and non-duality that's what we're going to discuss here actually before I did actualized.org and I was still not clear about my own life purpose I was toying with all sorts of different ideas of what I could do with my life career-wise and one of the things I was toying with was seriously considering the idea of becoming a science fiction
01:30 - 02:00 writer um and to do that I started studying a lot of stuff I started to study narrative how narrative Works how storytelling Works what are the common themes and tropes of Storytelling of drama I started to study and read books on character development the psychology of drama and also the psychology of dictators and villains I became very interested in that so I started to read biographies about Hitler about Saddam saying about other villains that I would
02:00 - 02:30 you know consider villains these dictators and such to see you know what is the psychology of these people that lead them to then abuse their power and so forth because I wanted to create a really good villain for my story because I felt like my hero in the story could only really be as good as the villain and I felt like most villains out there that you find in the movies and in the books they uh aren't as rich and nuanced and psychologically compelling as I thought
02:30 - 03:00 I could make mine so I started to study all that because what I thought was that to be a good Storyteller you have to really understand human psychology and in a sense that's one of the reasons that I got propelled into personal development is because by studying all this of course I couldn't help but also take in a lot of self-help information and then make interconnections between the psychology of these villains which was so fascinating to me and the psychology of these Heroes which was fascinating to me and then my own psychology and then how do I fit into that picture you see um but before that
03:00 - 03:30 was before actualized.org and one of the things that I was also studying was the development of Star Wars because Star Wars was sort of the influence that got me interested uh in this idea of becoming a science fiction writer of course very influential um IP uh so I started to study the way that the original Star Wars was created started reading about it watching interviews and so forth and looking at all the source material so what's all the s material
03:30 - 04:00 for Star Wars where did it come from what inspired it so I started reading Flash Gordon Comics because George Lucas said that's one of the things that inspired him um I also started reading these valarian Comics which I want to show you these are pretty cool uh these are some old school French Comics which few people know about until now because this summer there's a Valyrian movie coming out by uh Luke Besson who also did The Fifth Element and the fifth element was inspired by
04:00 - 04:30 these Valyrian comics and uh Star Wars was also inspired by these valarian Comics there's some designs that are just like taken straight out of these these uh these comic books and they're they're quite um quite fascinating to read it's kind of like going back through time into the 1970s and 60s and 50s kind of style and also it's got this kind of European French flavor to it so I thought these were cool I just wanted to show them to you you could can still
04:30 - 05:00 buy these on Amazon they're pretty fun to read um but anyways so there was that and I was fascinated by all that and then of course I stumbled upon Joseph Campbell who is the uh American mythologist and Scholar of comparative religion who was one of The Inspirations for Star Wars and he's the guy who came up with the whole concept that we call the hero's journey he didn't actually invent the hero's journey he's just the one who made it sort of popular and made it explicit in our Consciousness over the
05:00 - 05:30 last 50 years so let's get the foundation here because we need to understand what we're talking about when we mean the hero's journey so before I can give you my commentary and how it relates to spirituality here's my summary for you of what the hero's journey is and this is a very Illuminating thing to understand because this here in a nutshell is what human life is about but it's in a very sort of stylized and schema Manner and you have
05:30 - 06:00 to be able to see how this fits in with your practical everyday life so the hero's journey begins just by seeing the hero in his everyday ordinary existence living with his tribe or his people in his village or town wherever he comes from and at this point he's not really a hero he's just an ordinary guy or girl and in this ordinary existence he's very comfortable and it's just a very sort of boring average existence it's
06:00 - 06:30 not special at all then what happens though is that the hero is presented with a call to action the call to action is what is the opportunity it's the window of opportunity that is presented to the hero that tests whether he really wants to go on an adventure so something new and something radical comes into his existence which beckons him to go on this adventure and of course what does the hero do does he accept the adventure
06:30 - 07:00 no because to be psychologically accurate here we have to recognize that the human psyche is very lazy because it's stuck in homeostasis and it wants to maintain its ordinary comfortable mundane existence and it's very risk averse and it's very fearful so if I come to you and I say hey come on my rocket ship and I'm going to fly you to a new planet a new Galaxy and there we're going to battle dragons
