{"id":5037,"date":"2019-07-23T06:54:43","date_gmt":"2019-07-23T10:54:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/?p=5037"},"modified":"2022-05-26T22:13:10","modified_gmt":"2022-05-27T02:13:10","slug":"riding-the-blue-moon-the-heroic-journey-of-healing-ourselves-and-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/2019\/07\/23\/riding-the-blue-moon-the-heroic-journey-of-healing-ourselves-and-others\/","title":{"rendered":"Riding the Blue Moon: The Heroic Journey of Healing Ourselves and Others"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>By Dr. Olivia Efthimiou<\/strong><\/p>\n

We are born into a world that invites us to the adventures of the senses. It compels us to instinctively seek out that which will make us whole, give us meaning, and satisfy both our most basic and superordinate needs.<\/p>\n

Yet, as the years go by, as we are weathered by the often unforgiving heights of the journey, we seem to fall into an increasingly deep, dark sleep. A sleep that begins to eat away at us like rot. Sometimes we can smell its decay, we feel there is something wrong with our mind, our body, our heart, our spirit. Other times it is as though a comforting veil is pressed lightly upon our head.<\/p>\n

When this veil bursts, it is a defining point in the story. Our story arc is split wide open, down to its bare bones. And that is one of the most, or the<\/em> most terrifying thing most of us can experience. If we can muster the courage to live through it, that is.<\/p>\n

We are the heroes of our own story. That much is undeniable. We can be sceptical about assigning the label of \u2018hero\u2019 or \u2018heroine\u2019 to ourselves; most of us are. We may even have a deep resistance to it. But heroism is in our blood. Heroism and the hero\u2019s journey of life and death we must all pass through is the one thing we have in common apart from being human. The ancient origins of the word are not fully validated. But one ascription assigns it the meaning of protector or safeguard<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Fundamentally, to live is to be transformed. We must evolve and change, no matter how we feel about it. And some, if not most, of us will do this kicking and screaming. We live in a world of duality, and two halves must form a whole. We must die, to live again. Healing does not, and cannot exist without dis-ease, in this reality at least.<\/p>\n

I used to believe that a hero is a protector and a safeguard of life, of the good, and the pure. But I now believe that to be a hero is to experience, and be transformed by, the journey in all its dualities \u2013 the black, the white and all the colours in between. \"\"<\/a>To truly transform, the hero\u2019s journey requires us to go with the flow of energy as it is presented to us. We must not fight it, we must feel it with our body, in its entirety. We must be cracked open, spat out and redefine ourselves when the call to do so comes.<\/p>\n

Like the moon, we must wax and wane through all our phases \u2013 we must witness these changes. And sometimes, if the stars align, it becomes our natural progression to become the \u2018supermoon\u2019, or the \u2018blue moon<\/a>\u2019 as some call it.<\/p>\n

When you are called to ride the blue moon, your entire world will fall apart. Life as you knew it, becomes a pale shadow and your reality is turned upside down. Everything you held to be true is disintegrated<\/a> and you feel like you are torn into pieces with it. There is no in between, and often no safety net underneath, just a gaping black hole that may suck you up if you let it.<\/p>\n

Clinicians and psychologists may call this depression<\/a>, or mental illness. But spiritual teachers have long described this as a \u2018spiritual awakening<\/a>\u2019 often accompanied by a \u2018dark night of the soul\u2019. Let\u2019s not forget that the history of modern medicine and psychiatry is less than a century old. Those disintegrating pieces we hold onto so tightly are often referred to as the \u2018ego\u2019, who fathers of psychology Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud theorised at length.<\/p>\n

But the ego is not an enemy<\/a>, as spiritual teacher Christina Lopes describes \u2013 its purpose is actually to protect us, to build an identity that creates a space in which to define ourselves. Eventually, this safety mechanism we build for ourselves becomes a prison, as it must make way for new forms of being and growth.<\/p>\n

Human evolution is now calling us to accept higher and higher levels of uncertainty and complexity \u2013 for it is only through this open field that we can ascend to a higher state of flow and disruptive creativity. A state that our current structures are not forgiving of, nor nurturing towards.<\/p>\n

In the words of modern day spiritual teacher Adyashanti<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cEnlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It\u2019s seeing through the facade of pretence. It\u2019s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.\u201d<\/p>\n

That is what heroism and the hero\u2019s journey process is at its core, as transformation-in-process<\/em>. More and more people are now called to ride the blue moon and its eradicating process. Yet, as much as this process takes away, it has the potential to give back tenfold.<\/p>\n

As Joseph Campbell<\/a> described, the hero\u2019s journey has life-affirming properties. This is no complicated notion \u2013 to live, me must die. \"\"<\/a>In the season 2, episode \u201cFreedom\u201d of the classic series Quantum Leap,<\/em> Native American Joseph Washakie played by Frank Sotonoma “Grey Wolf” Salsedo, describes death as a doorway \u2013 and us as a grasshopper.<\/p>\n

The blue moon begs us to leap into its depths. To allow its deep blue waters to completely penetrate us, and seed into us the new self that must be born again from our union with the universe and its\/our spirit, as we make our way \u2013 begrudgingly, willingly or painfully \u2013 into the other side, the new world.<\/p>\n

Through this process, we discover that the pieces that fell to the ground and were swept away with the wind were not truly needed or a part of our innate nature to begin with. Those that are left, that stick onto us as if they are indeed part of our skin, we may come to rediscover in a new light, and re-assemble them in a new whole.<\/p>\n

And perhaps the illusion is that we were never destroyed or disassembled to begin with \u2013 like the moon appears to be incomplete, it has always remained whole<\/em>. We have just awakened to a deeper, more authentic sense of wholeness. One that is not a<\/em> version of us \u2013 but us<\/em>.<\/p>\n