The Journey
The way we grow and develop follows a loose pattern, that is in literature called the Hero’s Journey (by Joseph Campbell).
~ It is a concept to describe people’s self-perception when they are in a growth process. ~
It’s the process that unfolds as a person pushes themselves out of their comfort zone and into the adventure of developing.
If you want to know more about the Hero's Journey and its stages, check out this summary.
There are certain parts of life that trigger that process. If you set your life up to include them, it will almost naturally follow the Hero’s Journey. These parts together is what I call the Human Journey.
Why Create Your Own Human Journey at all?
For one, it leads to consciousness evolution we talked about on the last page. If you haven’t read it yet, you can check it out here.
But disregarding that, the Human Journey has benefits itself, too.
It actually has a huge fun and freedom part to it. Because you can decide where that journey goes and how it will get you there. One of the first tasks of your journey is roughly determining where you want to go. We are going to talk about that in detail later on. But it means that you get to choose what you want to have as a purpose, as a goal and as the activity you are going to engage with down the road. You can choose it based on your own passions, on the things you love, on what makes you happy.
When we are on a Human Journey, we come alive. Humans feel alive when we experience, improve, connect, contribute. We want to feel passion for what we doing and pride about the results of our doing. Without that, we stop experiencing life fully and start becoming more numb.
If you have never experienced how it is to be on your own journey like that, it’s hard to describe the feeling. At best, I could say, when you don’t have an own journey, you feel like a passive spectator to a stream of random events. Like a plant with eyes, watching what those around are doing. And when you then embark on your own journey, suddenly you feel all these emotions, you have all these new impressions. Suddenly, you can do something, something of your own will and desire. Suddenly, there are activities worth investing effort in, people worth connecting with, a dream worth building towards and a self worth being proud of. It’s like someone grabs you by the shoulders and rips you out of the grey empty cage into a world full of color. You are shocked and amazed at the same time as you can feel the wind on your skin and the sun on your face. And you find all these wondrous things to explore and all these paths that lead you to lands even more amazing. And you start meeting people who are alive like that and have their own paths, too. All of this feels in itself worth experiencing.
And at the same time, while there is suddenly so much going on, as you continue further down your own path, you become calmer and more confident. You start to understand your inner world better, your own perception and thoughts and your emotional world. You become more centered.
One of the things that brings us out of our calm most is that we don’t know where we are going and what we are supposed to do at where we are. But as you gain a better understanding of your own storyline as it unfolds before you, that fear starts disappearing and a sense of trust in the world and in yourself emerges, that allows you to be calm and focused in the present moment, because there is essentially nothing to worry about.
~ When we immerse ourselves in our journey, we head towards our own inner strength and our innate greatness. ~
One of the most outstanding parts of the journey is becoming the person it makes you.
If you stay true to your road, that helps you build your inner strength. And it allows you to develop your own innate greatness. Not some forced upon you outside greatness, not some outside opinion on what your greatness should look like, but your own character and skills at their best, in the way you define them in your biggest dreams. That is the ultimate result of the journey. The person you become. If you are on your path, you become more of who you are and less of what you should be. And by that you expand to be better and stronger. On your own journey, you don’t change yourself. You become more fully who you really are. You don’t develop new skills, but you become more able to use yourself in the way you want and express your inner resources. You don’t take on new traits, but you discover traits you haven’t seen in yourself before. It’s not about following someone else’s idea of a life path or the ideal person on it. It’s about having your own. That’s why there are not going to be any specific rules on what a Human Journey has to look like. Make your path your own and it will lead you to your own kind of happiness and greatness.
Don’t get me wrong, on a journey there will be obstacles, failures, pain. That comes with being alive. If you have all these high emotions, you also get the low ones. You need them. They are an essential part of the journey. They make you grow. Your response to them will make up the major part of your internal process that takes place on the journey.
And that’s ultimately the choice you have to make. Are you going to refuse the call of your own adventure? There are a lot of people who do. They choose the comfort of numbness over aliveness, because aliveness comes with the hefty price of feeling the highs and the lows and. You are shown your shortcomings and you have to correct yourself over and over again, until you break through your old self.