07:00 - 07:30 and space aliens together what are you going to say are you going to say yes Leo let's do it let's go right now no it might seem at first like yeah that's what I want to do that sounds fun but you got to understand that it's one thing to be watching this on the Silver Screen when it's happening to somebody else it's another thing to be in the hero's shoes so I want you right now to put yourself in the hero's shoes so if I come to you and tell you that hey you're coming with me to a new Galaxy to fight space
07:30 - 08:00 dragons and stuff what are you going to say you're going to say hell no Leo I got to go to work tomorrow I got to pay the bills I got to feed the kids I got to prepare food I got all this stuff to do I got all these commitments I got all these obligations I don't have time to fly out there I'm tired I was working all day I was working for 10 hours today I'm not going to go out there and fly with you somewhere to risk what to to risk my life my health my security for what to go on some wild goose chase no
08:00 - 08:30 way I'm not going to do that so you reject the call to action that's what 99% of people do and actually including the hero because the hero is pretty ordinary what happens next though is that finally he's forced to accept the call to action because the call to action imposes itself upon him so classically like in Star Wars what happened to get Luke to go on the adventure well they had to the Storm
08:30 - 09:00 Troopers had to destroy his his house his Homestead his farm and his uncle and Aunt right and so now he's got no choice his whole family and house has been destroyed he's got nowhere to go so of course now he has to go on the adventure so something like this happens right he's forced to accept the call by extraordinary circumstances and so he Ventures out into unknown territory
09:00 - 09:30 which is dangerous and he's not sure what he's going to find there it's full of risks and this is where the adventure really begins and the first thing that happens to him is he faces the threshold Guardian one of many that he will face the threshold Guardian is an archetype which basically is your first obstacle whenever you go on any Journey so I don't know if you've ever encountered this but have you ever gone on like a road trip and you plan out this road trip it's going to be this long uh far away destination that you're going to
09:30 - 10:00 you're excited you get in there you're you're you know you're driving let's say you're using your car you're driving for the first 100 miles and then you get a flat tire so that's your first threshold Guardian is that first flat tire because what that does is that tests whether you really want to go on this trip or not whether you're really serious about it so most people when they face that first threshold Guardian they're defeated and they crawl back to their old existence but the hero he sees that there's a
10:00 - 10:30 bigger Vision here he knows that there's something bigger he's fighting for so he tries to overcome that threshold Guardian maybe he succeeds or maybe he fails if he fails then he needs to go and find a mentor that will teach him how to do battle and train him and maybe give him some secret weapon a magic potion a lightsaber a mirror Shield some kind of
10:30 - 11:00 armor some sort of amulet you know something that will um serve him as a weapon or a tool on this journey for overcoming all the tough obstacles that will be ahead so he finds this mentor and he gets his training and then he goes off to face more threshold Guardians and with this training and of course with the mentor's advice he's able to defeat the threshold Guardians and go further and further and deeper into Uncharted Territory now the mentor this is an
11:00 - 11:30 important Point what is the mentor well of course the mentor is a hero himself from a past generation so he is usually a wise old man or woman who has already gone through this journey herself and now she's there to give advice and training to new Heroes who come about trying to accomplish the same things we'll get back to that later so anyways the hero with the training goes
11:30 - 12:00 off he faces more threshold Guardians he defeats them and finally he has to face the final boss and what is the final boss the final boss is let's say the dragon the dragon which guards the holy grail and the hero is after the Holy Grail so he's just not on this adventure for a lark he's on this adventure because he's been promised that there's something valuable at the end of this journey for him that is what we call the Holy Grail or the elixir of
12:00 - 12:30 life or he's trying to save the Damsel in Distress and she's the holy grail and she's of course behind the dragon so he has to defeat the dragon usually what happens is that the first encounter with the dragon this is like the final boss in the video game there are minor bosses before the final boss but then the final boss is a really tough one and when you first face the final boss you usually fail you have to go back and lick your wounds
12:30 - 13:00 and really rethink your strategy so the hero does that and this here leads to the most important aspect psychologically speaking of the entire Journey which is what's called entering the belly of the whale this is where the Fe the hero has to now face himself he has to really rethink his whole life and his whole approach to this journey and he has to face his own inner demons because he recognized is that the things that are holding him
13:00 - 13:30 back from successfully defeating the final boss is his own inner demons and weaknesses and fears so that's really where the war gets waged on the inside so he goes he turns inside he faces himself he conquers his inner demons that's the hardest point in the journey once he gets past that now he's free and he can go and he can fight the dragon defeat the Dragon and get the Holy
