The Hero´s Journey - Deprogramming from old thought paradigm.
Everyone is the hero in their lives, and the journey of finding our signature strengths is often about moving into our unknown interior to get to know ourselves in a new and deeper way. Gestalt therapists work phenomenologically where one of the tools is about the archetypal hero´s journey that the American professor Joseph Campbell (1904 - 1989) is known for. The hero´s journey can be used as a reference frame when people go through transformation from old to new identity, and from low to higher consciousness. Campbell has gone through thousands of fairy tales, movies, legends, novels and myths to find a common pattern for them. He believes that all the characters from these cultural expressions are in their own heroic journey. We can see that the film successes Harry Potter, The Matrix, Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings have something in common with the heroes of ancient myths. Campbell believes all of these are versions of the same hero. He studied myths from around the world, and then published a book that analyzes thousands of stories and explanations of how each story represents the monomy myth, and the hero´s journey.
The hero´s journey is illustrated with a circle based on the clock and twelve core points. The journey wanders between the new and the old world. The journey begins and ends in the hero's ordinary world, and along the way there are several key events.
The hero's journey can be outlined as follows;
12.00 Status quo
13.00 The hero receives a call and receives a mysterious message. An invitation and a challenge.
14.00 The hero meets his mentor and is assisted by someone who is wiser than himself.
15.00 The hero travels into the unknown and goes from his normal safe home to a special world and an adventure.
16.00 The hero faces trials and challenges. The hero must solve puzzles, overcome and fight.
17.00 More resistance, attacks and ordeal often show up in the journey through the hero's greatest fear. On the journey, the hero meets both allies and enemies.
18.00 Eventually the hero comes to an ultimate crisis. This is often the hero's darkest hour. He is facing death and may have to die in order to be reborn.
19.00 As a result of the demanding crisis, the hero gets a treasure, a special recognition or a type of power.
20.00 New results, insights and wealth are achieved.
21.00 Is about returning to the ordinary world. After all the adventure, the hero returns to his usual world.
22.00 New life and insight. The journey has changed the hero who has grown from his old life.
23.00 A decision on a new direction. All loose threads must be clarified.
24.00 Back to a new upgraded level of insight and awareness.
What is the common factor with the heroes in series, movies and fairy tales? Most heroes are people just like us, and the myths of hero´s journeys exist in all cultures and are constantly updated as people reflect on the world through symbolic stories from their own lives. We leave our comfort zone, have an experience that changes us, recover and do it all over again. Everyone deals with problems and challenges. Often it can be the illnesses and sensitivities of an unbalanced society that are our adversaries and dragons. Campbell said that "thetreasure we seek lies in the cave we are afraid to enter". What is the symbolism here? We can be sensitive to this in our own lives and listen for our mission, our life's work or calling. There can be many of these, because from our soul consciousness we have enormous options for action within the same basic intention. The myths that have influenced Norwegians the most are Norse mythology, which is part of Germanic mythology. Norse mythology did not develop from a coherent religious system, but from an ethnic religion that had little to do with belief and more to do with action. The myths of the Viking Age are a legacy of a masculine action paradigm.
Campbell believes that the hero´s journey begins with an inner journey and a calling that is about a deep truth that applies to all people. A journey with self-insight and living a full and realized life. The hero´s journey is a metaphor for a deep transformation that heroes at all times and in all places seem to share. A journey that often leads us into separation, setbacks, ordeals and where our logical, sensible and analytical pre-programming coincides. It costs us something to fight for the light and the good. The hero finds hidden powers in himself, acknowledges his own vulnerability, survives confusion, grief, lost strokes, psychosis, schizophrenia, suicidal thoughts, personality disorders, imbalances, resistance, loneliness, hopelessness, powerlessness and despair. The journey often consists of both an inner mental journey in states of consciousness and an outer adventure and experience journey. What we encounter is often what we fear most, and where we have the most resistance in ourselves.
