The Highest Hero's Journey - What It Means To Be Real Hero

• Understanding the Highest Hero's Journey: Leo Gura from Actualized.com explains the concept of the highest hero's journey in relation to spirituality and non-duality. Before starting Actualized.org, he explored the possibility of becoming a science fiction writer, which led him to study narrative, storytelling, character development, and the psychology of villains. This research further drove him into the realm of personal development.
• The Influence on Star Wars: Gura notes that Star Wars, an iconic and influential science fiction series, was inspired by Flash Gordon and Valerian comics. These comics, expressing a European French flavor, also influenced the film The Fifth Element. Of particular note is the American mythologist and scholar, Joseph Campbell, who is identified as one of the key inspirations for Star Wars–especially his concept of the hero's journey.
• The Hero's Journey conceptualized: The hero’s journey typically begins with the hero living an ordinary existence. This is interrupted by a call to action, which is initially resisted due to a desire to maintain the comfort of the mundane life. However, after the call is imposed upon the hero by some extraordinary circumstances, the hero embarks on an adventure into unknown and dangerous territories, beginning with facing the Threshold Guardian (the first obstacle).
• Encountering Challenges and Inner Transformation: The hero faces various obstacles, associates with a mentor, and eventually confronts a final boss (symbolized by a dragon) to obtain the Holy Grail. Gura explains that the real Holy Grail is not a physical reward, but the inner transformation and growth that the hero undergoes throughout the journey. Upon achieving the Grail, the hero returns to his tribe to impart lessons learned. However, the hero often encounters difficulty in communicating his experiences.
• Hero’s Journey as a metaphor for Enlightenment: Gura emphasizes that the hero's journey is a metaphor for the internal journey towards consciousness and enlightenment. The battle against monsters and evil symbolizes the struggle against one’s self. He also makes a distinction between a hero and a villain — a hero chooses truth over ego, whereas a villain represents selfishness and desiring to maintain the status quo.
• A True Inner Spiritual Journey: A hero, according to Gura, is an individual who embarks on a true inner spiritual journey and achieves spiritual purification. Society’s distractions and initial resistance often make the acceptance of this journey challenging. A hero embodies a strong will to break free from societal intoxications and is able to see past the discouragement from others, finally realizing the importance of this inner spiritual journey.
• The Challenge of Accepting the Hero’s Journey: Accepting the call to embark on the hero's journey is difficult due to fear induced by the uncertainty of the outcome, the comfort of the status quo, societal pressure, and the struggle with consistent envisioning. Gura believes it is critically important to navigate clear visioning, which many people struggle with.
• Importance of Emotion in the Hero’s Journey: Heroes are seen as embodying our highest potential and are admired for their struggle with confronting their inner self. The struggle of being opposed by societal norms and coming to terms with the realization of not truly knowing who they are can induce intense emotional reactions.
• Taking the Hero’s Journey: Gura emphasizes that understanding the hero's journey can only come from personally experiencing and overcoming the challenges. The lessons can only be learned from firsthand experience, not theoretical understanding. He posits the truth is so powerful that mentors who have come to understand it often choose to remain silent, only imparting their knowledge to those who actively seek their advice.
• Life as a Journey: Gura presents life as a journey, a process, and a framework—implicit in life are the phases of facing Threshold Guardians and overcoming challenges. By understanding this big picture, one can find the guidance needed to stay true to their purpose, address sacrifices, and manage emotional labor that come with following a path that leads towards achieving one’s life's mission.
• Threshold guardians and the mentor in the Hero's Journey: The hero faces various obstacles called Threshold Guardians, for which they may need mentoring to overcome. The mentor is usually a hero from a previous generation who has accomplished the journey. The hero learns from this mentor and receives advice, training, and tools to overcome the obstacles.
• The final boss and the inner battle: The hero must finally face the final boss, represented by a dragon who guards the Holy Grail. This can be the hardest part of the journey where the hero faces their inner demons, fears, and weaknesses. Success in this inner war allows the hero to defeat the dragon and obtain the Holy Grail.
• Receiving the Holy Grail: Once the hero gets the Holy Grail, they realize that the journey was primarily about the transformation and growth they underwent rather than the physical reward. The actual Grail is the experience of finding oneself.
• Returning to the tribe and becoming a mentor: After obtaining the Grail, the hero returns to their tribe to share their lessons. However, these lessons are often misunderstood because the tribe hasn't experienced the journey themselves. The hero, now a veteran, becomes a mentor to any future heroes from the tribe.
• The core of the Hero's Journey derived from Vedanta: The Hero's Journey fundamentally revolves around an internal spiritual journey towards consciousness and enlightenment. It represents the key decision in life between serving the ego or pursuing the truth about oneself. This is closely related to Vedanta, a Hindu philosophy of non-duality and one of the oldest spiritual philosophies.
• The battle against the self: The external journeys of heroes in movies and comic books are metaphors for the internal struggle against oneself. The villains, monsters, and evil forces represent one's ego and the choice of serving the ego or pursuing the truth. Fighting these metaphorical demons is akin to overcoming one's fears, weaknesses, and selfishness on the path to enlightenment.
• Choice between Ego and Truth: The lecture posits that individuals cannot coexist with both their self-identity (ego) and the truth. A desire for the absolute truth requires a dissociation from selfishness, phasing out self-centeredness. Misunderstandings often arise as people attempt to embrace the truth while maintaining their selfish tendencies, which paradoxically makes them embody the villain archetype and reinforces the status quo.
• Understanding of Evil: Evil, as explained in the lecture, is not an external force, monster, or demon but intrinsic selfishness. It includes every action rooted in self-service that perpetuates the villainous status quo. Therefore, individuals, in their self-serving actions, embody villainy in their daily life.