13:30 - 14:00 Grail now an interesting thing happens when he gets the Holy Grail there is a sort of 180 Dee reversal in his understanding of what the Holy Grail was all about originally he thought that he would go and he would defeat this Dragon get the holy grail and then be live happily ever after because he would now have this this you know this prize he would have all the gold or all the jewels or something like that and that now that would make him happy but as
14:00 - 14:30 soon as he reaches the Grail and he puts his hands on it he realizes that the journey was not really about the Grail The Journey was about who he became in order to get the Grail and that that is really what the Grail is and so in a sense he surrenders the physical material Grail the treasure that's not important anymore and he finds his peace and his happiness in who he has become and simply in being the new more powerful version of himself
14:30 - 15:00 that he has become by going on this whole journey in a sense this is a journey to find himself and so he's found himself and at that point The Grail becomes insignificant the real Grail is finding yourself and so he takes the Grail both the physical one and the immaterial one and now he returns home back to his tribe or to his village or town to share the less lesons that he's
15:00 - 15:30 learned but of course the irony here is that the the tribe cannot comprehend his lessons because they have not gone on this journey themselves and because they are stuck in complacency and they are stuck in stuck in group thinking and so when he tries to communicate and share the lessons with his tribe it falls on deaf ears and so the hero then retires and he
15:30 - 16:00 now is there and available to any new hero who from the tribe decides to accept a new call as part of a new generation of Heroes and now the old hero is available as a mentor to mentor and train and guide the new younger Heroes should they arise but that's a rare thing because very few people from the
16:00 - 16:30 tribe really want to be heroes they're comfortable living in their mundane ordinary existence and so in a sense the circle completes itself and that is the hero's journey as described by Joseph cell Joseph Campbell very interesting is very interesting to to study Joseph Campbell and how he arrived at the hero's journey and his formulations of it he was a mythologist and he studied a lot of mythological Traditions from
16:30 - 17:00 cultures around the entire Globe across various eras and generations and he disc discovered these consistent threads and patterns throughout all the mythologies of human beings whether it was from Africa or from Asia or from Europe or from anywhere and this is what he found is that there's the hero's journey it's always described in slightly different language and it looks different you're fighting different
17:00 - 17:30 Monsters uh there's different types of mentors and there's different threshold Guardians and the Holy Grail is always different but in the end the structure here is the same and this structure is very important for you to understand for your life because this is the structure of human life in a sense but it goes deeper than just that because the real journey and this is what most people miss and this is why I wanted to shoot this whole episode is to not just to tell you about the
17:30 - 18:00 physical journey of fighting dragons and monsters you know about that you've watched plenty of movies where that has happened and you've probably heard about the hero's journey already but what you probably don't really know is that the real journey is all done on the inside that's the key takeaway that I want you to learn here Joseph Campbell derived the core of the hero's journey from Vidant Vidant is a Hindu philosophy of
18:00 - 18:30 non-duality it's one of the oldest spiritual traditions and philosophies that we have it's several thousand years old over two or 3 thousand years old some of the earliest written texts in Sanskrit from India that's where he derived it from and what is Vidant about Vidant is about the pursuit of Enlightenment what I want you to get here is that all the external journeys of Heroes are just a
18:30 - 19:00 metaphor for the internal Journey towards Consciousness and Enlightenment so when you see movies or comic books superheroes uh TV shows you're reading novels and you see all these great Heroes men and women who seem Valiant and they're fighting against forces of Good and Evil right they're fighting
19:00 - 19:30 evil they are the force of good and you think like yeah that's that's a hero that's kind of how I should be understand that all of that is metaphor in reality there is no outside battle there are no outside monsters and there is no outside evil the battle the monsters and the evil is you it's not anything other or separate from you it's you
19:30 - 20:00 you are on a journey to fight yourself what you see in the comic books and in the movies these are childish caricatures metaphors that we have confused for the true inner spiritual journey and that Journey basically amounts to you taking a stand in your life on one critical issue and here's what that is the issue of siding with ego or
20:00 - 20:30 siding with truth this is very important you're going to have to make this choice in your life and it will be made whether you make it consciously or not it will be made by default if you don't know that you're making it the choice is between will you serve your time in this life serving e go or pursuing the truth with a capital
20:30 - 21:00 T that's basically what human life boils down to and that's what the hero's journey boils down to what is a hero a hero is someone who chooses truth over ego and everybody else who's not a hero why are they ordinary why do we not talk about them or really care about them because they're just part of the crowd and the crowd always serves
