The Way of the Courageous Vulnerable: Finding Your Meaning and Purpose Through the 7 Stages of the Hero's Journey

By Matthew Harris

The Way of the Courageous Vulnerable is a self-transformation and personal development book that is filled with wisdom and humour. 

It connects the wisdom of the Hero's Journey storytelling template w

• Language: English
• Publisher: Matthew Harris
• Release date: Jan 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9780645067316

Matthew Harris

Matthew Harris is a long-time teacher, storyteller, workshop presenter and writer who lives and works in the beautiful Byron Bay region of New South Wales, Australia. He writes inspirational articles and gives workshops on the Hero's Journey, spirituality, and personal transformation. He helps people find inspiration, purpose and meaning by helping them appreciate their own heroic and noble journeys in life. Matthew experienced his own Hero's Journey encountering extended periods of illness, depression, and poverty. He now sees this as an Initiation experience, eventually, leading him into breakthroughs that brought about his emergence, into his gifts, talents and wisdom. He has been interested in mythology, spirituality, and the archetypal path since childhood. He now combines these elements to provide a roadmap for human growth, transformation, and fulfilment. Matthew provides workshops, retreats and courses in writing, spiritual expansion, and finding and applying the Hero's Journey in your daily life. His courses and programs provide participants access to their inherent wisdom and power, and fulfils their basic need for self-value, self-appreciation, and purpose. Matthew believes we all go through a journey in our lives, mostly unconsciously, to achieve our life's mission and purpose. Matthew's work reveals this inner courage and nobility within your own life path.

Book preview

Table of Contents

Preface

PART 1: OVERVIEW

INTRODUCTION

The Hero’s Journey – Overview

The Stages of the Journey

The Hero’s Journey in Detail

PART 2: THE STAGES OF THE JOURNEY

Phase 1: Preparation and Departure

Stage 1: Call to Adventure

Stage 2: Crossing the Threshold

Phase 2: Initiation

Stage 3: The Road of Trials

Stage 4: The Abyss

Stage 5: Rebirth and Transformation

Phase 3: The Return

Stage 6: The Road Back, Rewards and Gifts

Stage 7: Reintegration

Conclusion

Acknowledgements

About the Author

To all my teachers, who have all contributed to my journey.

Thank you.

And to Sean Duncan Elias Harris – a beautiful boy with

a profound purpose. May you be blessed.

And still...

I walk my path...

Through places

I did not want to go.

Letting go

Of that which I did not want to release.

Becoming

That which I never thought I would be,

Greater

Than I ever knew,

Freer

Than I ever hoped.

Always

I Am.

And still...

I walk my path...

WotCV_page-vi.jpg

Hero: A person who is admired for their courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities. They personify a nobility of spirit which manifests as concern and compassion for others and the well-being of all.

Courage: The quality of mind or spirit (mental or moral strength) that enables a person to venture, persevere, or face difficulty, danger, pain, or fear.

"Courage is a heart word. The root of the word courage is cor - the Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms, the word courage meant To speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart.

Brene Brown, Author

Vulnerable: Open or exposed to the possibility of being wounded or harmed.

Ordinary: What is commonplace or standard.

Preface

J ust see if you can enjoy being sick, my brother said to me as I lay on the couch sweating from a virus that I had had for a week. I cursed him under my breath as I acknowledged the absurd logic of what he said. He was right.

He was saying there was a flow in which I could choose to sit, that allowed the virus to naturally go through my body. If I could just allow and even enjoy this process, then I would do much better. The virus would do its thing in my body and then leave. However, if I spent my time fighting the virus by trying hard to make something happen, it would probably linger longer, prolonging my discomfort.

In 1999, I experienced an emotional breakdown. It was on a scale I had never experienced before. It was triggered by me seeing my ex-wife from across the street. There was nothing special at all about this event. She was having lunch with friends and appeared to be having a good time. We were divorced the year before, and it was always uncomfortable seeing her at that time. It always stirred up butterfly feelings in my stomach; feelings of not knowing what to do, say, or feel.

On this day, I saw her from across the street and again felt the same feelings of discomfort and uncertainty. This time, however, it was a little more intense than usual. This time, there was an accompanying feeling of nausea and a higher level of uncertainty, and I’m sure my breath was shorter and there was a tightness in my chest and stomach. I wasn’t sure whether to go over and speak to her, to deal with the situation in front of me, or to acknowledge how I felt and go home. I decided just to go home and allow my body and my feelings to settle, even though I felt a bit defeated in not speaking with her.

But my feelings didn’t settle. I experienced a level of nausea and emotional and energetic build-up I had never before encountered. I had had several emotional breakdowns in the past, the first being when I was 19, but this had an intensity and depth and breadth which was completely new to me. It was incredibly unsettling. I was confused about what was happening to me. It felt like I was stepping into something huge and I had no frame of reference for what was occurring.

