Being Point

Month: May 2009

  • Freedom To Be and The Hero’s Journey

    The promise of the Hero’s Journey is to return safely home – not necessarily unwounded or unscathed – but free. The freedom comes as a result of losing one’s fear of death during the journey.

    The Hero is able to resist looking into the past with regret or into the future with apprehension. Upon the conclusion of the ordeal, the Hero is able to be present in the moment. The Hero is ultimately free simply to be.

    The Hero’s Journey demands courage and fortitude. The journey requires surrender to the journey itself and to its perils. The passion and commitment to a goal larger than oneself. The drive and zeal to return home and be willing to be transformed by the journey and its lessons.

    Think about your life’s significant challenges and / or adventures. Situations in your life where you have defied your comfort zone in service of a goal or calling that demanded that you grow.

    The journey, of course, is often not enjoyable. It is often arduous, but it is most often supremely rewarding. What parallels can you see in your own life using the steps of the Hero’s Journey? How free are you to be?

  • The Hero’s Journey In Film and Fiction

    One of the many intriguing aspects of The Hero’s Journey is its reflection in fiction. Famous examples of films containing elements of the Hero’s Journey are the various iterations of Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. As you consider the plot lines, consider the ways in which your life has modeled the seven steps.

    Both LOTR and SW began with a Call to Adventure and ended with the victorious return home after encountering many difficulties. Books like Huckleberry Finn have elements of this mythic structure as the hero leaves the known and journeys out into the world.

    What adventure is calling you? Can you recognize any of the stages of the Hero’s Journey in the specifics of your own life? Are you just setting out on a Call to Adventure or are you almost home after a harrowing journey? Are you fighting dragons? Is the prize within your grasp?

  • Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth Describes The Hero’s Journey

    Joseph Campbell called the Hero’s Journey the “monomyth,” a powerful pattern that describes all myths, and, in the process, describes how we humans often navigate our way through life.

    From Wikipedia:

    “In laying out the monomyth, Campbell describes a number of stages or steps along this journey. The hero starts in the ordinary world and receives a call to enter an unusual world of strange powers and events (a call to adventure). If the hero accepts this call to enter this strange world, the hero must face tasks and trials (a road of trials), and may have to face these trials alone – or may have assistance.”

    “At its most intense, the hero must survive a severe challenge, often with the help earned along the journey. If the hero survives, the hero may achieve a great gift (the goal or ‘boon’) which often results in important self-knowledge.”

    “The hero must then decide whether to return with his boon (the return to the ordinary world), often facing challenges on the return journey. If the hero is successful in returning, the boon or gift may be used to improve the world (the application of the boon).”

    A hero’s journey can include processes like going off to college, starting a new business, getting married, having a child and other major life journeys. What are some of the events of your life that you can see within the context of the Hero’s Journey?

    (Pursuant to the GNU Free Documentation License):

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces

  • Basic Seven Steps In The Hero’s Journey

    The Hero’s Journey is an archetypal way of understanding the quests of our lives. Joseph Campbell wrote about the hero’s journey as a way to conceptualize how and why we take on the challenges we choose. Very simplistically, think knight in the castle who learns that there is a damsel in distress. He sets out to slay the dragon and return home victorious with the rescued damsel by his side.

    There are seven major steps to any hero’s journey – with many sub-steps. Today, we’ll start just by naming them:

    The Call to Adventure

    Refusal of the Call

    Supernatural Aid

    The Crossing of the First Threshold

    Belly of The Whale

    Initiation

    The Road of Trials

    Return

    Think of any challenge or opportunity which confronts you. At the very least, you’ve heard the Call to Adventure based on your awareness of the challenge.

    Just knowing what you know now about the Hero’s Journey, can you think of an example, past or present, where your life’s journey might be able to be understood through the steps of the Hero’s Journey?

  • Is Life Poetic? Is Life Poetry? Do You Write Poetry?

    As we conclude our consideration of poetry this week, some questions loom large: Is life poetry? Is life poetic? How can we find the poetic in life – in love, in grief, in everyday things, in all kinds of health or illness, difficulty, stress, happiness, betrayal, joy . . . in all of the human experience?

    Probably we’ve all written some kind of poetry – or at the very least, thought about it. Here’s a line from an unfinished poem which, I think, exemplifies a way to experience life as poetic:

    I saw a double blue star once through a telescope on a cold Arizona night

    And the desert provided the purity of darkness to allow only the star to show.

    Hardly great poetry, but these two lines take me back to an extraordinarily happy evening which can be revisited using my attempt at poetry. I know the special circumstances that the double blue star represents in a delicious field of pure darkness. Each of us has these kinds of memories and experiences that can form a way of relating to life as poetic.