21:00 - 21:30 ego never serving the truth that is the fundamental choice because what evil is is evil is literally selfishness or ego and so in the degree to which the hero is good is the degree to which he breaks loyalty with ego and he rejects it and this is a very difficult thing to do
21:30 - 22:00 this is one of the most counterintuitive moves you could make in your life is this this choice of Truth over ego because you know what's going to happen when you choose truth at first it might seem like oh well Leo that's pretty easy of course let's just all choose truth not so fast because when you choose truth are you prepared for the consequences of what will happen when
22:00 - 22:30 the truth butts heads with ego and what if there's a really fundamental conflict there in the sense that you can't have both you can't have yourself and the truth if you want the full truth you have to give up yourself completely or if you want to hang on to yourself then you can never get the truth so when it really comes to a head like
22:30 - 23:00 that what are you going to choose see most people are quick to choose the truth before they recognize the full consequences of what that means because they think that they can choose the truth and honor their selfishness at the same time but you can't do that if you do that you become the villain not the hero the villain is who maintains the status quo
23:00 - 23:30 selfishness evil that's all it is evil is not some metaphysical Force out there it's not some dragon or some Demon it's simply selfishness it's you it's yourself it's everything you do to Serve Yourself agenda that's what villain is and you are the villain make no mistake about it the villain is not living in some other country he's not some president or ruler he's yourself he is the person who has abandoned Truth for
23:30 - 24:00 ego and he serves to represent the status quo of society and of culture if you take a look at all these movies and all these novels that talk about heroes what do you see you see the hero battling usually what some villain who represents what the status quo or the existing social order because the existing social order is always serving the ego it doesn't care about the truth
24:00 - 24:30 so that's the that's the defining characteristic of a hero and that's why we hold Heroes as as remarkable and uh noteworthy people is because they have summoned something higher within themselves that allows them to pursue the truth whereas most people cannot do that they shrink at that challenge that's a very big challenge
24:30 - 25:00 and that's the decision that you are being left to make in your life but we'll come back to that let me also talk about what the Holy Grail is what is the Holy Grail the Holy Grail is not treasure it's not some sexy damsel and distress that you get to uh go start a family with it's the truth or God or Enlightenment or Consciousness all all these things are synonymous with the Holy
25:00 - 25:30 Grail and the truth or Enlightenment or God or Consciousness is fundamentally intangible so you can't cling it grab it hold on to it put it in your bank account you can't buy a house with it you can't rule an Empire with it you see that's why most villains don't care about the truth because the villain wants power why power because power allows him to serve the self more better
25:30 - 26:00 you see you can't serve the self with truth with God you can serve the self with power though and the villain because he's chosen ego over truth doesn't want the Holy Grail he will do everything to try to besch and destroy the Holy Grail taint the Holy Grail convince people that there is no Holy Grail so the hero has to go fight the villain in order to let
26:00 - 26:30 the truth shine forth so to speak upon the people because the villain usually tries to hold back the truth from the people so that's where you get into this Cosmic battle between good and evil between truth and ego see it's very important that you understand that there is nothing external to be fought in life there are no demons out there that you are figh
26:30 - 27:00 people get so confused by this because I think that even though in our modern Consciousness there is the idea of the hero's journey people understand it that's why people love watching all these superhero movies and so forth they like to see the good guy Prevail over the villains but really uh this deludes a lot of audiences because I don't think they really understand what the journey is about the journey is not materialistic it is not about conquering some monster or stopping some plague or
27:00 - 27:30 some disease or stopping some terrorists or defeating some Nazis that's all metaphor it's just metaphor you got to see what the metaphor is telling you the metaphor is telling you that you need to go on an inner spiritual journey you you you and uh the sad part here is is is that people are so confused about this whole thing is that they' spent half
27:30 - 28:00 their life diddling around half their life is already over and they haven't even accepted the call they haven't even begun their Journey on the inside and they trick themselves with perhaps telling themselves that oh I I am on a journey already Leo but really you're on some materialistic Journey you're chasing a wild goose so if you fancy yourself as on a real uh
28:00 - 28:30 hero's journey to pursue money or Career Success or a family this is not a real hero's journey in a sense it's actually a trap and a distraction you've misunderstood what the hero's journey is about you're no hero in doing that you're actually very ordinary and actually that is the path that produces villains so by taking the materialistic path you will become a villain this is guaranteed you will become a villain because you you can't help yourself because the only person