The people who choose not to take that burden on themselves, you can’t blame them. A part of the journey is struggle and nobody can judge them for wanting to avoid that. There is nothing wrong with wanting to live in comfort. It’s a pleasurable experience. Especially in the modern world, where we don’t need to go on any lengths to survive, so it’s probably the most logical and also the most sane thing you can do. I wouldn’t judge anyone for that decision.
And yet, there are some people who dream bigger. They imagine more. They want a full experience, not a vacation. They crave to grow, to give to others, to connect with life, to feel emotions as deeply as possible. Sometimes it’s hell, but with time it becomes a paradise of its own. To walk on a path like that, it needs courage. Maybe it’s insane. But those people know that they only live so many times. Everyone is going to die, but while you are breathing, it’s your choice if you are going to be numb like you are dead already, or take it all in, the good and the bad, and actually LIVE. It’s the best experience. And the worst. It breeds miracles and surprises, the most pleasurable ones and the most painful ones. It’s a holistic approach to experience.
If you are still reading, there is a good chance you are one of those people. Who can’t just sit and consume all their life. Who actually want to do, grow, give, feel, and see reality with their own eyes.
If you are ready to go on your own journey, be assured that it holds bigger surprise gifts for you in store than you could ever imagine. Once you are at the right path, your life could easily double in terms of experience. Exciting? I know.If you are one of us, I hope we are going to meet one day. Meeting people like that is one of my greatest joys in life. Sitting with those people, it makes a different kind of conversation.
Here you have an overview again of what your own path has the potential to bring you.
Setting this pattern up in your own life can help you:
- feel that life is more meaningful
- grow towards a better, stronger version of yourself
- find your own place, your own purpose
- find inner fulfillment (which is a lasting form of happiness, in contradiction to short-term happiness)
- unleash and express your inner greatness
- find a deeper connection with people and other life around you
How the Human Journey Works
So, what actually is the Human Journey? The journey of a person is triggered by the following things (you don’t necessarily need to have all of them right from the start, a few of them can do it too).
Here they are:
- Purpose:
A meaningful purpose to fulfill, that is uniquely your own. Something you are willing to pursue with all of yourself. Something to work towards that is bigger than yourself.
- Mission:
The path that leads to making your purpose real. This is the journey itself. This is the way, the ups and downs, the goals and challenges that will make you grow.
- Passion:
An innate drive that sets you on fire and gives you energy for your purpose and your mission.
- The Self:
The main character of the story, willing to grow, learn and experience. The self builds itself up during the journey, so that it can fulfill its purpose. The self goes through the mission to find its own greatness and that, in itself, is a goal of the journey.
- Community:
Other people who are pursuing their purpose (this in Wilber’s terms would be span, in contrast to depth), other like-minded individuals who either support your plans or challenge you, not matter which one they do, every one of them offers valuable support.
Especially our supporters often become extremely valuable to us we go on our journey. They go with us through the hardship, are there for us when we need someone, support us, believe in us, even in the times where we can't even believe in ourselves.
The Human Journey Leads to Consciousness Evolution
Creating this pattern for yourself and then following it in everyday life will set you up for achieving your goals better and with more ease. And, as discussed on the last page, it allows you to level up in consciousness in the long term.
How that works?
Higher up stages in consciousness are characterized through a bigger, more accurate view on the world and on yourself. That view can incorporate more perspectives, a better understanding and more compassion on the outside part, and better understanding and control on the inside part.
Developing the outside part works like this: By following your Human Journey, you are working towards a purpose. That, with time, shifts your focus from being primarily on your own self-preservation (which is an attribute of the lower consciousness levels) to focusing more on the bigger picture, your purpose and what you can contribute. You still care about your self-preservation, but for the majority of the time, your focus is on something bigger. That is one way to reach higher consciousness levels and shift your view of the world upwards.
Developing the inside part works like this: Your internal perception also improves as you go up in the consciousness spiral. The Human Journey can help with that, too. The Human Journey itself is a path, a mission, on which you grow. That growth, that constant testing yourself out and growing on it and getting your successes and failures thrown at you and seeing your own improvement and especially that necessity to perform well for your purpose you care so deeply about, all of that is exactly the work you need to put into developing yourself to level up your perception of your inside world.
