Stepping Stones

The Return Home - Moving From Oz to Om

Choosing to set off on a spiritual journey begins by simply saying yes to the call to discover our authentic Self. As Dorothy’s story reveals, spiritual transformation is a process that is initiated deep inside us, from our home in the center of our being, and the journey calls us into a process of unfolding our authentic Self. The hero’s journey is just a metaphor for engaging with our life in a way that uncovers the hero we already are. Through the course of our lives we take on patterns, beliefs and behaviors meant to please others, keep us in our place, keep others comfortable, ensure our survival and gain acceptance from the outside world. But the spiritual journey calls us away from this small and safe outer life and challenges us to live from the truth of our inner life. The hero’s journey is just the opportunity to confront and shed all the layers of ourselves that have covered over our authentic Self. The journey of spiritual transformation is not about becoming someone we are not, it’s about unveiling who we really are.

Joseph Campbell said that the power of the myth of the hero’s journey is the “waking of individuals in the knowledge of themselves.” Through the course of the journey we discover our connection to our soul—the secret presence of the God within—and come to know that if God is going to walk into the world and change it, that change must come through us—through our willingness to live in the Mystery and to give witness to the Mystery. Where we walk, God walks. Where we create, God creates. Where we evolve, our ability to make God manifest in us and in the world evolves. Ready or not, we must walk with our jewel back into the world.

But remember, the myths and traditions teach us that the hero’s journey is not a single adventure: it is a series of adventures and saying yes to the journey must be our new orientation to life. The philosopher Heraclitus says that “you cannot discover the limits of soul, even if you travel every road to do so; such is the depth of its meaning.” For just when we think we know the truth, we are called into the next level of opening in the Mystery of the Field of Being within which we live and breathe and make our meaning. We will take the hero’s journey again and again, always evolving and expanding into the sea of divine consciousness, and then walking our piece of the Om consciousness back into the world.

Weekly Stepping Stones

If you reflect on your life journey using your soul’s eyes, can you get a glimpse of your authentic Self? What are the gifts your deepest and most authentic Self has to offer the world? How have those gifts been muted or covered over during your life? If you said yes to your soul’s call today, what parts of your Self would you bring forward into more authentic expression?