The Heroine's Journey in Rome (4)

What the Journey Requires

When we believe that our journeys are not important and fail to confront our dragons and seek our treasures, we feel empty inside and leave a void that hurts us all. While it is true that no one of us is more important than anyone else, we each have an important gift to give - a gift we are incapable of giving if we fail to take our journeys.

This story of The Heroine's Journey in Rome is designed to help you and others understand your significance and potential heroism. Perhaps most of all, it offers the potential to leave behind a shrunken sense of possibilities and choose to live a big life. Many of us try to achieve a big life by amassing material possessions, or achievements, or property, or experiences, but this never works. We can have big lives only if we are willing to become big ourselves and, in the process, give up the illusion of powerlessness and take responsibility of our lives.

"If there were a little more silence, if we all kept quiet.. maybe we could understand something" - Fellini

There is a profound disrespect for human beings in modern life. Business encourages us to think of ourselves as human capital. Advertising appeals to our fears and insecurities to try to get us to buy products we don't need. Too many coaches see their job as helping people learn to accomodate to what is, not to take their journeys and find out what could be. Too many educational institutions train people to be cogs in the economic machines, rather than educating them about how to be fully human.

"You exist only in what you do" - Fellini

Basically we are viewed as products or commodities, to be either sold to the highest bidder or improved so that eventually we will be more valuable. Neither view respects the human soul or the human mind except as used as an acquisitive tool. As a consequence, people increasingly are disrespectful of themselves. Too many of us seek to fill our emptiness with food, or drink or obsessive and frantic activity. The much - lamented pace of modern life is not inevitable - it is a cover for its emptiness. If we keep in motion, we create the illusion of meaning.

We are subtly and not so subtly discouraged from seeking our own grails and finding our own uniqueness by an ongoing pressure to "measure up" to preexisting standards. And of course, when we try to measure up rather than find ourselves, it is unlikely that we will ever discover and share our unique gifts.

"There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life" - Fellini

As long as this is our process, we will never find ourselves. Instead we will become compliant consuers, paying all the people who claim that they can help us overcome our ugliness, sinfulness, sickness and poverty. And, in the process we will keep them as stuck as we are - striving for something above us, rather than searching to know what is genuinely in us and ours.

Initially we may be called to the quest by a desire to achieve some image of perfection. Ultimately however, we need to let go of whatever predetermined ideal holds us captive and just allow ourselves to take our own unique journeys. The Heroine's Journey is not another self-improvement project. It is an aid in finding and honoring what is really true about you.

Knowing that you are a heroine means that you are not wrong. You have the right mind. You have the right body. You have the right instincts. The issue is not to become someone else, but to find out what you are for. It means asking yourself some questions. What do I want to do? What does my mind wants to learn? How does my body wants to move? What does my heart love? You can even ask yourself "What does this problem or illness help me learn that can aid my journey?".

The rewards of self-discovery are great. When we find ourselves, everything seems to fall into place. We are able to see our beauty, intelligence and goodness. We are able to use them productively, so we are successful. We are less caught up in proving ourselves, so we can relax and love and be loved. We have everything we need to claim our full humanity, our full heroism.