Week Three
Ensemble Hero:
Crossing The Threshold
Navigating New Ways Through The Unknown
From Daring It & Bearing It – to Wearing It
Learning to experiment with and ‘try on’ new ways of becoming.
Developing The Capacity For Unknowing
Requires Humility & Courage
Requires Us To Tolerate Our Insecurities & Doubts
Invites Us Into States of Wonder & Novelty
Become More Capable Of The Unexpected
Become More Willing & Able To Surprise Ourselves
The Journey Now Takes You
‘Yielding’ is a very different self-experience from ‘clinging’. To enter into the sense of mystery and wonder that can be experienced in adventures into the unknown, we have to practice letting go, loosening our grip on certainty, and feeling so ‘sure’ about the projections we make about future outcomes.
Accepting the reality at our lived experiences will most often go better than what our mind tends to think. This requires humility, self-compassion and a bit of perspective. Let’s see if we can just keep our intentions on moving with the flow of life, with the ‘going forward’ of our life force, and practice the simple mantra, “YES to Life.”
Practice giving yourself ten seconds of creativity or courage. We practice our ‘daring it’ and ‘bearing it’ attitudes, and then simply ‘wear it’ for a bit of time. We try on new ideas, new approached, new behaviors, just to lean into the newly possible, and open ourselves to be surprised. What if the unknown becomes somenow ‘now do-able’?
An Essay In Support Of The Theme
SOUL ADVENTURES & EGO ORDEALS
by Michael Mervosh
This essay is about understanding and accepting that adventures and ordeals are intertwined. One will inevitable be found within the other. We are being encouraged to live into the adventures that life offers, and accepting the ordeals that may come along with them.
Week THREE Whole Group Recording
In Week Three we had Two Whole Group Sessions on Crowdcast.
The First recording was from Saturday, Feb 11th.
The Second Recording is from Sunday Feb 12th
A Reflection
Joseph Campbell once said that a ritual is simply a myth being re-enacted. By actively participating in a ritual, we take our place in a living myth, something truer and more alive than basic information and historical facts. The function of myth is to awaken in us the realization that we are all manifestations of the powers and possibilities that hold all of life. A vibrant, living myth calls us to re-make ourselves, in the words of Campbell, transparent to the transcendent.
A ritual also helps to move us beyond the ordinary functions in our lives. It invites us into a deeper, more attentive and more expansive awareness of that which lies beyond the most familiar and routine aspects of life. It offers us an internal space where mental thinking turns back; where the wordlessness of wonder, awe and mystery can come forth and be expressed in a body-centered, lived experience.
Two questions to ask ourselves at our ‘threshold point’:
- What ritual ‘marker’ will give this particular life transition ‘distinction’?
- What creative, intentional, formalized act would ritualize your next Threshold Crossing?
A Guided Meditation
CONNECTING TO THE VAST UNKNOWN
- Live from our retreat in Rosendale NY, with added music by Meditative.
- Starts with grounding, and an invitation to connect to a larger and vast unknown future. Expansive and hopeful.
- Practice deep awareness, paired with steady breath.
(This is a recent practice from the Hero’s Journey collection at the Insight Timer App.)
ACTION OPTION ONE
FACING THE NECESSITY OF DISORIENTATION
Every now and again, and at certain particular times in our lives, we will find ourselves entering the dark forest of the psyche – the deep unknown – going down into the soul’s unknowable depths, and perhaps wandering ever further from ‘the path already made’.
Allowing ourselves to be disoriented, to move beyond the familiar frames of reference, going out beyond the typical dualities of life – good/bad, right/wrong – this is a very counterintuitive posture, one that can be quite perplexing to the ego.
Read more about LEARNING TO WAIT IN THE UNKNOWN.
ACTION OPTION TWO
OPENING YOURSELF TO THE ‘OTHERNESS’ IN ANOTHER PERSON
For this option, make it a point to have an encounter or a conversation with someone with whom you would not typically seek to engage – someone ‘other’ than your typical choice of connection.
Notice what keeps you from opening yourself in a new way, or if this might be an example of how you might tend to ‘over-protect’ yourself from the ‘otherness’ of someone who is different from you in some fundamental way.
Open up to the possibility of being surprised by what you find; look for their humanity underneath your differences; what did you learn about yourself?
ACTION OPTION THREE
DO EXACTLY WHAT YOU WOULD DO IF YOU FELT MOST SECURE
Follow this encouraging advice from Meister Eckhart, make it a point this week to try one thing that you would have never attempt to do before, due to your own sense of inadequacy, fear of rejection or failure, or inability to tolerate a personal discomfort.
Do not dismiss any type of new action because of its apparent simplicity or smallness, and don’t try to take on something too large or daunting as a compensation. Just give yourself ten seconds of courage, step into an unknown encounter, conversation, activity or pursuit, and see what new possibility may arise.
SEPARATION – INITIATION – RETURN
These three essential stages of the Hero’s Journey myth provide the seeker with distinct features and tasks to support a transformational process. For those of you looking to understand more about the various components for each of these stages, and want access to more resources from our library of information, you can access them here.
Access To Journey Resources
Suggested Books & Highlighted Readings
Relevant Podcasts - coming soon
Poems That Reflect The Inner Journey
You Make The Path By Walking It
“Traveller, the path is made by your own footsteps
And nothing more.
Traveller, there is no path
The path is made by walking.
By walking you make a path
And turning, you look back
At a way you will never tread again
Traveller, there is no road
Only wakes in the sea.”
- Anthony Machado
The Thread
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
- William Stafford
JOURNEY MAP
Introduction Week
Week One
Week Two
Week Three