    Who out there writes poetry – even if you never share it? Have you ever written to someone you love? Has anyone ever written poetry for you? How special is that to you? Do you read your poetry to your children, your significant other, your friends, your family? Would you like to confidentially send in some of your poetry and / or post it to the new beta site:

    http://www.coachingforresults.com/studyhall

    Happy Friday and Happy Mother’s Day to Mothers Everywhere, Including Our Mother Earth !

  • Favorite Love Poems

    No discussion of poetry would be even remotely complete without mention of love poems. Most likely, all of us have at least one favorite. Whether or not we can recite it, there’s usually something that we have heard that has touched our hearts.

    Here’s my favorite – and it’s best read aloud. I invite you to think about your favorite and to share it with someone you love today. Poetry can connect our hearts.

    i carry your heart with me i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
    my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
    i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
    by only me is your doing, my darling)

    i fear
    no fate (for you are my fate,my sweet) i want
    no world (for beautiful you are my world,my true)
    and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
    and whatever a sun will always sing is you

    here is the deepest secret nobody knows
    (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
    and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
    higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
    and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

    i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

    ~ e. e. cummings

    Please write me and tell me your favorite love poems. You can also post (so everyone can share) on the Study Hall blog beta site at:

    http://www.coachingforresults.com/studyhall

  • David Whyte On Poetry As A Life Saver

    A few years ago, I had the privilege of hearing poet, David Whyte, speak. He has made it his life’s work to get poetry to as many people as possible because it’s such a life saver. Whyte is Welsh, and he has a wonderfully deep baritone voice that one could listen to all day and still want more.

    Here’s a link where you can hear him read his poem Everything Is Waiting For You and discuss his views on poetry. My favorite line is: Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hq2NfrNt9EU

    Whyte says that poetry “gives you a language that makes you able for the world – large enough for it and not to hide from it – whereas our strategic, empirical language is constantly trying to give you a read-out into which you can retreat and to say, If you get competent in this area, you’ll be safe. And it’s not true. There’s no area of competency you can enter that will keep you safe from the disappearances of life.”

    How do you feel about Whyte’s point of view? Do you agree with him that poetry provides a special way of interacting in the world? Is your experience of poetry that it is empowering? Do you think poetry can be a life saver?

  • Musings On Britain’s First Female Poet Laureate

    History was made last week with the appointment of Britain’s first woman Poet Laureate in the 341 years of the existence of the position. It’s telling that Carol Ann Duffy will receive an annual stipend equal to $8,500; yet, it’s a great milestone to have broken the gender barrier even if it did take three and a half centuries.

    In the U.S., Louise Bogen was appointed its first woman Poet Laureate in 1945 (the fourth U.S. Poet Laureate overall). The current Poet Laureate, Kay Ryan, is charged with raising the national consciousness of poetry, and she’s paid $35,000 annually. Ryan writes in a poem called Hide and Seek:

    “It’s hard not to jump out instead of waiting to be found. It’s hard to be alone so long and then hear someone come around. It’s like some form of skin’s developed in the air that, rather than have you torn, you tear.”

    Some might consider poetry like this frivolous; others consider it essential. Where do you stand? Is there a practical role for poetry in our lives? How might you incorporate poetry into your life? If it were up to you, how valued or not valued would the Poet Laureate of a country be?

  • “Poetry Is Nearer to Truth Than History” ~ Plato

    What would the world be without poetry? Poets translate the world into infinite ways for us to experience it from the bittersweet, to the tragic, to the humorous. Poems were often sung in ancient times, and we are surrounded by song lyrics that often aspire to poetry.

    Plato said, “Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.” This makes sense in that poetry at its best is an open window into the human condition. Whether or not you read poetry, if you sing along to songs, you are engaging in a form of human poetry that is as old as language.

    How is poetry a part of your life? Do you remember song lyrics, and do you consider them poetry? Do you have a favorite poem, passage or line that speaks to you in some way?

  • Wellness and Integrity Are Related

    Although we most often think of integrity in the context of morals and doing the right thing, it’s useful to know that the word derives from the Latin and Old French roots meaning “wholeness” or “soundness.”

    When we think of a person who has integrated her moral code with all aspects of both her business and personal lives, there is a sense of wholeness. And “wholeness,” of course, is equivalent to “wellness.”

    So it seems that integrity and wellness are related. How do you feel about the possibility that one can be well by being “sound”? What are the ways that you manifest wholeness in your life? How important is balance in a whole life?