• The Hero’s Defining Characteristic: Heroes are exceptional for their ability to activate a higher sense within themselves, enabling them to seek the truth. They combat the status quo maintained by villains, and their inspirational actions often cause others to shy away from the task.
• The Holy Grail as an Intangible Truth: The Holy Grail, according to the lecture, symbolizes truth, God, enlightenment, or consciousness. These are intangible and cannot be exploited for selfish gains or materialistic power—traits that villains seek to maintain the ego-serving status quo. Heroes, on the other hand, battle to let the truth shine forth against villains determined to conceal it.
• The Metaphorical Journey: The hero’s journey is not about conquering a materialistic world but rather embarking on an inner spiritual journey. The lecture expresses disappointment about how many people have spent their lives chasing after superficial goals, mistaking them for a genuine hero’s journey.
• Characterizing the Real Heroes: Real heroes are not commercial celebrities but spiritual leaders like Zen masters, yogis, mystics, and saints who have embarked on genuine spiritual journeys and found the Holy Grail (truth or enlightenment). This realization has humbled them, and they share their wisdom subtly and modestly.
• Refusing the Hero's Call: Many people have unconsciously been refusing the call for a deep inner spiritual journey due to various reasons like fear, uncertainty, comfort in maintaining the status quo or confusing the call for an external materialistic journey.
• The Rarity of Heroes and the Conspiracy of Society: Heroes are rare because their journey requires breaking loyalty with oneself, a daunting task for most individuals as they are fundamentally loyal to themselves. Society conspires collectively to serve the ego, creating a delusion that serving the self is normal.
• Decision to Embrace the Hero's Journey: Ultimately, the biggest challenge and perhaps the most difficult decision in life is saying no to one's ego and yes to truth, even at the cost of becoming an outcast or being demonized by society. This is the crucial first step to becoming a true hero who embraces their journey.
• Accepting the Call to Adventure: The call to adventure in the hero's journey often involves refusing the call at first due to fear, insecurity, and the desire for comfort and certainty. Individuals inclined to maintain the status quo might see adventure as too risky and prefer to stick to what they know. Accepting the call requires a leap of faith, vision, and a certain level of romanticism about taking on the unknown.
• Barriers to Accepting the Call: Several societal and personal factors can discourage an individual from accepting the call to adventure. These include societal intoxications or addictions, peer pressure, and the fear of being ostracized. Furthermore, the pressure to conform and lack of personal vision often prevent individuals from stepping out of their comfort zones.
• Heroism and Societal Response: Society often views heroes with admiration and emotion, recognizing that they embody our highest potential. Heroes are admired because they undertake a profound inner journey to self-purification and personal growth, which requires considerable strength and courage. However, this journey also makes society uncomfortable, as it forces individuals to confront their own ego and selfishness, thereby disrupting the status quo.
• Why Heroes Must Struggle: A hero's journey involves inevitable struggle, mainly due to the resistance they face from the status quo. The path of a hero is counterintuitive and disorienting, often involving internal conflict and self-fighting. The struggle also stems from having to face one's true self, which can be a daunting and complex task.
• Lack of Understanding from the Tribe: The tribe or society usually fails to understand the hero's lessons due to the unique, personal nature of the journey. This understanding is beyond intellectual and cannot be easily communicated through books or symbols. It involves tangible experiences and overcoming obstacles, reinforcing the idea that finding true happiness and meaning in life is a spiritual journey and not a scientific problem.
• The Uniqueness of the Hero’s Journey: The hero's journey is an individual process of self-discovery and self-transformation. It cannot be outsourced or achieved vicariously through the experiences of others. This journey involves real-life trials and these hard-won lessons can't be handed to others.
• The true purpose of life: According to Leo, one's existence is to experience and understand the truth of reality, which he referred to as the Holy Grail. This understanding, however, is paradoxically subtle and often best-realized through making mistakes and learning the hard way.
• Non-transferability of the hero's journey: Each individual must undertake their own hero's journey. It cannot be outsourced to or completed by anyone else. This journey of self-discovery and enlightenment is best guided by mentors, who often possess wisdom yet remain carefully modest in dispensing advice, understanding the importance of personal experience.
• The limitations of theoretical understanding: The mentor understands that one must personally undergo the journey. They cautiously provide advice to avoid fostering a false sense of understanding based on intellectual or theoretical knowledge, as without personal experience, this knowledge lacks depth and substance.
• The lonely sanctity of the Holy Grail: Possessors of the Holy Grail, signifying truth and enlightenment, often live as hermits, detached from society, which commonly serves egoistic pursuits. They feel no compelling need for society, although they may still live within it.
• Hero's journey as framework: Leo suggests understanding the hero's journey as a framework for life. This journey isn't easy and one will face meaningful obstacles (Threshold Guardians, dragons), but understanding the framework can help one remain focused and undeterred.
• Importance of accepting the call and realizing the journey's costs: Accepting the call to embark on the hero's journey is a significant step and requires clear understanding of the journey's emotional and perceptual costs, and readiness to pursue what truly holds meaning.
• Life dedicated to a higher cause: Leo advises listeners to dedicate their lives to causes greater than themselves. Although such a choice may face opposition and derision, those who withstand and make the journey ultimately fulfill the mission of their life.
• Depiction of the hero's journey in a haiku by Rio Khan: The Zen master's haiku encapsulates the essence of the hero's journey — the disappearance of the familiar (the village), navigating challenging paths, and eventually returning to solitude (lonely hut) — mirroring the solitary, rigorous journey to self-discovery and enlightenment.