Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
For many of you, this is the first time you have been introduced to Joseph Campbell.
On the surface, his work seems to be simply an outline for a screenplay,but it’s much
more than that.
Joseph Campbell’s philosophy is a map
of your spiritual landscape,
and it’s designed
not for a large theoretical framework,
but it’s designed as a roadmap for your individual
spiritual journey.
The idea of the warrior phase
is that it
is there for us to keep in mind that we are no longer children,
and that the journey is going to require a strength,
and an endurance that we have yet to access.
The spirit of the warrior refuses to accept…
that his or hers only motivation is fear.
It’s this understanding that our whole lives
have been motivated
by fear.
We’re trained not to look at the world…
from an inner strength and an inner confidence, but,
that we should be afraid of the world,
that we’re restricted with these ideas of political correctness,
open-mindedness, and understanding.
Your only concern as a warrior should be in overcoming the enemy
in complete and total victory. The demons of fear must be completely destroyed.
When the Divine calls us to our particular Hero’s Journey,
it is this quality of the warrior,
this quality that requires us to be marginalized
from our culture and our family,
that keeps us
from accepting the divine call,
and this is what Joseph Campbell refers to as
the Refusal of the Call.
One of the greatest difficulties I had to overcome,
with the idea of this warrior phase,
is that, there were people in authoritative positions that literally acted as threshold
guardians,
as gatekeepers, trying to restrict my movement.
It was as if they needed me to still be a child.
After many failures and fits of rage,
I finally developed a quiet resolve
that allowed me to...
To stand against and defeat the coercive nature of the gatekeepers.
If you were to ask me
where and how and how you would start your story,
I would say, the first thing you would need to do
is you need to trust that your dreams are every bit as real as reality.
Ah, I would tell you that the portents that demand your awareness,…uh
… have been there from the beginning of your life, and their even now speaking to
you,
and I would tell you to hold on to any sacred item that has been given to you,
no matter how small or insignificant it might seem,
and I would tell you to watch for the divine guides,
both inner and outer,
that are there to help you…um
…when you least expect it.