28:30 - 29:00 that's not going to become a villain is the one who spiritually purifies himself through the process of going inside and becoming a hero by attaining the Holy Grail that's the only way see or you're just going to be part of the crowd part of the unknowing masses the herd of uh Humanity who doesn't have an opinion about anything and commits evil anyways simply by um by following the villain's
29:00 - 29:30 orders see the majority of people aren't really heroes or villains they are just enablers and co-conspirators of the villain the majority of people because when you're unconscious you don't know any better you're going to do what the villain tells you because hey you're just as selfish as the villain basically maybe a little bit less so maybe you're not going to go to his extremes to feed his ego but you're
29:30 - 30:00 still out there feeding your ego mostly and so you're going to basically resonate with whatever the villain is telling you to do so he's going to be your leader and you're going to be a a little minion of the villain and you're going to be fighting and demonizing all the heroes Who come out of the woodwork so what I want you to recognize that for your whole life basically you've been refusing the call and you haven't even been conscious of of the fact that you've been refusing the
30:00 - 30:30 call the call for a deep inner spiritual journey has been presenting itself to you in many ways but you weren't clear that this was the case and so you've been refusing it you've been hesitating you've been scared you had a lot of good reasons why not to go on this journey you didn't even understand this this journey was being presented to you or you confused it for an external materialistic
30:30 - 31:00 Journey also understand that the real heroes are not the athletes the celebrities the business tycoons and the politicians these are the false Heroes the real heroes are the Zen Masters the yogis the mystics and the Saints the Hermits the people who get almost no recognition at all they are the real heroes they are the ones who actually went on a true through inner spiritual journey and they actually found the holy
31:00 - 31:30 grail and the Holy Grail has made them humble and modest so they don't go flashing it in your face and even if you if they did you still wouldn't get it because to get the subtlety of the Holy Grail you need to actually go on the journey and let it transform you before you can even just conceptually understand what the
31:30 - 32:00 Zen master and the yogi are talking about you already need to be on the journey they need to in a sense be preaching to the choir you need to be coming to them rather them than them coming to you so why isn't it that everyone is a hero why are heroes rare precisely because it requires breaking loyalty with yourself and this is the thing that is common amongst all people
32:00 - 32:30 amongst all the crowds is that they are fundamentally loyal to themselves that's what pragmatism entails and that's what most life is about is about pragmatism most people are not very principled people they just go with the flow and they do the thing that serves her ego the quickest and the easiest that's what they do and to actually turn your back on
32:30 - 33:00 yourself in a self this is the ultimate um sacrilege or heresy as far as Society is concerned because all of society is a conspiracy so that uh we serve the self together you see because if we try to serve the self in isolation by ourselves alone each of us then we would start to notice that hey I'm serving the self
33:00 - 33:30 this isn't right I should stop doing this but together when we come together we can create a mass delusion that serving the self is normal we can normalize each other in the same way that a bunch of Nazis coming together being Nazis together can become blind to the evils of their own actions and their own selfishness you see and so that's what Society has done to you and you're a part of that whole mechanism you not somebody else you this is critical for you to
33:30 - 34:00 grasp the hardest thing you will ever do in life is to make that critical decision to say no to yourself and to say yes to Truth at the cost of yourself as soon as you do this you will become an outcast you will also be on your way to becoming a true hero but you will generally be demonized and isolated by the rest of society because this is a
34:00 - 34:30 big no no because you're breaking the secret conspiracy to serve the self in practice accepting the Call to Adventure is very difficult I want you to pay extra special attention in movies and novels from now on when you read about heroes about this critical phase where the hero accepts the call and at first refuses the call because this is very
34:30 - 35:00 critical at first when I read about this in the hero's journey from Jose Campbell I thought like well why is it necessary that the hero plays koi why can't the hero just want to go out on this Grand Adventure but that's just not psychologically true because most of us as adventurers as we think we are we're not nearly as that adventurous really we're very pragmatic and lazy and we're very risk averse so the reason it's so rare that
35:00 - 35:30 people accept the the call is because to accept the call you have to be sort of a romantic because if you do a a a sort of cool-headed rational calculation and Analysis of whether you should or shouldn't accept the call if you do a sort of pros and cons list of accepting or refusing the call you'll see that there are a 100 excellent reasons why you should not go on this adventure
35:30 - 36:00 because of all the risks and dangers and all the bad stuff that will happen to you and why you should stay put why you should M maintain the status quo be part of the tribe not shake the boat so if you're just a totally pragmatic person you will always choose the status quo you will never accept the call so the hero has to be a bit of a romantic he also has to be a risk taker because
