The End of the Hero’s Journey

I have had many talks over the years with one on one clients about the hero’s journey. The archetypal narrative that weaves through our books, movies and even our own spiritual journeys. I have even discussed the differences of the heroines journey (think Alice and Dorothy, falling in to their alternate reality). But in the classic telling the characters are often younger, not quite sure who they are, and some initial spark, or accident in the case of the heroine, leads them to embark on a journey of personal transformation.

This way of telling stories is compelling and still has merit, but society is shaped by the dominant narratives used in our art and media. Children’s and even adults minds’ are molded by the narratives they consume. Movies, books and even personal storytelling weave our understanding of reality. I was listening to a podcast (forgive me for forgetting what or who) a while back that talked about how ancient or more nature based cultures had other narratives beyond the hero’s journey but in the modern western world we have mostly the one.

This shapes the way we attempt to interact with life. I see this in my own life and definitely in the world of personal transformation, and spiritual growth. We journey to discover who we are, we meet friends along the way, we face challenges and in the end we come home with a vision. And then…

Well thats where it ends. what happens next. Happily ever after? Well not really. Not in real life. What is the story after the hero’s journey, and where is the cultural artistic narratives to help mold our understandings of this? While a whole other article could be expressed for what other narratives could be told, for the sake of focus and clarity Im focusing on the one that follows the end of the hero’s journey. The return and integration.

The story of after is important because currently in the healing and spiritual space we have many people who try to find the journey again and again. Dismantling their lives and keeping us young in a way we don’t need. It keeps development and mastery limited. Of course you can embark on change and self discovery any time. Your never to late and in a culture that doesnt have deep transformative rights of passage we may often be doing a “journey of self discovery” much later in life. But once we have done them, we need cultural guidance of what comes next.

How do we take the visions and embody them? How do we integrate them into community and society? I feel like the biggest area where vision is nurtured in our modern world is entrepreneurship and art. Both very different and sometimes overlapping. But we need a wider narrative for how to nurture all kinds of personal visions.

Our world is in the midst of so much breakdown but in that ,there is space for the new. This new shouldn’t match the old and the framework we use to tell stories is a major player in creating what is next. In some cultures vision quests for young men were crucial parts of society. They were so important they were taken knowing some would not survive the quest but when they that did came back it was to bring their vision home not just themselves. It wasn’t a test of survival and courage it was a chance to access deep wisdom to bring back to community. (no I am not an expert on this so this is a loose idea on things I have read and understand)

It’s time for us to collectively take all our visions and dreams and start to narrow them down to what we really can nurture and bring to life. This is my personal season and I invite this for you too.

This could look like spending time daily with your own dream and finding small ways to breath life in to it. But I also hope that it includes a wider scope of creating a new world for others. I do believe that by expressing our own unique personal path and desires we contribute to the collective but by also daring to imagine a wider vision for your community, or our wider world, you can also invite in the opportunity to operate from a new story entirely. You can mold your personal creations to a model that you would want your community and our world to operate under.

So let’s say you want to create abundance and build the house you saw in your dream, but also you want to live in a world where money exchange is mutually beneficial and sustainability and community spaces are prioritized. You could look at merging the two. How can my own abundance begin to operate under those principals, how can my home be more sustainably built and create space for gathering?

Because we focus so much on the journey of transformation and the after story is almost just a 3 minutes scene or a half chapter, we don’t feel the same empowerment in the day to day. We don’t feel as valuable in the moments that bring life forward. It’s hard to also infuse the same level of commitment and inspiration in to daily life as it feels like “the mundane.”

But the daily activities is the grand adventure of life. The ways in which we nourish a vision and honor a commitments to our journey is the real magic. We need to tell this story and to live this story more fully. I see it in less formal content— Youtube’s of people just living their life, romanticizing the every day content, etc. This is a start and speaks to the desire within people to have different narratives.

Let us together gather a vision for what can come next. Let us all learn to cultivate the spiritual journey in the small, being able to maintain our clarity and hone our connection.

I will be exploring more ways to do this in my work in the future and currently help people to do this in one to one readings and mentorships. I am excited to go deeper in community with this vision.

Tell me what vision you plan to nurture.