Joseph Campbell saved my life! He became for me a guiding star. My journey began on a bright, sunny California Sunday morning. I was peacefully going about my life, giving a lecture at a local church when I got a frantic phone call from my wife. Niki is dead, come home! She had found our infant daughter dead in her crib. We were thrust into a darkness I had never known: shocked, empty,alone and filled with an incomprehensible rage. That was February 1971. And now I look back in wonder at how a chance encounter became the start of a terrible, wonderful journey.
One evening I happened to watch an interview between Bill Moyer and Joseph Campbell. I was captivated immediately by his warmth, humor, erudition and encompassing perspective. I found the interchange both illuminating and inspiring. That one encounter led me to a long conversation with Campbell through his books, lectures and videos. Steeping myself in in his world of myths and metaphors got me started on a healing journey into my inner world and out of the darkness. It gave me a fresh window on my bleak world. Step by step, brick by brick I picked myself up and began to rebuild.
I learned that by looking at what happened and how trauma affects people's lives,and how we struggle to regain a sense of meaning and purpose and some sense of normalcy we may understand the process of transformation and healing much better. And how this very struggle for understanding is part of the healing process. This is what I have spent my entire adult life delving into. The Hero's Journey continues to serve as a lense through which I view my experience.
The Hero's Journey as set forth by Campbell, in brief, is a life process which involves 4 stages. Stage one is the Awakening: as described by Campbell in the Hero with a 1,000 Faces, "the call rings up the curtain alsways on a mystery of the transfiguration, a moment of spiritual passsage. The familiar life horizon has been outgrown: the old concepts, ideals and emotional patterns no longer fit. The time for the passing of the threshod is at hand" (pg 51) I find this to be descriptive of exactly what happens in the case of trauma. Life suddenly changes and one is forced onto a totally foreign track of life. It feels like the end of the world. We cross a threshold, it is the beginning of a journey! Back then I could not even imagine continuing my life. And as I discovered, the journey required heroism: and I was not sure I had it in me.
Stage2, by crossing the threshold we find ourselves in a dark pathless forest. In folklore and mythology this is often symbolized by ogres, demons and evil spirits located in the nether regions of our unconscious. It is a very dark and forbiding place: for some, even a god forsaken place. As the result of the traumatic event we go beyond the familiar horizons of our comfortable, well ordered life, it is a place where nothing makes sense, shock and numb we wonder why this happened and why it happened to me. There is no time limit in this stage and contrary to common myth, time does not heal all wounds. It is only how we respond which determines the outcome.
Stage 3 Campbell calls The Road of Trials which leads to the potentially healing inner journey and transforming crisis. He writes, "it involves going into the deepest chambers of the heart, where the shattering of the key boundaries of our restricted consciousness are lost." I have found that this part of the journey took me many years to traverse and took a great deal of work on this road of trials. It led me to many people who shared their lives and stories and eventuated in, according to Campbell "a unifying vision of self and life."
This, then, is the healing path, begun in one shattering, shocking experience for me, or for others it may be in a series of experiences, we are thrown aqcross the threshold and boundaries of our lives into a dark and lonely place. While struggling to make sense of the experience, I wrote some poetry. One verse went like this: I stand amidst the bombed out ruins of a cathedral, my holy icons and relics are shattered, the beautiful stained glass windows no longer filter the eternal light. The despair is all encompassing, I am lost, without hope in the shrine of what was my life.
I realized eventually, extending the metaphor, that I had to rebuild, resurrect a new and different cathedral of the self with new icons, beliefs and rituals. This was the healing part of the journey, reinventing myself. I have written extensively about this in my book: Trauma Loss and Bereavement.
This brings me to the reason for this blog. Stage 4 envisioned by Campbell involves the "Commision to return to the world with a message for the restoration of our immediate village, community, or world. This is where I now find myself. I have a desire to share my discoveries and perhaps create a community of Heroes, who are in various stages of their journey and wish to share their stories and collective wisdom. I intend to share with you what I have learned about the very nature of trauma, its paralyzing and devastating effects, how we get stuck in complicated grief, and what the path of healing looks like. And most importantly, how we can transform a shattered and dead world. What this looks and feels like, is of course widely different for all who have trod the path. I will share the stories of other fellow travelers I have known and helped and from whom I have learned so much. I have found that there is healing and hope in the shared story. It is not easy, but it is possible to rebuild our shattered worlds. They never look the same, but can be somehjow more beautiful and authentic. And best of all, it is ours, one we have created out of the rubble. Much like the city of Berlin after world war II. Our consciousness becomes awakened, we feel more alive and when we are thrown across the boundary of the familiar and known into the wilderness we discover what it feels like to be really alive. Our lives can take on new meaning and purpose.
One last thought. There are many ways and reasons that people find themselves on an unexpected life adventure. Not all are caused by trauma. What is often the beginning may be experienced as a vague restlessness, ennui, emptiness and a sense of dis-ease with ourselves and our lives. People often start the journey by entering therapy because they are in psychological distress. Or it may be a life crisis precipitated by divorce, illness, or loss of a job. they have a sense that their life is not working. "It hasn't turned out the way I expected" as so many of my clients have exclaimed. These are more boradly based existential concerns. Nevertheless the quest is still about awakening, searching for meaning and breaking out of our limiting views of life and a healing of our inner fractures and unhealed wounds. Lost in the darkness, we never know how or when we will find the thread that will lead us into the light.
I will write more about this in future blogs.