36:00 - 36:30 this choice is fundamentally uncertain you're going from a place of certainty and security to a place of uncertainty and insecurity and this of course conjures up fear so you have to have the faith to see that that will be worth it in the long run another reason it's difficult is because you got to shed a many of your intoxications so your culture and your tribe has intoxicated you you see with all sorts of
36:30 - 37:00 addictions addictions to entertainment to sex to drugs to alcohol to Coffee to food to Fat to salt to television to internet to social media all of these are intoxications specifically designed by Society to be tools of this conspiracy of ego over truth and so you as a member of this Society now have to reach escape
37:00 - 37:30 velocity to break out of the orbit of the gravitational pull of this selfish community that you're a part of this unconscious Community it's sort of like you have this gravitational wave of unconsciousness that you're trying to break through and it's really hard because you have to undo all your intoxications most Heroes never even accept the call because they're just too intoxicated by Modern
37:30 - 38:00 Life and uh the more technologically advanced our society gets the more powerful our intoxicants get and the harder it is to go on a hero's journey that's why there's something romantic and simple about the hero's journey because we recognize that our technology is doing more harm than good to us another reason that it's so difficult is because the peer pressure so you're going to have a lot of peer pressure
38:00 - 38:30 from your family from your colleagues from your friends all pulling you back down into everyday mundane existence they're going to tell you what are you crazy going on this journey off to some new Galaxy to fight some drag space dragons that's some dangerous risky stuff why would you be crazy enough to want to do that don't do that that's stupid stay here you're safe you're comfortable will take care of you and you have to say no
38:30 - 39:00 to that which means you have to risk being ostracized you have to risk um stepping on some people's toes and uh the other reason that it's so difficult to accept the call is because it requires a vision you have to have a vision of what you're going after you have to see the Holy Grail in your mind eye long before you actually see it in
39:00 - 39:30 real life in your hands you'll never hold it in your hands until you see it in your mind's eye and most people are very bad at visioning they can't Vision consistently they can't see that far ahead they're myopic and so they never accept the call and in fact they think of people who do accept the call as being foolish and stupid but that's only because they lack the
39:30 - 40:00 vision why do we admire Heroes as a culture and Why Do Heroes make us emotional for example when you see a Great Hero in a movie his actions can bring you to tears why is that have you ever wondered it's because the hero shows us our Highest Potential in that act of doing something something heroic we see for a glimmer in
40:00 - 40:30 ourselves what our life should be about it should be about not doing heroic acts That's The Superficial material Level I'm talking about the deeper level here our mission is to spiritually purify ourselves to go on this inner journey to tap into everything we've got and you're going to need everything you've
40:30 - 41:00 got every ounce of strength and courage you can muster to go on this inner spiritual journey it's much more scary than going on some external adventure to fight some monsters facing yourself facing the monster that is you that's the scariest thing of all it's also very tricky because this monster of yourself you're fighting yourself when you're fighting yourself you're self uses all sorts of tricks and slights of hand and self-deceptions against you you see it's
41:00 - 41:30 difficult because you can't really discriminate which parts of yourself are good and which are bad which have to be fought and which not have to be fought you're in Conflict you're confused in a sense it's like the monster has you know slapped some mud in your face you can't see you can't think straight you can't see straight you're fighting yourself it's very difficult it's confusing it's disorienting it's very counterintuitive because you never think that you need to fight yourself in life and that you
41:30 - 42:00 would be your own greatest enemy so for that you will need to muster um a lot of strength and courage that's why Heroes make us emotional why must the hero struggle you might wonder you know why isn't it just easy for the hero to go and obtain the Holy Grail why does it have to be this epic battle with dragons and threshold Guardians and all this difficulty well because you're opposed by the
42:00 - 42:30 status quo first of all so your entire environment is conspiring against you because when you rise up and you embody your Highest Potential that means everyone else will see that that's possible and that won't rub them the wrong way I mean the right way that'll rub them the wrong way because that means that hey they have to admit to themselves they have to be conscious now of what they've been repressing they have to acknowledge their own
42:30 - 43:00 villainy and they don't want to do that they don't want to acknowledge their own selfishness the whole point of society is to be a conspiracy for us not to have to acknowledge our own selfishness so that we can get away with being selfish that's the whole point so Society in a sense is against you because Society is all about loyalty to the self and uh a lot of it is about power see what is power about power is about preservation of the