And then it happened. The dam to my emotions broke open. It was an opening to grief, shame and sadness that I had never experienced before. I had been through many periods of depression and sadness before, but I had never felt such intensity in the upwelling of emotion, over which I had no control at all. I couldn’t ignore it and I couldn’t suppress it; it was just too big. I knew the best thing I could do was to feel these feelings, as uncomfortable as they were, and allow them to pass through my body.

The intensity of shame and sadness I felt drew me to my knees. I wept and wept and cried and sobbed from the hurt and shame I felt, down to the bottom of my guts. The sensations and overwhelm went on for more than an hour. They just kept on coming, longer than ever before. Eventually, the intensity eased, and I was able to get up and try to work out what was going on.

From my previous experience with depressive episodes, I knew there was an intelligence going on which I needed to attune myself to. I knew that these episodes resolve in their own time, and it means allowing for the movement of the accompanying energies. As time went on, these episodes of grief and sadness emerged spontaneously during the day or night. Eventually, I had to resign from my job as I could no longer perform my work functionally. I had to pay attention to my healing, and do it now.

In doing so, I sought out healers and therapists of different modalities. I began meditating, enrolled in personal development courses and allowed myself to feel deeply what was going on within me. It was a profoundly uncomfortable and painful period.

But it was also a time filled with deep insights and personal revelations. I was uncovering long-held suppressed feelings and emotions from deep within me. They lead me to a greater understanding of who I was, and what happened to me through my life. I was shown where my responsibility lay for the pain I was experiencing. This breakdown was creating a breakthrough for me into a deeper appreciation of myself and the world around me.

In 2000, during my healing process, I experienced several profound intuitive insights. One of them was to trust the ‘still, small voice’ that occasionally spoke to me. This voice was my intuition, an angelic presence, and I knew its voice was true. I knew its truth because it was clear, it was still, and it was certain. There was no pressure or judgement with it.

One evening, after a series of meditations over the previous week, this intuitive voice told me to change my name in order to embody the changes I had experienced in my healing. I was, both symbolically and manifestly, becoming a new person.

So, in October 2000 I changed my name. I crossed a threshold and walked into the world as a new person. At the time, I had great hopes and dreams of a new life with my new name, embodying freedom, wealth and love. I believed I would leave the painful past behind and walk a new path of personal power, freedom and abundance. Little did I know however, that life, had a completely different plan to the one I had in mind.

Just a few years later, life’s plan for me led me to experience extended periods of illness (perpetual viruses including glandular fever), unemployment, poverty, isolation, failure and depression. I seemed unable to achieve anything, even though I was doing all the right things the personal development courses told me to: have goals, write them down, make them SMART, meditate, think positive, read books, be in a Mastermind group, find a mentor and take action. None of these things seemed to work. I felt totally powerless and ineffectual. In fact, some methods like positive thinking actually made me feel worse. I felt like either I was either always doing something wrong, or there must be something wrong with me.

Paradoxically, even though I was experiencing failure and depression, I always had a sense that there was something within me, assuring me that I was alright and that ‘I’ was not my circumstances, and that I was actually on a profound journey of purpose. I always felt that there was a light within me, some inexplicable energy or force, leading me on to achieve a purpose which I couldn’t comprehend at the time.

I experienced immense feelings of frustration and hopelessness during this time. I was doing my best to create a vision and goals, and take action accordingly. But I always seemed to go nowhere along that path. I felt like I lived in a landscape where there was mud to the horizon in all directions, and whatever I did, however I plodded, nothing changed. And it went on for years. And years. And years.

Eventually, after years of struggle and my brother saying that I should ...just try and enjoy being sick, I slowly learnt the lesson and stopped trying to control the process. Eventually, I found ways to be at ease with my journey and appreciate myself and others around me. I finally realised that there was a bigger purpose and journey I was living through, or was living through me, I just didn’t know what it was. And even though I wasn’t achieving my goals and dreams, I was still part of a much grander purpose which I couldn’t fathom at the time.

By 2013, I realised that I had completed this journey. I had fulfilled the purpose of that part of my life. It was the end of a huge and important cycle in my life. I had been through an arduous journey that had taken me into an abyss of depression, failure, powerlessness, illness, poverty and humiliation many times, over many years. I had completed a full Hero’s Journey cycle.

During 2012 I knew this cycle was coming to an end, and by 2013, I knew I completed it. I knew that I had done all that I was supposed to do, and that I had been on a profound journey of healing and transformation. I had emerged as a new being into the light of a new day. I was so relieved. I had completed a major part of my life’s purpose, and I felt free. I realised that the name I had adopted during that period was a persona I needed to embody, to enable me, Matthew, to emerge at the end. So again, the inner voice of knowing called to me and affirmed that I should change my name, back to my birth name. And so, I did.