How to Find and Use the Human Journey in Your Own Life
Now, after we know the parts of the Human Journey and what it can lead us to when we put them together in our life, let’s get practical!
I am going to show you for each part how to use it and also give some ideas on how to find it in your own life, if you currently have no clue.
First, please be aware that the Human Journey is a holistic concept. That means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The “single” parts, are not really single, they are interrelated and when you put them all together, they interlock into a whole. So, if we talk about, for example, community, also think about what you already figured out about the purpose part and how that might relate to what kind of people you want to be around. But you’ll see that more clearly as we go on. Here we go.
Here is an idea on how to use every part and some clues on how to figure them out:
- Purpose:
That’s a question it is perfectly understandable to be afraid to ask: What is my purpose?
So, first, let’s talk about how to use your purpose. Your purpose is the main ingredient in the journey. It is the target you are heading towards, so without it, there would be no journey. That’s why your purpose should be something that inspires you deeply, something that sets you on fire, because during the struggles, your purpose should be the one thing you can look at and say: “I absolutely need to get through this hardship, because…”.
A purpose should be something that you feel is valuable. Something you can be proud of accomplishing. The things we do on a regular basis shape the people we become. A purpose is something you dedicate the biggest junk of your time to. It should be something that, if you do it every day, makes you the person you most want to be.
In terms of the Hero’s Journey: “A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.” - Joseph Campbell
A purpose is a life changer. Having one that is truly compelling and valuable to you can be liberating and a great source of joy and pride. It expands your desires and your triggers for joy to more than your own physical and emotional wellbeing.
When thinking about your purpose, there is one big trap to avoid falling into: Don’t take on as your purpose what other people want to see you do or what you think others see as valuable. Sure, making feeding starving children in Africa your purpose is very noble and probably something society would applaud you for. But if you love sports and you dream of being an inspiration and role model for the people around you through that, then that’s the thing you should do. It has to feel valuable to you personally.
Here is a great question to ask yourself to start figuring out what feels valuable to you: Often, our strongest values become what we missed most in our past. If someone never had enough food in their family during their childhood, they might develop a massive drive to make sure no child ever has to experience that ever again. If someone lacked self-confidence as a child and then they get into sports and they find a player who really resonates with them, and that player is so confident and sure about himself, and the child takes that player on as a role model and it helps them become confident in themselves, they might strive to become such a role model themselves for others in their adulthood.
There is no “right” purpose. There is only what you feel you are here to do and express at your best.
Your purpose is all yours. And when you get into it, you might notice that you are your purpose’s. Dedicating your life to a purpose might seem like a heavy decision, but, wow, is it a spectacular way to live! It doesn’t mean dedicating all of your time to it and not doing anything else. It just means working on that purpose continuously, maybe even as a job. It’s a roof for your life. You should take the time to have fun and explore and relax under it too, but you should always act under it.
A purpose is something that becomes a part of you, like an arm. It’s the secret to fulfillment and lasting happiness.
The question of purpose scares and confuses a lot of people and that’s completely understandable. Because it is such an important question, I am going to make an extra article and a course on how you can find your own answers. As soon as it is released, I will link to it here. You can follow me on Facebook or Instagram if you want to get notified about it right away.
But I won’t let you stand in the rain until then. Here are some questions you can ask yourself right now, that will help you find a first direction. Please be aware that you don’t have to have all the answers from the start. Gather ideas, find out a rough direction you want to go in. Try out a lot. And take time. A purpose isn’t something that has to be crafted in one day.
Questions to think about for discovering your purpose:
- What sets you on fire? What are you passionate about? What makes you come alive? Our joy is like a compass that tries to steer us towards our purpose. When you feel immense joy, that is your internal feedback system called emotions, telling you that you are on the right track.
- What kind of work gives you energy? Normally, work drains our energy, but when we do work that is our purpose, we feel even more energized afterwards.
- What were you doing when you feel happy and content? What are the specific situations? Is there maybe a pattern behind them?
- What are your deepest values? You can throw words out like “love”, “freedom”,... And why are they so important to you?
- What is the feeling you like to have most?
- What makes your life worth living? Is it the people or the experiences or....?
