Beginning the Spiritual Hero's Journey: The Call Into the Extraordinary

Tim Wilkins
Jul 31, 2016
6 min read

“The usual hero adventure begins with someone from whom something has been taken, or who feels there is something lacking in the normal experience available or permitted to the members of society. The person then takes off on a series of adventures beyond the ordinary, either to recover what has been lost or to discover some life-giving elixir. It's usually a cycle, a coming and a returning.”

― From the book by Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces

It begins with a frightened princess asking for your help through a hologram projected from an android.... or with an ancient wizard and his friends knocking on your front door to take you on a quest.... or someone telling you to grab a towel because the world is about to end.......OK, probably not, but your own call to the Extraordinary is exciting in its own way.

For most of us, our call to enter this extraordinary journey of becoming a Spiritual Hero is a lot more "normal" than what we see in movies or read in stories. Usually we hear the call to adventure from deep within where the divine stirs us into action. We recognize that we are missing that something that makes us feel complete. This 'call' prompts us to begin to think about that missing peace and what we need to do to get it back. It can be some deep, life-changing event or experience that stirs our need to address the bigger things in life or it might be an epiphany that arrives in our minds while sipping coffee at the local coffee shop. There are no hard and fast rules for how this journey begins. It is absolutely different for everyone.

In my own experience of following the call of the Divine in my life, it arrived as a feeling that I needed to do something to improve the world. My childhood experience of being raised in a family dominated by clergy lead me to initially interpret this feeling as a calling to become a clergyperson and improve the world through my work in a local church. I undertook the process of going to school and receiving all of the degrees required by my chosen denomination and passed all of the examinations necessary to be ordained as an Elder.....but quickly discovered that the direction was just wrong for me.

My love for reading, study, teaching and other more academic pursuits put me at odds with the typical work of a local pastor. Pastors generally are extroverts, I am not. Pastors enjoy going to people's homes and visiting with them, I didn't. I preferred to stay in my office and study or prepare for my sermons or classes I had scheduled to teach. I didn't want to go out and visit in the community. I wanted to study and write. I wanted to dig deep into spiritual truths that were waiting for me. This other stuff just got into the way of where I felt compelled to travel. I recognized that my gifts, and talents were in the area of Spiritual Direction, teaching and writing. The expectations of pastoral work, I soon discovered, was completely at odds with the path that the Divine had set me upon.

One day, while sitting in a meeting with the other pastors in town planning a special service for one of the holidays, I realized that I was in the wrong place...not in the wrong calling but just not the right place for me. I am an activist who enjoys working to change communities through involvement with city government and through leadership roles in community organizations. I get involved in causes that impact human rights, not just hold people's hands. I realized that, instead of traveling on the journey I was supposed to take, I assumed the roles that I had witnessed as a child. This was not the right "fit" for me. I had followed in what I assumed was the "correct" response to my calling instead of actually going on my own journey. I finally understood why I was so uncomfortable. I was following someone else's calling. I was trailing them on their adventure and not pursuing my own.

Once I realized had taken a wrong turn on the journey to be a Spiritual Hero, I did what any person does in response to such a life-changing moment in life. I sat down and started pouting about how it sucked to be obedient when you don't have a clue where you need to go! I had inadvertently refused the calling to be the person that the Divine had commissioned me to become for the comfortable journey that I saw others following. What I have learned from all of this is what I want to share with you today. It comes as two pieces of advice about becoming a Spiritual Hero.

The first piece of advice is: Follow your passions and your intuition. You have everything you need inside of you to achieve the goals of your spiritual journey through life. All of the life experiences and choices you have made to this point have prepared you to answer this calling. In your meditation and time of reflection, take the time to really delve into who you are. You may not like all that you see when you do but that is OK. This just helps to see where you need to work as you move forward. Explore your gifts and talents. Read books and articles to which you feel drawn. Don't limit yourself to what your "ought" to read, do or be. Begin keeping a spiritual journal. Write inspiring quotes and experiences down in that journal. Add life and color to the pages as you write each day. Journaling gives you a record of your own call to adventure and the tools you bring to the journey. The Divine and your connection to that energy knows where you need to be. Listen to that still small voice of intuition within and follow it even when it goes against the usual pathways. This is the way the Divine speaks to you. When you are in tune with the Divine and your intuition, resources for the journey - teachers, books, conferences, etc.- just "happen" to show up at just the right time to help us move forward to the next steps in our journey. Like the old saying says, "When the student is ready, the teacher will arrive."

The second piece of advice is: Don't be perfect, be consistent. The tyranny of perfection is a hindrance to the pursuit to become a Spiritual Hero. It discourages spiritual and personal growth oppportuities by letting our inner critic run the show. That critic may be your parents, your religious upbringing, your past. Whatever it is, it has to be addressed. The phrase that can stop us dead in our tracks is: "We've never done it that way before!" When that comes up, and it will, simply agree with it and move past it. Remind yourself that of course you've never done it that way before, you are blazing a trail and following your own path. Mistakes will happen. They are the tools that help us to learn what we need to learn. Experience is always learned after the fact. Mistakes, missteps and false starts sharpen our resolve to continue when that inner critic is screaming in our ear telling us we have to be perfect. By consistently moving forward, we defeat our inner critic and tune into that still small voice of Divinity urging us onward. In the pursuit to be a Spiritual Hero, it is not uncommon to start down one direction only to have to u-turn and go the other direction later. Be courageous enough to accept the imperfections of your journey and keep moving forward.

So... take a deep breath, quiet your heart and mind, look around you, use the resources and listen to those who are sent to teach you. It will be fun, frustrating and terrifying- sometimes at the same time. But in the end it is all worth it. Oh and one other little piece of advice borrowed from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Don't Panic!