The Hero’s Journey and Men’s Work

All right, and welcome back. So today I'm going to talk about the hero's journey and men's work and how these two things, I think, are deeply related.

So the hero's journey, if you're not familiar with it, is the name given to kind of a loose structure that author Joseph Campbell discovered studying classic myths and that very clearly map onto all the modern stories through books and films and whatnot, to this very day. So kind of what happened was he read all these different classics and noticed some patterns, and these patterns followed a pretty specific structure that made for meaningful change and the protagonist of a story.

Now, this hero's journey structure is a great tool for authors, filmmakers, writers, etcetera, for how to create a great story, for how to create a great story. But it's also an amazing example of how humans change, like the journey, what it actually entails for us to transform. And I think it's a great, great framework to actually explore the power of men's work through specifically men's work in person.

And so the hero's journey, right, it has 12 very specific steps in it that you can look up and are very detailed about points of the journey, so to speak. But in very simple terms, they break down into three acts, right? The first part of the story, the middle of the story, and the end of the story. And those acts. And those acts really boil down to separation, initiation, and return. So what does that mean?

Well, it basically means transformation as we know it, right, Is changing from one thing to another. And how that always starts is there's some kind of normal, right? There's the normal in our lives. Equilibrium, as he would call it. It's the way things are. Separation. The first act is when something disturbs that system, right? There's a call.

He literally calls it the call to adventure. We would call that the call to transformation or change. And often heroes and journeys initially resist that call. There's a bit of an addiction to the equilibrium, to the stasis. But at some point, they take up the call and they separate. What that really means is they leave not their ordinary world, they actually leave.

Their ordinary world might be their family, their community, their village, their town, their home. They leave what has been normal and they cross into what they call the unknown world or the special world. And that's the place where transformation actually happens. It. If you've been listening to this podcast, that's the place where I would say vulnerability lives, right? Stepping forward into a moment or an interaction or a change of direction in our life where we do not know the outcome ahead of time.

And it's in that initiation that the hero of the journey meets new people, including mentors, friends, foes, and gets put to tests, right? Actually gets challenged. They get stressed. They have to learn and grow. They have to emerge with something new in the moment, ultimately moving against whatever conflict they are facing in the story.

And then at some point, as they've found the gold, so to speak, they faced the dragon and found what's on the other side. They begin the process of return, returning to their ordinary world. So they take all the wisdom and all the treasure that they got on their journey of growth and transformation and adventure, and they bring it back to the ordinary world. They bring it back to their family, they bring it back to their community to enrich that, right, to enrich whatever was their ordinary world.

They come back more than they can still engage, but there's more of them there. They have new skills and capacities and wisdom to bring to the table. So what does that have to do with men's work? Well, a lot these days, right, when we talk about the masculine in this podcast, it has some patterns to how it transforms and changes that map a lot onto the hero's journey, right?

Just in even the way a lot of just in the way many hunter gatherer cultures were organized was woven into the masculine experience to leave the village for a hunt or for war. So separate from the normal, separate from their families, separate from their village and tribe, and go off to face the unknown to either create safety, ideally, or bring back the bounties of food and game from the hunt.

And they did this by leaving, often together in a small pack, and being pushed and having to learn and having to train each other, having to rely on each other before they could come back to their village, come back to their family. So this is a core part of the masculine journey already. It's going off to face the unknown and figure out who we are, learn what we're made of, what makes us tick, what we're capable of.

And that's often really hard to do in the ordinary world. It takes going away from our equilibrium, from our known, and going into a heightened environment of transformation and change and, yes, some kind of stress on our system where we have to, to show up in ways we've maybe never had to before. And so I see this a lot in guys I work with, and I've experienced this a lot in my own journey.

What's shifting is, for a lot of us men, particularly in the west, first world nations, we don't actually have to go out and get food. We don't actually have to go out and put our lives on the line, right? We live in societies and structures and governments that keep some of that at bay, keep us safe, right. For those of us that are privileged enough to not have to go do that stuff.

The point being, part of what's shifting in this moment in time is men are aching for that journey. We don't know who we are unless we leave the ordinary world. We don't know who we are unless we go on a journey, unless we're stressed, unless we have to step into that vulnerable place, unless we separate, initiate, and then return. And there's an ache in so many men, right, for that.

It's why we're drawn to a lot of those films and stories and movies and current events where we imagine what we would do in that kind of situation. Now, I think it's actually a good thing that most men don't have to do that these days, and most humans don't have to live in a world where food and war really are on the table. There's plenty that do, and it's not a great thing as much as we might romanticize it. So what's starting to happen instead is that journey, that hero's journey of separation, initiation, and return from the ordinary or known world to the special or unknown world.

It's moving from something that happens outside to something that happens inside. Our world isn't necessarily a vast unknown place anymore, right? It's literally Google mapped. But the new territory, the new frontier we have to confront is the inner world. Our inner demons, our inner shadows, our inner self of healing or doing the work as we often talk about.

And so for those of us that have the privilege, that journey becomes about deepening ourselves and healing ourselves and doing the type of work that most men in our family system probably never had the opportunity to do, right? And because of how stressful and technological and wired our modern society is, a lot of that work starts with us going offline, getting into our bodies, connecting to our hearts, our souls, feeling all the things we never felt before, and doing that in some kind of community that tracks us and pushes us.

And so this is why I think one of the most Important things men can do these days is to get into men's work and specifically have the experience of actually going on a men's work journey. So this would be like a live training or event where we get to recreate the hero's journey that actually starts right? With feeling a call. I know there's more in my life. I want something different. This can't be it.