The hero's archetypal journey has several similarities with what is referred to as the dark night of the soul. The journey I went through from 2013 -2019 can be described as both a hero's journey and the dark night of the soul. There is usually great personal development involved when we go through difficult and significant transitions and experience a deeper perception of life. The process points to a painful conceptual framework of identity, which is shattered when our belief system, habits, career and what used to make sense suddenly doesn't. The dark night symbolizes a revelation of the ego's programming to its true essence. Ambiguities about oneself, what life is and one's programmed identity are put to the test. In the dark night of the soul, we cannot trust our programmed matrix and perspectives, because the bottom of our habitual patterns falls out. We cannot create a new identity without the dark night of the soul.
The hero's journey and the dark night of the soul is an awakening comparable to sacred traditions and enlightenment. A journey from suffering and illness, leading us to a bigger picture of human existence with a connection to higher intelligence and trust. These experiences are some of the most beautiful things that can happen to us. Human nature will always yearn to become something more than we already are. Through our inner journey, we will meet our longing for everything. Then we will reach a realization that we are everything and that we are infinite. Our deepest longings are not about one particular thing, but about an expansion where we expand boundlessly like the hero does. Literature that refers to the dark night of the soul often shows that it can last from three months to years. My experience is that there are no limits to this journey.
The dark night of the soul is an existential crisis that requires us to review everything within us. We usually feel a deep emotional and physical pain at the same time as an intimacy with absolutely everything. We deprogram and transform before we come to an awake state within ourselves. The soul wants to make a greater entry with its power and influence that is more all-encompassing than the psyche associated with the programming matrix. There is something new that wants to be born in us. Our logic and causal understanding will collapse as we go through the dark night of the soul. It is a transformational journey that puts us in touch with the higher order laws of the universe. The cultural society and the illusionary part of our thought programming will be dismantled, so that we are more in touch with the essence of who we are. We become part of our mystical self and intelligence, where qualities such as trust, faith, clarity, wisdom and connection become our supportive allies. Mystical experiences will reveal themselves to us that our brain cannot explain causally. We have not developed a good language for our boundless soul where we experience miraculous things when we are closest to our unified truth. The unity is experienced stronger and stronger as we let go of all illusion.
The collective language of patterns that most cultures and people are connected to is about our relationship with money. Often we limit and stop creative expression, good ideas and intuitive guidance because of money. During the dark night of the soul, I unlearned the limitlessness I had in relation to finances. The economic systems and programming we have in relation to money are not sustainable and makes us sick. My existence was also characterized by limitations in my development, because there simply wasn't enough money in the account. Even though I wasn't a millionaire, I had largely followed my inner calling, which from a higher perspective is the greatest abundance. When we create abundance from higher intelligence, external means and resources will always support us. I know it sounds simple and I worked several years to really incorporate and have full confidence in this. I know that means and outer resources will not be what stops people from their deep desires, if they live from a loving, authentic and grateful inner state. It is our thoughts, insecurities, and fearful programming that stops us from doing and being what we "really" want. During the dark night of the soul, we will usually transform patterns and programming that make us sick, unbalanced and prevent us from following our heart. Our essence and self-worth have no relevance to money, means or external resources in the world.
One of the greatest gifts of living awake is that we don't have to react or be triggered emotionally by statements that previously gave us reactions. We see the cosmic game and can choose whether or not to respond. We are connected to the beyond, that which is above time, space and samsara, and have a direct guidance from a higher sacred order that is not reserved for religions, state power, ideology or sect. It is a sacred intelligence that everyone is a part of, and can connect to at all times and places. Everyone has the capacity to connect with inner wisdom, and we all have the essence of the sacred and all-encompassing within us. Everyone can reach the state of joy, freedom and boundlessness that we create through our soul consciousness. Famous personalities of our time who have made their hero journeys visible are Oprah Winfrey, Morgan Freeman, Eckhart Tolle and our own Princess Marta Louise.
"Theprivilege of life is to be who you are "
Joseph Campbell.