- Have there been problems in your past, that you are now passionate to solve for other people?
- If you could craft a vision of your ideal world in your head, how would it look? And then, what would be your place in it? That’s your purpose.
- What’s your favorite type of greatness? How would greatness look to you? Would you be doing it publicly or more behind the scenes? What would it be about? What would you be great at? What skills do you want to be great at? In what field do you want to be great?
- Who would you be proud to be?
- If you could formulate an overall purpose for all of humanity, what would it be? (This is a bit of an out-there question, so I’ll give you my own answer as an example: “Humans are the universe experiencing itself. Life is a celebration that existence is.” That is my definition, you can craft your own.)
Here is a little thought game on finding your purpose you can check out.
Keep in mind that these questions are just guidelines to get you thinking. You can tweak them or add or remove some for yourself.
- Mission:
In order to figure out your mission, you first need to figure out your purpose. Then, it’s pretty easy. When you know the destination, finding a path that leads there is not that hard.
Think about the practical work it would take to make your purpose real. What would it take to make your purpose reality? What goals could you set towards it? How do you have to grow yourself to achieve those goals? Do you have to learn new skills or adopt a new mindset?
You can start with the big end goal on top and then work your way down to where you are right now, like this: Start with getting a clear picture of how it would look if your purpose came true in the real world. This is your most long-term goal and also the biggest goal. Then start breaking it down to what you can do in the next ten years, in the next five years, in the next one year, in the next month and what you can do daily. These could contain smaller goals that will build up towards your big end goal and also goals of self-development, to make you the person who can fulfill the big end goal.
To illustrate this better, let’s use an example. Say, it’s young Josh’s big dream to create better opportunities for the next generation than what he is having right now. His big goal is to create a business that can offer these opportunity to the youth. As a ten year goal, he might set to have a global business. As a five year goal, he might set the goal to have a local business. As a one year goal, he might set to get a business education or be part of a business that is already succeeding to learn from them and to put some of his freetime into reading about youth empowerment.
You see, in this section too, you don’t need to have all the answers front up. Yes, have a plan, so that you have a north star that helps you navigate, but stay flexible. As you go and learn more about your subject, new opportunities might open up that you didn’t even know existed when you made the plan. Let your path grow itself organically, step by step. Let it grow like a storyline, moment by moment, and a bigger picture emerges by itself. The more you can let go of the need to control and predict what is going to come, the better you can make use of opportunities.
Now, here’s the most important thing about the mission: The mission IS the journey. It’s the thing you will spend the most time on of all these sections. Make it enjoyable. Make it fun. Make it something you love. Don’t set goals where you hate the work you have to do
achieve them. Of course, sometimes you will have to do things that aren’t fun too, but the main part of the mission should be stuff you like. Otherwise, motivation dries out quickly and that blocks out long-term success.
For starting to craft your own mission, there are actually many great tools out there. One I can recommend is Tony Robbin’s MAP (Massive Action Plan). Everything that is a life and goal planner goes, so pick one that works for you.
- Passion:
Passion for your subject is one of the strongest forces on the planet. It’s something that enables humans to do things beyond their limits.
This is an easy one. If you have ever felt an overwhelming sense of excitement, joy and satisfaction for something, you know why you want to have passion in your life more often.
When you know what triggers that feeling in you, set your purpose and your activities up around it. Then you will experience that feeling on a regular basis, which will give you an unheard of energy boost and over time can increase your base level of happiness.
Doing things we are passionate about increases performance naturally. One way to improve performance is when our brains see the activity as particularly valuable and allows us to increase the effort and focus we put into it. There are several ways to increase that value, like finding necessity, finding meaning, finding people you care about who need you to do that activity, and another one is passion. Emotions are the feedback loop for the brain on its behavior. When it does an activity and feels a set of positive emotions, like passion is, it labels that activity as safe and as desirable. That makes it way easier for us to engage in the activity than when it has no strong emotions attached to it or, even worse, negative emotions associated with the activity. Setting up strong positive feedback loops by doing things you are passionate about can prove as one of the most valuable strategies to increase the quality of your performance and the satisfaction with what you are doing.
