The world is full of people who have stopped listening to themselves. – Joseph Campbell
In his riveting series of interviews with Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, recorded in 1987, Bill Moyers (left) probes the question of hero worship. Why are we so fascinated with heroes, both male and female? Campbell says hero stories are the only ones worth writing. Perhaps there is a broader answer.
Do we want to be the heroes of our own lives? Each person might answer this question differently. But our fascination with heroes may flow, in part, from our amazement with the way energy can be concentrated in a single human life…
Heroes live their potential. The life of Leonardo Da Vinci does not suggest that he wasted much time. In spite of his titanic accomplishments, he no doubt could have contributed even more had he been granted more time on this earth. The same is true with every enduring hero from Moses to Martin Luther King.
We count on heroes to protect us from evil as Theseus did when he defeated the minotaur (left.) More important, we count on them to awaken us to great spiritual truths. We love to sit back and watch heroes risking their lives for us while we remain spectators. But their lives also tell us something about our own.
All heroes have great courage because every heroic adventure requires that the hero face down his or her demon. Is it any different with any of us?
Campbell worries that too many of us give up on our dreams. I agree. We worry so much about consequences that we surrender to the crushing weight of the systems we serve. The system’s push for compliance may steal our independence and individuality. When we stop listening to who we are and listen only to the voice of the system outside us we surrender our soul.
For Love to thrive, we all need to become mavericks of a sort. This is because so many of the people around us have lost themselves in the system.
We need to find, again, the voice we knew as children and pass it through our adult experience so that it may become real in the world today. Why wait for retirement to start living? Other people need our energy right now. And we serve others best when we are most true to ourselves.
Are you listening to yourself? Are you living your life in a way that feels true for you?
-Erie Chapman
Journal of Sacred Work 
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