43:00 - 43:30 self a truly secure person never needs power an insecure person needs more power to preserve the self see so this is why there's struggle there's also struggle because you're coming to terms with yourself you've never really met yourself before you just assume you have so when you discover that actually you don't know who you are what you you are why you are the way you
43:30 - 44:00 are that in of itself will be a struggle just to come to terms with that let alone to start to change that why doesn't the tribe just accept the hero's lessons so why is it the case that when the hero finally returns back home with the Holy Grail that his tribe isn't just immediately all cured precisely because the only way that you can really develop this understanding is by going on the journey
44:00 - 44:30 yourself this is a very important point to understand the point is that understanding here is not intellectual understanding this is not something that a hero can just write in a book and then you pick up the book and you read it and say oh yeah of course now I have assimilated all the lessons of the hero no the way it's going to work is if a hero writes it down in a book and they do you read the book and you say oh my God this is the dumbest thing I've ever seen this hero is stupid and you throw the book Into the Fire and you go off
44:30 - 45:00 and you join your friends in drinking partying whoring around and all the other stuff that you do as part of your tribe the only way you will understand what the hero wrote In the book is by actually going and encountering all the obstacles that the hero encountered to learn these lessons these are hard one lessons and the ultimate Holy Grail is much too subtle and much too
45:00 - 45:30 Grand to be communicated through any kind of symbols it's literally incommunicable it's nons symbolic which means that you cannot put it in symbol form which means that you can't utter it you can't write it down you can't schematize it you can't model it you can't subject it to Scientific analysis which is why science will not solve this
45:30 - 46:00 problem for you you see Finding meaning and happiness in your life is not a scientific problem it's a human spiritual problem which requires that you go through this process that's in a sense why you're alive you see you're not alive to breed and to enjoy yourself with carnal pleasures and to become successful that's not why you're alive you're not
46:00 - 46:30 alive to work either you're alive so that you can experience the truth of reality of what life is of what reality is that is the Holy Grail but that's a very big thing it also turns out to be a very paradoxical and counterintuitive and subtle thing and the only only way to really appreciate the subtlety of it is to go on this journey and to make all the
46:30 - 47:00 mistakes and then learn your lessons that way so that life or reality teaches you through the School of Hard Knocks which is why you can't Outsource the hero's journey to anybody you can't get your friend to do it for you your mom and dad can't do it for you some Corporation can't do it for you despite maybe what they would advertise see and why do mentors become
47:00 - 47:30 Hermits why are they usually depicted as these little old men living in little Huts far off from the tribe it's because the Holy Grail leaves them speechless that's its power it's so powerful and Grand that you would never believe it if it was told you so the wisest mentors keep their mouths
47:30 - 48:00 shut unless you come to them and you really ask for their advice and even then when they give you advice they tend to be fairly tight lipped and they might frustrate you with that sort of Zen approach you know you come to a mentor and then you wonder why is this Mentor not just giving me all the answers why is he forcing me to to to do all this hard work to to derive all these answers for myself that's not because the mentor is
48:00 - 48:30 an or he's just some you know crotchy old man not not because of that it's because he understands that the only way you can understand is by going through the Journey yourself and he doesn't want you to accidentally fool yourself into a false sense of theoretical understanding intellectual understanding without the experience to back it up so he's going to push you and force you to actually go on the journey
48:30 - 49:00 for yourself so he's going to try to be light with his answers he's just going to give you hints because he knows that he can't actually hand over the Holy Grail to you even though he's got it he's got the Holy Grail right here and yet he knows that you have to go through all those threshold Guardians go fight that damn Dragon defeat the dragon and only then after L risking life and limb only then can you have the Holy Grail too and so the mentor generally he's happy he's peaceful he retires off by himself
49:00 - 49:30 also because he doesn't want to be part of this circus act this Carnival that is the co the conspiracy of society you see he doesn't really want to be part of that game because that's just a conspiracy to serve ego and he has rejected ego he's accepted the truth and once he's got the truth he doesn't need Society anymore not really he can live within it he can mingle inside of it but it doesn't really excite him that
49:30 - 50:00 much so now you start to understand some some of the spiritual subtleties of the hero's journey it's quite a profound and deep framework what are the takeaways here practically for your life firstly I want you to understand that Society will not lead you to Salvation or to happiness or to meaning these are things you have to find on your own you cannot Outsource this because this is a spiritual problem