Now, how you find your passion? There is a good chance you already know what you are passionate about, because you have felt it before. But even if you don’t know, it’s not that hard to find out. When passion hits you, you feel it. The more difficult part about is to figure out what exactly triggered that feeling.
Here is a simple exercise: The next time a feeling of joy, this sudden energy kick, this lightness, overcomes you, write down what you were doing when it kicked in. Write down the situation you were in, the actions you were taking, your behavior, but also your thinking and your emotional state before it started.
When you have been doing that a few times, always tracking when it kicks in, you will start to find patterns.
Now, this requires, of course, that you put yourself in situations where you can feel like that. If you are stuck in a boring routine, you won’t experience that feeling. So, if necessary, shake your days up, maybe on the weekends, do something that has the potential to set you on fire.
- The Self:
A story without a main character is no story. It’s a sequence of landscapes and events put on top of each other. The perception is missing, the emotional common thread is missing, and the engagement is missing.
The self decides it all. It decides for the purpose, if it wants to go on a mission and what it is passionate about. The self is the center, from which it all comes. And yet, the self is the most humble part of the construct, as it has to learn to grow and change itself in order to rise up in all other fields. It has to learn to let go of so many of the things it thought defines it: its comfort, its bad behaviors, its pride, its current state, its old beliefs. On the journey, it has to burn down his current self slowly, step by step, in order to build up its newer, better version.
The self can make the journey hard, or it can make it joyful and enhance progress. Which one of those two scenarios is true, depends on the beliefs, mindset and habits of the self. If the self has empowering beliefs, a mindset to learn and grow and habits that set it up for success, it will make the whole story extraordinary by its presence. Acquiring that mindset is a part of the journey.
The major thing about the self is to understand that the whole journey, the whole thing, mainly serves the self to develop itself towards its innate greatness. That then enables it to fulfill its purpose, to do well on its mission, to serve its community and in that, to find new states of fulfillment and passion. The main part of the Journey is the internal journey, the internal development of the person. Outside events are only triggers or examples that support that internal growth. They are secondary. First is the internal process. That is why it is important to work on our inner world. That is the number one action to accelerate the whole journey. Some examples of working on our inner world are meditation, self-reflection, Martial Arts,... If you want to read deeper into the topic, I wrote a Blog Post on it.
Internal development is not only about our logical thoughts and worldviews, as we sometimes think. It is mainly about feelings and emotions, because they trigger how we think and how we view the world in any given moment. It becomes obvious when we look at an example. When you are reading this right now, your thoughts are likely revolving around this topic, trying to make sense of this text, and maybe following distractions of the environment around you from time to time. Let’s say, a lion would appear in front of you right now. That would trigger a state of fear in you. And that state would automatically make the main topic of your thinking how to get away from here in one piece. Your thoughts would start racing, telling you to, run, no don’t run, the lion's faster than you, then play dead, wait, it’s intelligent, isn’t it?, then, can you find something to use as a weapon, wait, I’m not Indiana Jones, what am I thinking, you can only win against predators in movies,... See where this is going? This is not a rational thought process. It’s your conscious mind triggered by a strong emotion, fear in this case.
That is why watching out for your emotional curves and gaining better awareness on them is crucial for the journey. When you are able to handle these emotional states, you are close to achieving mastery on your journey.
Now, how can you create your self? I already mentioned some practices above, like mediation. More than that, if you go all in on the other parts of the journey, you will create a better version of yourself automatically, one step at a time.
There is one more exercise I want to recommend: Take some time to sit down with a sheet of paper. Imagine your life as a movie or a book for a moment. Imagine you were the author of that movie or book. You wrote the story, created the situations, and now, you have to design the perfect main character to go on that story. Maybe he or she is less capable in the beginning and has to develop new strengths on the journey, which is how most story characters are written. You can write down or even draw that character on paper. Feel free to go into any details that are fun for you. Play around with it. Get creative.
Here are some ideas. When an author creates a character for a story, he normally thinks of different aspects:
- the physiology, the appearance of the character, for example, what they wear and how they look
- the current situation of the character, like if he or she lives alone and what she does every day
- their backstory and how he or she feels about it
- his or her psychology
- his or her desires, emotions, dreams and needs
When you are doing this exercise, keep the journey you want to go on in your mind. That means, think of your purpose and mission and passion and who you would need to be and become to make them real.
