#MondayInsight:

Last week I shared about the return journey home on the hero’s journey, and how so many of us struggle with the “refusal of the return.”

I mean, why make the return when it feels so good to finally have the elixir and you can hang out with other elixir holders?

What I’m present to is that at some point, if you don’t make the return journey home, there won’t be any juice left in hanging out with the elixir.

Perhaps making the return journey home is something you do more for yourself than anyone else.

There’s a movement from reacting – to responding – to creating that’s related to this (thanks Revital and Ron for sharing your perspectives on this!).

I believe those are three phases we go through when we’ve gotten the elixir and are called to make the return journey home.

In the beginning of the Hero’s Journey there’s the refusal of the call. The parallel on the return journey home is the ‘refusal of the return’.

In the refusal of the return, we’re in reaction.

That reaction-refusal can sound like this…

It feels so good to have the elixir, I don’t want to face going back to the tribe and try to convince people of the value of this gift I’m here to bring… but I have to because it’s my calling.

As you move out of reaction, the next stage is response.

When you‘re responding to the call to return, it can be that you’re doing it for others more than for yourself. It can sound like, I’m choosing to do this because I have hard-won gifts that people need, and on some level I feel a duty to deliver them.

But there’s this third state, which is creation.

You’re not taking the return journey home because you must…

You’re not even doing it because you can…

You’re making the return journey home as a creator because you want to!

You want to see what can be created!

You want to get your hands dirty and see what can emerge as you do!

That’s the space of creation on the return journey home – and you returning home to yourself as a creator is what the entire hero’s journey is about!

At the beginning of this hero’s journey every hero starts out as a victim. Something happens to you (whatever your wounding was), and rather than refusing the call outright and becoming a hardened villain, you say yes to the adventure, becoming the hero.

The definition of a hero I’m using is this:

You’re a victim who has chosen to answer the call to adventure – even though it’s an adventure you’re ill-equipped to go on!

In the return journey home, you make the return journey as a creator.

Sometimes the word hero is conflated with savior, because of how it’s been used in Hollywood where one person saves the entire world.

But that’s not it at all, because when you‘re a savior you’re still in victim consciousness – you see everyone as victims that you need to save. In reality that’s exhausting, even on a small scale.

But creation emerges from a state of freedom.

It’s not in reaction to anything – you‘ve done the work, you‘ve gotten the elixir, and you‘re now free of so many of the wounds that bound you before… so you can go where you want to and create what inspires you.

Your true calling is not to save – it’s to create.

And the real heroes are those that dance in the field of creation, and bring something wholly new and emergent to this world…

Not first and foremost because the world needs it, but first and foremost because it delights them.

We’re just the lucky ones who get the benefit from that delight.