I realised that I had completed a full cycle of the Hero’s Journey. I had lived in the Known World, Crossed Thresholds, encountered allies and enemies, endured many Trials and Challenges, and had been into the Abyss and experienced death and rebirth, multiple times. I had then emerged into the path of Ascent.

On the Ascent, I gained new insights and appreciations of myself and others. I put these insights into action as sincerely as I could in my work and personal life. I gained new allies and enemies, and endured even greater trials and temptations, as I was challenged to endure further illness, poverty and powerlessness.

But finally, finally the challenges ended and I emerged from my journey into a new sense of health, freedom and empowerment. I emerged into a realisation that my life was an expression of a profound purpose of healing and transmutation which was unrecognised by myself and others as I was going through it.

The focus of my appreciation and insight was that most people, however ordinary, are far more courageous and noble than we give them credit for. And that we, as ordinary as we are, are far more courageous and noble than we give ourselves credit for. And we perform these courageous and noble acts in our very ordinary daily lives.

I understand now that we may not be able to control our circumstances, but we do have some choice in how we experience them. If we face our hardship and powerlessness with acceptance, courage and nobility, we can then emerge from our journey bringing greater peace, wisdom and love into the world. Or we can traverse it with avoidance, cynicism and bitterness.

In response to this momentous life event, I started writing short articles and posting them on social media. I wrote about my insights and my appreciation of people and the courage and nobility they exhibited in their ordinary lives. I spoke of how our ordinary experiences, from hardship to achievement, from the profound to the mundane, are part of a great journey that occurs naturally in our lives. I wanted to share my perception that even when we go through our lowest moments, or performing the most mundane of tasks, we can still be fulfilling our life’s purpose.

A Book, a Calling and the Hero’s Journey

I knew that a book was calling me, but I didn’t know how to start or what to do. So, I just started writing. I wrote short pieces about my insights and awareness and posted them on social media. I wrote intuitively, often stimulated by my responses to others on social media.

What I brought was a depth and appreciation which I drew from my experience. These personalised reflections were quite different to the common articles posted about positive thinking or spiritual truths at the time. These articles have formed the basis of this book.

Having endured extended periods of depression, ill health, poverty and powerlessness over many years, I realised that there was both purpose and meaning behind my experiences. I found an explanation and illustration of that purpose through the Hero’s Journey template.

I have used the Hero’s Journey template as an organising tool for the articles. The template is useful because it is both personal and universal. It is both symbolic and practical, and easily applicable to our ordinary and material lives. It applies to all people, whatever their gender, to describe the commonality of the different stages of our life’s journey.

This book then describes these natural and grand cycles that occur in our ordinary lives and the way they affect us through challenges and achievements. They show us that our journey achieves grand and noble ends, that both build and reveal our character, and delivers our legacy and our purpose through our ordinary lives.

So now, in gathering my writings and sharing my insights, I hope that you too will find greater self-awareness and self-appreciation as you go through your journey. And please, take it from me, as you go through your journey, just see if you can enjoy being sick.

PART ONE:

THE HERO’S JOURNEY OVERVIEW

"The Hero’s Journey is not an invention, but an observation.

[It is] nothing less than a handbook for life, a complete instruction manual in the art of being human."

Christopher Vogler

The Writer’s Journey – Mythic Structure for Writers

WotCV_page-3.jpg

INTRODUCTION

The Hero’s Journey - It’s Universal

Ilove the Hero’s Journey. I was formally introduced to it in 2010 when I attended a Transpersonal Counselling course. As it was being explained, I could see how my life’s experiences could fit within it. I could see how my life fitted within a grand plan, and I immediately gained a sense of relief from that moment.

I love how it simply and actively provided a template and meaning for my life’s journey. I could see how my experience of ‘failure’, illness and turmoil could fit easily within the Initiation stage of this template.

I could see how falling in love and getting married was me ‘Crossing a Threshold’, and there were Mentors and Guides in other areas assisting me on the way. I could see the Temptations and distractions that were taking me off track, and I could see the times I entered the Abyss and experienced death. And then, following that, those times of Rebirth, of new awareness and relief from past burdens.

I love also how it shows me how archetypes, symbols and mythology express themselves in my life, and how these basic and universal elements are still relevant to me today.

I realised then, that as a kid, my interest in ancient stories of myths and legends was actually initiating me into the world of the Hero’s Journey, archetypes and symbols, without knowing it.

The Hero’s Journey is clearly demonstrated through age-old stories in many different cultures, like the tales of King Arthur, the Arabian Nights, and the Mahabharata. And now it is being used in movies, video games and TV series, from the likes of The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Japanese anime, and even the Toy Story animation movies.

