{"id":35394,"date":"2024-01-31T15:57:27","date_gmt":"2024-01-31T23:57:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=35394"},"modified":"2024-01-31T15:57:27","modified_gmt":"2024-01-31T23:57:27","slug":"hi-my-name-is-hero-and-i-am-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/hi-my-name-is-hero-and-i-am-a\/","title":{"rendered":"Hi, My name is Hero and I am a…."},"content":{"rendered":"

What a fascinating way to reflect on our personal life journey through the eyes of mythology and the journey of the hero (or the monomyth). I’ve never been into mythology, maybe because I don’t think I really understood it. But from the get-go, on the first page of the forward, it states, “Campbell was fascinated with the ways in which all myths told what he called \u201cthe one great story of mankind.\u201d[1]<\/a> I guess if I looked at it that way, I might have been more inclined to pay more attention to it.<\/p>\n

If I looked at this book through the lens of my project (and some bullet points from ChatGPT), here is what I would come up with. When someone is at rock bottom and done with the craziness of whatever drink\/drug\/or… of choice, they make a decision to change the way they are doing life. That would be the Call to Adventure – disrupting how they have lived and entering the challenging world of recovery to transform their life as it was into something meaningful.<\/p>\n

It is not an easy decision – leaving behind your “friends” and what you know, and you do it because you just can’t go on like this anymore. That takes them into the concept of Threshold Guardians. The journey is hard, especially at the beginning. The hero, or the person attempting to get sober, has terrible demons they have to fight – from guilt, depression, loneliness, anger (let alone the cravings and temptations), and the list goes on. The Threshold Guardians will test this person to the edge of relapse, and it is only with the right tools that they can overcome them.<\/p>\n

The hero in Campbell’s book receives help from others along the way. It is the perfect analogy to a sponsor. With the right sponsor, sobriety is achievable, but not without support from the community (which is why daily meetings are so important. When a newcomer walks in the door, they will be told over and over to attend 30 meetings in 30 days) – that kind of fellowship is one of the keys to success. The one thing I did not have, but my stakeholders insisted I include in my NPO, was community and a sense of well-being.<\/p>\n

If this person continues down the path of recovery, they will experience a beautiful transformation – the Apotheosis and Transformation that is examined in Campbell’s book. From making amends to those they have hurt to healing relationships, maintaining or getting a job, and a healthier lifestyle. These are the rewards they receive. It is a hard journey they want to give up on many times, but it is so well worth what they get out of it. For the alcoholic, the journey never really ends, but life is so much better. They have shed off the old way of doing life, hopefully are living their best life now. If I have my way, they will have a much closer union with God and full dependence on the Holy Spirit to continue the right path.<\/p>\n

The transformation has led to life experience and wisdom that can be taken to help others. The 12-step program is one of service – to help others on their way. Taking all the things they have learned as they go through the steps, with the help of a sponsor, has changed their value systems, thought patterns, and outlook on life. Their actions, relationships, dedication to sobriety, and an inexplicable joy show their transformation. To take all this, help transform another life, and have them do the same for someone else is a beautifully unique set of ways that few experience.<\/p>\n

Those actions reflect The Return with the Elixir stage, where the sober individual is now part of the community they once shunned. They have gifts of wisdom and knowledge of how to overcome the cycle of addictions for those still in it. In today’s world of fentanyl, opioids, and other destructive habits, the ability to interact with someone who has been down that road and beat it is invaluable.<\/p>\n

Years ago, I had the fortunate experience of attending the funeral of a friend’s grandfather, who passed away. He was a Navajo Indian, and my friend honored him at the funeral. What was discussed was the circle of life and how they felt that the person who died would return, possibly in another form, and do it all again. 12-step programs are a form of the circle of life. They die to the old way of life and have a chance to do it all over again.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces<\/em> (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2008), 11.<\/p>\n

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What a fascinating way to reflect on our personal life journey through the eyes of mythology and the journey of the hero (or the monomyth). I’ve never been into mythology, maybe because I don’t think I really understood it. But from the get-go, on the first page of the forward, it states, “Campbell was fascinated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":201,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","cohort-dlgp03"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/201"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35394"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35395,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35394\/revisions\/35395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}