{"id":5896,"date":"2025-07-11T08:26:19","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T12:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/?p=5896"},"modified":"2025-07-12T05:39:27","modified_gmt":"2025-07-12T09:39:27","slug":"the-heros-journey-parallels-the-spiritual-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/2025\/07\/11\/the-heros-journey-parallels-the-spiritual-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hero’s Journey Parallels the Spiritual Journey"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>By Scott T. Allison<\/strong><\/p>\n

The stages of the spiritual journey show striking parallels with the stages of the hero\u2019s journey, as both involve a departure from the familiar into a realm of challenges and revelations.<\/p>\n

Almost every major spiritual tradition — including Buddhism and Christianity — focuses on human growth resulting from struggle, suffering, and transformation. Franciscan Priest Richard Rohr shares how the story of Jonah became so important to him and his framework of transformation:<\/p>\n

Soon after I moved to New Mexico in the late 1980s, I began my studies for what would become the men\u2019s rites of passage. I read everything I could on why every ancient culture deemed it necessary in to initiate the male. It seemed that no culture assumed that men would grow up naturally, because nothing in the male wants to descend. He wants to ascend; he wants to be number one. It\u2019s the competitive nature of masculinity, which has totally informed our culture, no matter who we are. Something has to break through that level of consciousness.\u202f\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

For me, there is no story\u2014other than the Jesus story itself\u2014which has made that quite as clear as Jonah\u2019s story. Here we have a man who is running from God, running from his own vocation, and God sends a fish to swallow him and take him where he would rather not go. That\u2019s perfect! That\u2019s initiation! We have to be swallowed by something bigger than ourselves. The phrase used by many, including Thomas Merton, was that we have to go into the \u201cbelly of the beast\u201d\u2014a place where we are not in control, where we can\u2019t fix it, explain it, understand it, or even like it. Our lack of control, our lack of preference isn\u2019t important. We just have to learn from it.\u202f\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always made a great deal of the passage where Jesus says, \u201cThis generation is an evil generation; it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given except the sign of Jonah\u201d (Luke 11:29). He is saying that his message is simple and clear: You\u2019ve got to die before you die. In rites of initiation we teach people that they have to go down before they can possibly go up. In modern psychological language, we call it the death of the ego or the separate self. What has to die is our sense of separateness, because what goes with separateness is superiority. Once we define ourselves according to our nationality, culture, religion, or identity, then we feel we have to defend each one of those. What a waste of energy! We sink to scolding and blaming; not just are we \u201cnumber one,\u201d but everybody else is a second-class citizen.\u202f\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

That\u2019s how dualistic our thoughts become. When the private ego didn\u2019t die, Christianity even made salvation into a victory trip, thinking we knew who \u201cwon.\u201d To undergo the sign of Jonah feels like losing, and by worldly standards, it looks like it, too. The sign of Jonah is a symbol of surrender, of letting go, of giving up. Most of us wouldn\u2019t describe those as the stages of the journey of enlightenment, but they\u2019re much closer to the real truth and the real journey.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

In short, the spiritual journey is a transformative journey of being humbled by forces beyond our control, and then transforming as a result of that humbling. Triumph over some ordeal leads to a return or rebirth, where the individual, now\u00a0 enlightened, integrates the acquired wisdom into their life, often with a renewed sense of purpose and a desire to share their insights with others, just as the hero returns with a boon for their community.<\/p>\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n

Allison, S. T. (2024). Spiritual journey\u2019s similarity to the hero\u2019s journey. In S. T. Allison, J. K. Beggan, and G. R. Goethals (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Heroism Studies<\/em>. Springer.<\/p>\n

Rohr, R. (2025).\u00a0 A story of transformation. Center for Action and Contemplation<\/em>, July 11th.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Scott T. Allison The stages of the spiritual journey show striking parallels with the stages of the hero\u2019s journey, as both involve a departure from the familiar into a realm of challenges and revelations. Almost every major spiritual tradition — including Buddhism and Christianity — focuses on human growth resulting from struggle, suffering, and … Continue reading The Hero’s Journey Parallels the Spiritual Journey<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1182,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5444],"tags":[210859,210860,210862,210861,27448],"class_list":["post-5896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary-and-analysis","tag-hero-journey","tag-initiation","tag-jonah-and-the-whale","tag-ptg","tag-spiritual-journey"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/phawtM-1x6","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5896"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5900,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5896\/revisions\/5900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}