Joseph Campbell first described universal characteristics in stories and folktales that occurred across cultures and across time in his 1949 book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Later, these universal stages became known as the Hero’s Journey. Later again, an American family therapist called Maureen Murdoch, found additional elements relating to the way of the feminine in our modern life journeys, and called it The Heroine’s Journey, as outlined in her 1990 book.

Both involve the Hero (female or male) moving through different stages of their life’s journey. They encounter trials and challenges, a descent into profound emotional, physical and spiritual turmoil, and eventually into atonement and reconciliation with themselves and the world. This brings new-found gifts, boons and wisdom back into the community and the world.

It is important to note that both the Hero and the Journey are not gender specific. They are universal, and thereby archetypal in their nature and experience. Both women and men are heroes of their own life’s journey and may experience all the different elements of the Hero’s Journey and the Heroine’s Journey in their lifetime.

There are three well-known parts of the Journey. They are: Part 1 - Preparation in the Known World and Departure from it, Part 2 - going on the journey into Initiation that brings successes, trials and challenges, and that eventually leads through an Abyss into discovering your true gifts and talents. From here, the Hero begins Part 3 – the Return: a path of ascension where your new talents and gifts are tested, and then brought forth as wisdom, to Return into the world, and fulfil your soul’s purpose.

Where Do You See the Hero’s Journey?

It is easy to see this playing out in movies, books and TV shows. The whole journey is played out in a character’s developmental arc in a compressed period of time. It’s more difficult to see it in your own life though, as you are the character in your own movie.

But the Hero’s Journey does play out in our own lives. We live in a Known World; a family, a business or a common pattern of thinking. We often receive Calls to Adventure as we get messages, interventions or invitations to do something new. We must make decisions about Crossing the Threshold to engage the new experience, or not. And we often experience Trials and Challenges (illnesses, uncertainties, and failures), and then decide how to engage with them in the new Unknown World.

So, what do you do in these testing circumstances? How do you respond? How do you decide what to do and which way to go? The Hero’s Journey asks profound questions of you as you encounter these turning points.

The Journey asks you to engage with questions like: Who are you when you don’t get what you want? Do you hoard your new talents and gifts? Are you afraid they are going to be taken away from you? Who do you trust? Can you trust yourself and others, when you have experienced profound betrayal and hardship in your life?

I find the Hero’s Journey fascinating and enlivening. It has helped me see myself, and those around me, as people of great courage and heart, with talents and abilities that are both expressed and undiscovered, that are part of a great cycle and journey of fulfilment and achievement. These ordinary people, going through their ordinary lives, are also very heroic, noble and courageous.

How the Hero’s Journey Affects You?

The Hero’s Journey is a series of stages, set out in a natural cycle. It helps you see and experience the world symbolically and mythologically within a universal and timeless framework.

The Hero’s Journey affects you whether you are a woman or a man, old or young, successful or going through hard times. It is a cycle that is present in your circumstances, in your decisions, in your feelings and in your thinking. It is a template, a guide to describe the different stages you are going through in your life. It is telling you that You are the Hero of your own life’s journey.

The next chapters describe in more detail what the Hero’s Journey is, and how it appears in your life.

The Hero’s Journey - Overview

The Hero’s Journey in Your Ordinary Life

Most people live very ordinary lives: they go to work, go shopping, take the kids to school, go home, watch TV, prepare meals and make decisions about where to spend their time and money. Most people make sacrifices for others, endure hardships, illness, unfairness, challenges and losses, as well as experiencing times of happiness, achievement, success and love.

All of these things are part of The Hero’s Journey; your successes, your losses, your dreams, your decisions and thoughts are all part of a much bigger process and journey of life.

By taking the time to learn about the Hero’s Journey and the archetypes that go with it, you can find a way to appreciate yourself and your life’s journey more fully. You can see there are patterns and cycles at play, that seem to demonstrate a much bigger design and set of principles within your life.

Understanding the Hero’s Journey allows you to see your life as fulfilling a far grander purpose than you can see at the time. It shows you that going through your periods of hardship and struggle, as well as and your successes and achievements, are all a natural and normal part of your journey. And the purpose of the journey is to provide the opportunity for you to develop your character and fulfil your soul’s mission.

Who is This Book For?

This book is for people at all stages of their life’s journey: it is a Call to Adventure for those just beginning a journey; it provides comfort for those enduring the hardships of the Initiation phase; and it provides meaning and context to those who have experienced the fullness of the journey and are now at The Return, looking for ways to pass on their experience and wisdom.

Engaging with the Hero’s Journey means you are willing to go through the process that takes you through darkness and uncertainty, and employ the courage needed to deal with the challenges you will face. It will often call you to move into your