It’s best to do this exercise twice, once for the main character at the beginning of the story, who doesn’t have all the skills and all the answers they need yet, but have a lot of hunger and desire. And then, to do it a second time for the final main character, how he or she would be as their best self, when they developed enough through the story.
Try out this exercise to gain a bit more detail about who you want to be right now and who you want to be in the future, when you worked through the journey to become your best self.
- Community:
This is the last section, because it is derived from all the others.
Community is an amplifier for everything. First, it is an amplifier for positive feelings. Having a community that supports your purpose and your mission gives a sense of security, that there are people to help you when you need it.
It also makes you feel that your purpose and the mission you are working so hard for are more valuable when other people care about it.
And, this is a section where you can find a lot of happiness. Having people around who like you, who you can have fun with on the road, who are alive and joyful themselves, is one of the biggest sources of happiness on the way. Having people around who work towards their own purpose and are committed to be their best is a drive to do your best too and an opportunity to learn from watching others.
When you are travelling on a road alone, that’s one thing. But as soon as you have a friend with you, who you can laugh with and do fun things with as you are walking down the road, it becomes a whole different level of adventure.
Surround yourself with people who understand you and what you are doing and who like you for it. Surround yourself with positive people, with dreamers, with doers. You will become the average of the five people you spend most time around. That has become standard advice nowadays. And it’s true. It’s a powerful advice.
My best advice is to gather people around your purpose and mission. If you have a purpose that requires one than more person to work towards it to make it real, gather a team, gather new friends that are passionate about it, too. From my own experience, the people who go on a journey with, who you go through the ups and downs with, those are the people you bond with most strongly. Over time, when you work together for the same purpose, it becomes like a family.
People who are with you on a mission come in two categories (people can be more than one at the same time):
- the rival: the person who is with you on the same road parallelly and challenges you to grow and improve to keep up with them
- the friend: the person who is your supporter, always there for you and helping you make your plans come true
If your purpose is something you can only work on alone or only want to work on alone, surround yourself with positive, understanding people in other areas of life. Community is not only about teams, it can be found in hobbies, in a relationship with your partner, your family, your friends. Build community in the way it fits for you.
If you are interested in finding connections that will improve your journey in particular, here are the options I suggest for that, starting at the best:
1. Find a team, or maybe just one person, to work together with on your purpose and challenge you to grow it
2. Find role models to hang around who are further ahead on the road to the same or a similar purpose and learn from them
3. Get a mentor
4. Get a friend or a family member or your partner who understands your purpose and mission, why it is so important for you, and get them to support you
5. A strong bond towards your purpose makes the journey lighter. It raises necessity in a way that feels good. We feel more needed, more useful. When we have connections that support our mission, the question of “Should I even do this?” or “Do I have to work now?” starts disappearing and what remains is a burst of energy and focus.
The other thing about having connections around your purpose is that they give you a reason. They are a purpose in themselves. The people you serve, the people you do it for, they can be the biggest drive to grow.
I want to show you one common factor for motivation: When we try to go for a purpose in order to serve a community or a group of people, or even all of humanity, that is definitely a great motivation. But very often, it doesn't necessarily drive us enough on an emotional level. What really does the trick and can be one of the greatest motivations ever, is having one person you deeply care about, who you do it for. When we do it for our child, our partner, a family member, our friend, our teacher, that is when we become sure on an emotional level that we must succeed .
Imagine a parent who devotes themselves to curing diabetes, because their child has it. Imagine a friend who is in with you on a project and when you fail, he will fail too. Imagine a teacher who changed your life and now you want to serve with and express the gift they gave you. Maybe you have your own example of a time when you didn't do it for yourself, or for the group, but for one person you cherish. Sometimes a "They would want me to live my dreams. They would want me to live fully." is enough.
If you can find that person you have to fulfill your purpose for, you are already on the winning road. And the best part, once you succeeded, you can celebrate with that person.