50:00 - 50:30 it's a problem of not understanding what reality is you can't get this without the Holy Grail this is what the Holy Grail is about that's why it's holy it's the elixir of immortality is what it really is and you'll be shocked when you when you get F far far enough into this journey you'll be shocked at how literal some of these descriptions are sometimes it'll feel like you're actually fighting a dragon within yourself sometimes you'll see like oh
50:30 - 51:00 yeah today I I really faced a threshold guardian or I really met my mentor or once you get to the very end and you actually get a taste a little taste of the uh elixir of immortality you will discover holy it's actually an Elixir for immortality it's not just uh poetry this is real this is literal it's the Elixir to immortality that's available to
51:00 - 51:30 you but see do you recognize that can you see what that really means can you read between the lines it's really too good to be true that's part of the reason that so few people go on the hero's journey they they just can't believe that it could be that good and it is but the problem is that it takes some investment first you know that goodness comes at the end not at the
51:30 - 52:00 beginning the second takeaway for you is to understand that this here is a process this is a framework and you can save yourself a lot of time by understanding the pr the framework and process and learn from the lessons of past Generations you don't need to reinvent the wheel this is how your life is going to unfold either you will accept the hero's journey or you won't and if you accept it you will go through these characteristic phases they're all going to be there you will recognize
52:00 - 52:30 them perhaps more so in retrospect than from the beginning but the more you can see it from the beginning the better because it'll be easier for you because then you can remind yourself when you're in this process on this journey and you face a threshold guardian and you get your ass kicked by that threshold Guardian you can tell yourself oh yeah that was just a threshold Guardian I shouldn't worry too much cuz I know that I'm supposed to get my ass kicked by the first threshold Guardian that just means I need to go find a better Mentor get more training and then come back and face him again see and in this way you
52:30 - 53:00 keep yourself on the path whereas if you don't understand the overarching big picture of the path then what's going to happen is that you're going to you're going to get discouraged and you're just going to quit when you face that first or second threshold guardian or when the dragon kicks your ass for the first time you know you see that dragon and scares the out of you and you just run away and you never look at it again but when you understand the overarching big picture here you understand that oh I see the dragon it
53:00 - 53:30 scares the out of me and what that means is I got to go into the belly of the whale and face my own inner demons and deepest fears oh now I understand how to defeat the dragon you see so this is a road map here that's being laid out to you so that you can see how to get from point a point A to point Z point a being your mundane everyday existence right now Point Z being Enlightenment or the Holy Grail the elixir of immortality the next
53:30 - 54:00 takeaway is that what you really got to do is get to the point where you accept the call 99% of people have not accepted even the call don't mistake how significant this first step of accepting the call is most of your life you've been refusing the call what you got to do is find the thing in you which will make it worthwhile to accept the call and be
54:00 - 54:30 very explicit and clear about what that is I don't know what that is for you maybe you got to contemplate your own death maybe you got to become conscious of the shortness of your own life or you got to get dissatisfied with your current existence to such an extent that you see that it's unsustainable it'll never lead you to happiness or meaning and then once that becomes clear to you then you can make a clear-cut decision say okay I'm accepting the call and all the costs that come with it
54:30 - 55:00 don't think of this adventure as just a Carefree fun Lark no this involves some very serious emotional labor which is why you need to be explicit about your reasons for why you're going on this journey why it's important to you why it's the most important thing in your life and you got to be clear with yourself that you're willing to take some sacrifices and to pay the cost and to do the emotional heavy lifting other wise you will have no chance in hell of doing
55:00 - 55:30 that and the final takeaway is to realize that really what you've been secretly craving your whole life is to give your life to something bigger than yourself you just haven't discovered how to do that you've been hesitating you've been looking around at all your friends and your tribe and you've been seeing that they've been
55:30 - 56:00 giving you signals not to do it and so you've held back and so one of two things will happen either you will keep hesitating and you will hesitate for the rest of your life and you will stall and you will die with regrets knowing at the end of your life that you hesitated and that you didn't really go on the journey you were meant to go on or at some point you will wise up you will say no to all
56:00 - 56:30 the peer pressure and you will go and you will carve your own path through the Dark Forest face the threshold Guardians defeat the dragon obtain the holy grail and retire in peace knowing that you fulfilled the mission of your life and with that I want to leave you with one last thing and that is a ha cou by an old zen master a true hero someone who has done exactly what I
56:30 - 57:00 talked about here and his name is rokan and here's what he says the village has disappeared in the evening mist and the path is hard to follow walking through the Pines I return to my lonely Hut