“A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.” Joseph Campbell The hero’s journey is as follows: The hero usually starts in his town, within his comfort zone. Then the Universe present to him a Call to Action but he refuses it because of homeostasis and people are lazy. Finally, he is forced to take the Call. He ventures out to unknown territories and this is when the adventure really begins. He will face the Threshold Guardian – the first obstacle in your journey. That test whether you are serious about it or not. The Hero overcomes this Guardian! If he does it, he will find a mentor to train him. With this new knowledge, he goes on beating up the other Guardians. The mentor is the hero himself, from a past generation.  Finally, he has to defeat the Final Boss, which protects the Holy Grail. The first encounter with the Boss, will fail so then he comes back stronger than ever – this phase is called ‘Entering the Belly of the Whale”. This is where the hero has to now face himself and rethink his whole life and approach. After that, he can go defeat the dragon and obtain the Holy Grail. When he gets the Holy Grail, he realizes that the journey was not about the prize but who he became to obtain it. He surrenders the physical grail and embraces the real grail of who he has become – the new more powerful version of himself. Then he returns home to share the lessons that he learned, the problem is that the people in the town cannot understand his teachings. Then he becomes available as a mentor. This is the structure of human life! The real journey is not about the physical journey, but the spiritual one. Joseph Campbell took the root of this journey from Vedanta and the pursuit of enlightenment. The battle, the monster and the evil is you! You are in a journey to fight yourself. It is a battle between ego and Truth! Will you serve your life serving ego or pursuing the Truth? A Hero is someone who chooses Truth over ego. Evil is selfishness or ego. When you choose Truth, are you prepared for the consequences? You cannot have yourself and the Truth. If you want the Truth, you will have to give up on yourself and let it go. Villainy is everything you do to serve your self-agenda. The Holy Grail is the Truth or God or Enlightenment or Consciousness and its fundamentally intangible. There is nothing external to be fought in life! Everything is internal! For your whole life, you’ve refusing the Call but you weren’t clear that this wasn’t the case. The real heroes are the Yogis, Sages, Masters and Saints; not the rockstars or famous people. Why not everyone is a hero? It is precisely because you are letting go of yourself. The hardest thing you will do in life is to say no to yourself and say yes to Truth. In practice, accepting the Call to Adventure is extremely difficult because: -          You need to be a romantic -          You need to be a risk taker -          You need to have faith -          You need to shed intoxications of your culture -          Peer-pressure, all pulling you back down into everyday mundane existence -          It requires a vision Why do we admire heroes as a culture? The hero shows us our higher potential. They show us how our lives should be about. Our mission is to spiritually purify ourselves and tap into everything we’ve got. You are alive to become successful or to work, you are alive so that you can experience the Truth of Reality and what Life is; THAT IS THE HOLY GRAIL! Practical Takeaways -          Society will not lead you to salvation -          It’s much more good than you can imagine or expect -          This is a process, don’t reinvent the will -          What you really need to do is get to the point to accept the Call. Have a strong vision, otherwise you will not achieve it! -          Realize that you were secretly craving all your life to give yourself to something bigger than you “The village has disappeared in the evening mist and the path is hard to follow. Walking through the pines, I return to my lonely hut.” Ryokan