The finger that points at the moon: Using the Journey

To use the journey in life, remember that the journey is a metaphor for a fundamental process of growth and transformation. To focus only on the journey is to lose sight of the lessons it teaches. Recently I received an e-mail from a reader who asked how to use the hero’s journey with clients suffering […]

Translating Campbell for Everyday Life

Ironically, the characteristics that make Campbell’s work rich and compelling are also the characteristics that can make it difficult to apply his ideas to our everyday journeys. Over the three-plus decades that I have studied and used the hero’s journey, people have often told me that they love Campbell’s work, but they have difficulty teaching […]

The Parable of the Raft

On life’s journeys, we use “rafts” to carry us from one point to the next. In this parable, Buddha tells us that carrying these “rafts” after they have served their purpose ties us to our past rather than opening our future. Buddha once told his disciples the story of a man who is trapped on […]

Making Choices

Our choices build our character In the Sierra Nevada Mountains, each juniper is unique, shaped by winter’s icy winds and heavy snows. As with the juniper, the challenges we face help shape our character. For us, however, it is not so much the challenges that shape us into who we are; it is how we […]