The Call to Adventure

All this time, you’ve felt a nagging feeling that something’s not quite right, that something needs to change, and there should be something more in your life. You haven’t thought about it till now, but as you reflect on that message in The Ordinary World, you realize just what it is.

In The Call to Adventure, you will face 2 things: the pain of something in your life that you’re no longer willing to accept, therefore you must move out of your old world, or the pleasure of a new goal, that will thrust you into The Hero’s Journey.

What is it you’re no longer willing to accept anymore in your world? And what is a new goal that you want to set for yourself, a goal enticing and powerful enough that would want to make you leave behind your old world and step into a new one? That’s the treasure you seek.

And this is your Call to Adventure.

But is this the first time you’ve heard this call? In The Hero’s Journey, many heroes actually refuse the first call to adventure. They might be reluctant to do so, perhaps they fear the challenges that they imagine they might face, or they think perhaps they’re not the best person for this mission.

This is called the inauthentic state, because it’s inauthentic to believe that you’re not good enough compared to someone else. It’s inauthentic to believe that you don’t have the resources you need already inside you to rise up to any challenge you’ll face. It’s inauthentic to believe that other people deserve the treasure at the end of the journey while you don’t.

In the words of Marianne Williamson:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

In short, it’s inauthentic to recognize that you are the Hero in The Hero’s Journey.

For heroes who refuse the call to adventure, there’s only one thing that happens: they flounder. They start dying inside…but the call keeps coming, until one day they have no choice but to answer the call. Events sweep them up into motion, they find themselves drifting along without a direction until they’re just before a waterfall and they realize they have to start paddling like crazy or they’re dead. They are forced, they don’t choose, to undertake The Hero’s Journey.

Wherever you are in your journey, what is it that’s calling you to step out into a new world now? Is it something you’re no longer willing to accept? Is it a new goal you need to set for yourself? What’s the treausre you’re after? What in your life is calling you to a new adventure?