Hero’s Journey – Step 6 – The Road of Trials

Trials and temptation are always around in life. While the hero is within the magical place, learning lessons for life, these are hampered by old ways of thinking and the temptations that were an every day thing will become one’s down fall.

I could end the post here, because this is the take home message in a nut shell. But what does it look like in real life. I will pick some scenarios from real life. Because these trials come more than once and in many form.

Here I will break down what these trials are in the next post on this blog. This may be just one step in the Hero’s Journey. But this step is complex. I see this being played out in every day where I work. Even in the educational groups we use to help those with addiction address the trials we have in life.

During this time the Hero is metaphorically Dead to the world. While in the belly of the beast the loved ones at home and the world that the Hero knows does not know what the Hero is going through, likewise, the Hero does not know what is truly happening in the world. The Hero becomes absorbed in all that is happening to them and what they are learning. So to all that knows the Hero does not know what the Hero is going through and will never know what the Hero has learnt.

There is never a Hero that walks alone. A Hero always travels as a team, with others, even if that team is not wanted at first.

“The battles that count aren’t the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself, the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us, that’s where it’s at.” Jesse Owens”

The worst assumption we make about our self is that there is nothing wrong about our Values, Beliefs and Behaviour.

When we look at all the stories that do follow the steps of the Hero’s Journey. We will see that the Hero needs to change them self to reach the prize and so doing change the world around them in the process. Or their proception of the world around them. We can see with the story of Luke Skywalker and Anican Skywalker in Star Wars. Anican uses his power to change the world around him to match his inside, where as, Luke changes his inside to affect the world around him. Luke fights Darth Vader several times with his Sword and fails each time. Only when he throws his sword away and uses his controlled emotions and behaviour he wins the fight and saves his father from him self.

This happens in many stories where the hero portray this pattern. Likewise, the old Myths and Ledgens follow this pattern to instruct the reader that changing the self is far more important than forcing the world to change around you. If enough people change in the same way the world does follow and becomes the world you have helped change.  This is the battle we must fight as the temptations of the world leads us astray and tamps us to take the easy path by feeding our sensations which are forever hungry. Alternative, the Hero teaches us that happiness within does not need the the sensory perceptions to be feeding. The sensors that we have are tools to be used, not to be enslaved by them. 

Here is the Belly of the beast, This safe and magical place of learning is where the trials teach the Hero to become the best version of them self. In saying this the Hero’s life is investigated and all their values and beliefs are challenged.