In the Health Bible, our own story is placed within the circular core points of the hero's journey to show how we can use this understanding as a frame of reference for the spiritual development path that takes shape in our everyday lives. Many people are trained to believe that spiritual guidance, transformation and connection to higher dimensions are aspects of different religions or sects. These aspects are part of human nature regardless of ethnicity, race, religion or ideology.
Thecall in 2013 came when I experienced a saturation point from the aid systems' arrogance of power and abdication of responsibility for vulnerable groups of people. Time and time again, I was told that we couldn't help the clients because the method and the system were limiting. It was a matter of life and death for clients. In relations with the police, child welfare services, psychiatry and the management of the health systems (Bufetat/the state), I experienced a high degree of abdication of responsibility. The abdication of responsibility in the public sector resulted in me choosing to take certain cases into my own hands. The calling gave me an inner image and desire to contribute to changing the Norwegian care system, so that patients and clients could receive a greater degree of growth and recovery. I took in the great powerlessness inherent in the public sector. Several times I was stabbed in the back by people with fierce loyalty to the system when I stood up for my clients' rights.
At times I felt small and helpless in the systems, like a David against Goliath? Many of us are trained to think small and limited, as was I until 2013. At the time, I was unaware of the all-encompassing power of higher consciousness and the spiritual perspective of coexistence.
Since my calling involved the support systems in Norway, it was also the various systems and the people in them that became my biggest obstacles and opponents. I have experienced several of the Norwegian aid systems first hand for more than twenty-five years, and from 2012 - 2016 when I was at my weakest and about to die, they failed me the most.
In early 2015 when I was shown a greater insight of the calling and what lay ahead of me, I began to negotiate with the other side. Looking into the future what would come, I was still messing around in the fearful parts of my personality and I wanted to chicken out. All the insights and visions seemed so insurmountable and huge. Being clairvoyant and clairsentient requires a lot of us and is not for sissies. When we know the challenges ahead, we carry a great responsibility. When clairvoyance started to become more and more prominent, I tried for a while to work against future events in order to avoid certain scenarios. In doing so, I created fear and imbalance when the events happened anyway. I practiced carrying future knowledge and relating to linear time and plan. I surrendered the insights to the highest source and built up my soul strength through the trials life showed me. With great trust in myself and creation, after several tough years, life has turned into a beautiful journey of unprecedented experience.
"The only source of knowledge is experience. Learning is experience. Everything else is just information"
Albert Einstein.
It was mainly through techniques and methods from indigenous traditions that I came into contact with my essence and new identity. In one of the shamanic training courses I followed, about 75% of the students dropped out before completing the course. Of course, there were several reasons why the students left. Some left because the leap between logic/analysis/control and the all-encompassing higher field of consciousness was too demanding. We had curricula based on the dark night of the soul from others who had been led on their path. Some students limited real life stories to fairy tales and the supernatural. Those who are deeply programmed with limiting physical phenomena may find it difficult to follow the transition to the all-encompassing abundance of free soul in higher consciousness. Even in the health bible, I mostly chose to moderate myself. Automatic writing, direct downloads and channelings are to a lesser extent included in the Health Bible. The leap between old and new identity paradigms is like jin and yang or day and night and can be perceived as supernatural from an external perspective,
My experience is that there are thousands of paths to goodness and love, and that an external religion or particular faith will not necessarily suit everyone. We have seen how many wars and disagreements have been created in the wake of people wanting to convince and teach others that there is only one ultimate truth. Thinking that my truth is the right one is judgmental. Then people will measure themselves against each other, insult and kill. My miracle wish for human beings is that we open up to diversity and change the truth that " my faith is the only true faith ."
In Chapter 39 of the Health Bible, I write how the worldview and beliefs changed for me in the transition from the old paradigm of restrictive thought programming to the new paradigm of freedom, unconditional love and inclusion.
In the course "deprogramming" I teach you tools so that you can let go of diseases, limitations and old thought paradigm. This course is only for the bravest heroes who want to activate their authentic power.