The Hero’s Journey – Why it works so well.

I think it’s really about the fact that you can go on your own inner journey of development and have a free choice: How much you show yourself to others.

I think it’s one of the key elements of why it works so well. Because you have many inner experiences. You are nevertheless held by the setting, by yours truly and also by the group. And you are free to choose how much of yourself you want to show. This means that you have an incredibly high degree of autonomy in your own personal development journey.

You won’t get lost and at the same time you don’t have to get naked if you don’t want to jump around naked. There is also no need.

And I think that’s such a great charm – because many people have concerns: “Uii, I have to do something in the group now…”

It was always exactly my issue, why on the one hand I found the content good, but this constant, out of …

I’m more of an “extroverted introvert” – I don’t like talking about it that much.

And for more introverted people, it’s a great setting because I’m not made to go into the extra version of my inner life here. And in addition, together with Kesja, I realized at some point that this was neither necessary nor helpful. It can work much better if I don’t have to verbalize this process of change immediately.

Here too, modern approaches have come so far.

You know: It’s all about somatic experience.

And we use many levels that are beyond language and that’s why they work.

Because our problem arises from the ego and our neurotic self-reference, which arises through language and language…. If you do this pre-linguistically, without language, symbols and physical experience, then you are working on a much… You are working on the boat software! And all the problems we have are due to the fact that we have not properly developed basic topics and skills in the boot software.

And everything we do now with our intellect and ego development is an attempt to eradicate this programming or software error or software trouble, and that is why it is only ever short-term.

I always compare it like this: We install new software for the reversing camera and make all kinds of programs in our car software. Instead of getting out and cleaning the camera in the back. And suddenly the thing is running.

And that, I think, is the charm of the subject. That it is very much about a deeper perception. But now, unlike in SOMA therapy or in process-oriented psychology, without patterns.

These archetypes are deep inner psychological patterns that help us to hold on to them in order to gradually explore the free flow of our psyche without sinking. We’re not drowning yet.

We learn to swim with the help of these patterns. And at some point, which is the case with the Lovers Journey, the patterns become even finer and you begin to experience a floating consciousness, which comes more and more to this source of our original perception, and at some point even further, when you experience the floating and this free flow of consciousness, which is what happens in the flow theory, or in the Buddhist psychology of perception.

When you trust this free flow and, like when skydiving, you realize that the thing is carrying you even though it is nothing. Then you suddenly realize how you can reinvent much more out of this free flow.

That’s more or less what you have with Chinese philosophy too

You know, you have the Iging: That’s 64 social interaction patterns. If you dive even deeper, you have the 5 elements or the nine elements. And if you dive even deeper, you only have Jing / Jang. Which seems to be a basic theme of our psyche: dualism.

And suddenly you realize that dualism is a paradox, but that it gives me vitality: Light and shadow give me vitality. That’s why there is always light and shadow in archetypes.

And if you go even deeper, then you enter the Dao: this is the incomprehensible, yet tangible being from which you can create yourself anew. And with the help of the Heros Journey and then also the Lovers Journey and the Wisdom Journey, you can get to the thing without losing yourself.

You can still hold on to something, even though it’s nothing you’re holding on to. That’s why it works better than if you do it without a pattern. Because you can end up dull or in complete confusion.

And that is what is missing in many areas of psychology.

And now, if you take the original hero’s journey: Cambell has already seen and described it. And Paul Rebillot has made it much more structured and tighter and narrower in keeping with the spirit of the times – and that’s why, in my view, it’s absolutely out of date.