“This is a favorite phase of the myth-adventure. It has produced a world literature of miraculous tests and ordeals. The hero is covertly aided by the advice, amulets, and secret agents of the supernatural helper whom he met before his entrance into this region. Or it may be that he here discovers for the first time that there is a benign power everywhere supporting him in his superhuman passage…”

–Joseph Campbell The Hero with a Thousand Faces

A. The hero enters…

1. a landscape of curiously fluid, ambiguous forms…

2. to prove himself with a succession of trials…

3. covertly aided by supernatural aid.

B. The hero descends…

1. intentionally or unintentionally…

2. into his own spiritual landscape…

3. full of symbolic figures that may swallow the hero…

4. each representing an internal obstacle.

C. This is a time of…

1. preliminary victories…

2. unretainable ecstasies…

3. and momentary glimpses of paradise/Nirvana.

D. Deepening the first threshold…

1. Can the ego put itself to death?

2. Each task gets a little more difficult (goes a little deeper), and with each conquest, the hero gains the confidence to be ready for the next challenge.

3. The hero discovers that the original trial is only the beginning…

3. The dragons to be slain must be slain again and again and again…

a. Each villain represents an internal obstacle regardless of the shape of the shell it appears (or reappears) in.

b. Protecting/acquiring the boon is often one of the harder obstacles because of what it represents.

c. Discovering the real “villain” often reveals that the internal obstacle he represents is old and deep (most core).

d. He will be tempted by our greatest desires/needs.

e. He will be tempted by worldly power.

f. The final confrontation will seem like a victory.

g. But, such obstacles are never really “conquered,” only mastered so that the hero is better prepared for when they return.

E. In the vocabulary of the mystics, the road is…

1. The second stage of the Way

2. The purification of the self

3. Cleansing and humbling

4. The shifting of one’s energies to focus on transcendental things.