Note on Fake Paths
Sometimes we find paths we believe are ours, but aren’t. Or sometimes we find paths we want to be ours, but aren’t. Picking up fake paths is something common and everybody does it at some point. There is nothing wrong about it. In the beginning, when you haven’t figured out what your path is about, trying out different paths can lead you to find yours. Or, if you stray on a fake path, it can lead to something that will help you on your real path. By that, the fake path is really just a part of your bigger, true path.
The only problem is when we are not ready to step off these fake paths when we see them for what we are. No matter how long you have been on a fake path, or how much effort is involved with stepping off it, step off. For some people, that is one of the challenges they are going to face on their journey.
Also, your real path may change during your lifetime. Sometimes, we are on our real path and when it ends it leads us to another path that is from now on ours. Imagine it like a lot of bridges that are built on top of each other, and when one ends, the next one begins. They are different sections, but they all go together, because they all lead in the same direction, one after the other. When you are not on the bridges, but looking at them from a higher viewpoint a few hundred meters away, they look like one long path, floating above the ground. And that is your path.
Destiny or Your Own Will?
When you are on your own path, is it your own decisions that lead you or is it destiny? That’s a question where a lot of different people have a lot of different opinions. What you think about this largely depends on the beliefs you hold about the world and how life works. So I suggest you to go on your own journey, and then, when you are somewhat down the road, decide that for yourself.
For now, let me give you a framework that might show how destiny and your own will are related and why they might not be so different after all.
This is a framework created by a man named Michael Beckwith. He talks about the 4 stages of growth:
Stage 1: The world is happening to me.
Stage 2: The world is happening by me.
Stage 3: The world is happening through me.
Stage 4: The world is happening as me.
The higher up these stages, the higher the overall stage of consciousness is.
In words of the Human Journey, at stage one, we are not even on our own journey. We are just numb, not travelling our own road.
On stage two, we have begun our journey, but we are not very experienced yet. Stage two is the power stage. Where we have finally broken out of being a victim of life and now want to be in control of everything that comes into our life. We want to make our own decisions and display our power on all that happens. That’s a bit exaggerated for most people, but it illustrates well. And it’s not a bad thing. If we have lived in the victim mentality for a while, we first need to learn how it is to have initiative and be active. Just make sure you don’t stay stuck at that level.
After a while travelling our journey, we realize that we don’t really make those decisions all that much by ourselves as we thought. We feel something different guiding our way, something way more intelligent than ourselves. That is stage three. Our paths increasingly take care of themselves. Opportunities and the right people start showing up by themselves. When we talked about consciousness evolution, I said that life becomes more and more blissful and easier to handle as we level up. This is a part of it.
In the fourth stage, we think of life not happening through us, as in stage three, but as us. We realize that there is no real difference between making a decision by ourselves and having life give it to us.
~ We realize that being the decision-maker and following the universe or our intuition or a higher consciousness, are two sides of the same medal. ~
Maybe, you create your destiny by your decisions and in the same way back, destiny guides your decisions?
Live
For me, the Human Journey is a model that gives hope. It gives hope in one’s own life and one’s own experience.
The Human Journey woke me up. It showed me that life didn’t have to be this dull, everyday routine you have to get through.
Life can be an adventure you choose. Life can have meaning to you and other people. Life can be deep in emotions and experience, so that with every second that passes, you think to yourself “Wow, I’m actually alive”.
The Hero’s Journey is called the Hero’s Journey for a reason. It's not supposed to be a rigid mental concept. It’s an adventure. It’s something epic. And when we are in it, life feels worth living.
Links
Check out these links from different sources to learn more about the Hero's Journey tied to Consciousness Evolution:
Articles and videos:
The Hero's Journey - a Summary
Video about the Hero's Journey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hhk4N9A0oCA
Integral Theory and the Hero's Journey: https://integrallife.com/belly-whale-joseph-campbell-and-heros-journey/
Human Journey and Psychology: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-angry-therapist/201708/how-use-the-hero-s-journey-life-coaching-tool
Books:
The Human Odyssey Series (Ken Wilber & Joseph Campbell): https://amzn.to/2Dl7fOk
FREE pdf about the Hero's Journey for Higher Development: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272742085_The_Hero's_Journey_of_Self-transformation_Models_of_Higher_Development_from_Mythology
More Articles
Integral Theory - a Summary
QUOTES FROM THE ARTICLE