There's something missing. I don't feel just right or I don't really know who I am, right. There's a hunger. There's a deep hunger in so many of us men. And that call may show up as actually going to do some men's work, right? And what's so key about men's work and the way it can recreate the hero's journey, particularly when it's live and in person, is the way it recreates the cycle, right, of separation.

Feel that call and then I leave home. Virtual work is great, but there's something really potent and important about actually leaving our ordinary world. I've experienced this many times myself, that their journey to a men's work retreat or a shadow retreat or a medicine experience, that's an incredibly important part of the journey.

It actually starts the second we cross that threshold and leave our house. We're entering into a non ordinary state. We're becoming more conscious because we're stepping into the unknown and we're going somewhere. And the great thing about men's work is we get to go there with other guys, recreating some of those old experiences, right? Recreating leaving the tribe, leaving home and going off with other men to face the unknown, discover who we are, to face the unknown and discover who we are.

And men's work itself, so much of it in the ways and lineages I've been a part of, about becoming comfortable with discomfort. Can I stay present no matter what's happening, whether that's physical discomfort, emotional discomfort, even spiritual discomfort, can I learn to stay grounded and present in my breath? And we get to do that in men's work and on retreat with other men, where guided practices can take us to our edge, can take us to those uncomfortable places, can force us in a good way to find out who we are and what we want and what we care about.

And to do that in the context of connecting deeply with other men, where we get to get tuned up. As I recently talked about, other men in person can help sharpen us, tune us up, get us aligned in a way we can almost never do ourselves. Men's work Retreats are the modern hero's journey and they're an accelerant of wherever your life is at, right?

It's like hitting the gas pedal in my experience, where I can have a depth of transformation in two to four days by actually leaving home and going off to do deep inner work that I just can't do at home. That fills me up, fills my tank, gets me clear, gets me aligned, gets me charged in ways I often might not be just at home.

And I think this is one of the missing pieces for so many men where we just get plugged into the matrix and suddenly days, months, years fly by and we're not even sure what's going on. I know I had about a decade like that. Menswork breaks that all up, gives us a container to face the unknown, to grow and deepen and to have powerful state experiences, non ordinary states, to feel different in our bodies, in our hearts, in our souls, in a way that opens us to new possibilities that we can then bring back home, bring back to our community, to our life, to our family, to our job.

And there really is just something incredibly potent about doing it in person. The physical act of leaving home, the physical act of being surrounded by other men and the real energetic power that gives for that transmission of masculinity to really kind of, to really radiate through our bodies and the men around us, that tuning up doesn't just happen on an individual level, as happens on the collective level with whoever that is and the masculine in all of us.

It bonds by doing even more than relating. And I've had so many wild experiences in men's work retreats where there's just a feeling of I really know these guys. At the end of even a day long workshop. There's something about having gone through the ordeal itself that bonds and unites us as men. So when we go home, we're not just taking our personal inner transformation with us, we're taking a connection to other men who get that and have experienced us at our best in that energized, transformed, non ordinary state, who can then help us hold, in whatever way possible, hold us to that standard when we go back home.

Because they've been there with us, they've been breathing with us, they've looked us in the eye, they felt and experienced us. And what's possible in us because of that hero's journey we all went on together. And it's a good and exciting time because these types of experiences are starting to show up more. There's more men's work and transformation happening now than certainly any time I've been alive. And it's so crucial right now because so many men are in pain and isolated, disconnected men who are in pain do awful things.

Doesn't mean they're awful people. But when you get to that point, awful things will happen. Men need other men to keep them in check, to keep us aligned, to call us on our bullshit. As I've said, retreats are a great place to meet those kinds of men, to create that network around ourselves we can take back home with us. And there's just no substitute to the physicality of doing it in person. Can do a lot virtually work with guys every week and it's mind blowing how much we can do over zoom.

But at the same time I can always feel, ah, to be in the room with them right now, to be able to make physical contact would just accelerate the work even more. And it's one of the many reasons I'm excited that we're getting back to a place where we can at least cautiously start to do this type of work in person again. So I'm definitely running events, so you can definitely check out working with me and doing some of the live events that I run for men by going to evolutionary men events.

And that list will change over time depending on what's available. So depending on when you're listening to this, there may or may not be something upcoming, but there's always a list you can join. So only you know if, if you felt the call right, that low level feeling gnawing away at your heart, that it's time, there's gotta be more, there's gotta be something else. This isn't working for me.

I know I'm more than I'm showing up as right now. If you are feeling that, scary as it might be, you gotta heed the call. You gotta say, I'm ready to step into more and I need some help. And I'm probably going to need to leave home and confront some things to do it, to shake up my life, to break up that equilibrium, to add some conscious, intentional stress to your system, to strengthen it, to sharpen it, to open it, to tune it up.

So my hope is you find a way to get that call answered, whether it's with my work in my community or another one. Because the world needs it. The world needs you right now to step into the conscious, open hearted, fierce man you are that won't stand for so much of the awfulness happening. And it has to be men calling out other men at this level.

It has to be other men calling out in men, calling forward men who they see in pain or hurting or isolated, doing dangerous or concerning things. It's up to us to keep our eyes on those guys. Keep our eyes on each other. Say, hey, what's going on? I want to help. I see you're hurting. I've hurt in my own way. What can we figure out? You're ready to heed the call?

You can check out what's going on in my world at evolutionary mements. Till next time.