In the mirror of Heaven, there is no private self.
—Zen capping phrase
There can be great power in an idea, and the strength of that power is magnified as more people believe in it. In theosophy, there is a term that describes this: “egregore”, which is a group thought form that comes to have its own autonomous life force and can exert conscious and subconscious influence upon the group. There are many egregores that operate in our world today, sourced from religion to politics, economics and social consciousness, but today I want to talk about the egregore that is Joseph Campbell’s idea of “The Hero’s Journey”.
The Hero’s Journey is a mythological construct that describes the process of a hero who goes on an adventure, confront their own fears, is victorious in a crisis and returns home as a more whole, complete and healed version of their previous selves. Though Campbell had claimed that this was a monomyth, meaning that it was universal, many folklorists have disagreed, arguing that it is reductive and suffers from source-selection bias. However, the Hero’s Journey as an archetypal narrative framework has become deeply entrenched in modern Western Culture due to its prevalence in popular media depictions. That’s what has made it a pervasive egregore, almost invisible and yet powerful in its impact.
Under the influence of this egregore, we have internalized the unconscious desire to become heroic ourselves. Often without realizing it, we buy in to the notion that the Hero’s Journey is truly a monomyth, that it is the only way to move ourselves towards wholeness, healing and self-realization. Faced with this kind of crisis, we often feel we have no choice but to undertake such a journey, and so we prepare for all kinds of personal battles, struggles and challenges, telling ourselves that this is all part of our path to becoming someone heroic, someone special, someone worthy of love. But what if there were another narrative pathway to walk? What if we found ourselves in a different kind of story? What if the egregore of the Hero’s Journey were to disappear; what would we be left with?
In the course I designed, Find Yourself In Nature: Find Nature In Yourself, I invite participants into an aesthetic experience that can serve as a gateway to a story that has always lived within the nature of our hearts but has often been forgotten. This story is not about getting somewhere or becoming something other than what we are in this moment. In this alternate story, instead of living a life of striving, we relax into being right here, in this time, place and body, in a such a way that we incrementally erode the sense of separateness that we experience from the ecological phenomenon of being Earth. Slowly, this helps to build a sense of ecological identity—which is to say, we begin to identify not only with abstract ideas of “who we are” but also with the lived experience of “what we are.’ As we relax into such identification, we begin to hold an awareness that beyond the heroic concepts of self that are driven by the ego and its desire for an imagined wholeness, there is another reality: a humble, ordinary, and natural state of being that is “what we are”.
This is not to say that the ego self, that part of our selves that strives for heroism and specialness, must be abandoned or destroyed. Within the universal wholeness, everything has its ecological place. Instead of reacting violently to the idea of our selves, we can learn to see the ego, the “I” that craves the satisfaction of a hero’s journey, is only one aspect of our nature. While we tend to have strong relationships to the idea or story of who we are, when we remember how to relax into beingness, we come into deeper relationship with what we are. And as we remember this kind of identity, we begin to see that what we are is not discrete nor is it personal. Below the threshold of our egos, there is no “I.” What we are, quite simply, is Earth. We are an enmeshed piece of an unfolding ecological phenomenon that has always been here and will always be here, and it has nothing to do with the stories of our personal triumphs or defeats. The ecological identity that we share with all beings is connective; it doesn’t confer any degree of specialness to one being over any other. Within nature, there is no hierarchy; in equal dignity, everything has its place: all the beauty, suffering and mystery of the world lives within us and through us as an unfolding natural process.
The story that is woven throughout my course could be called “The Great Remembering”. It is not about struggling to become better than what we are or striving for heroism. Instead, it is a journey in which the destination is met before the first step is taken. Nothing needs to be done. Right now, as you read this, you are as natural as you have ever been and so has everything around you in this moment. Here and now, you are enmeshed in place and what you call your body is actually a porous ecosystem—without any effort at all, you are being ecological. This is the incredible thing about the ecological identity: we don’t need to be heroic; we don’t need to strive or prove that we are worthy of our place in the universe; we don’t need to climb holy mountains or slay iniquitous dragons. We don’t even need to evaluate or assess whether we are good or bad. Ecologically, below our thoughts, judgments and personal identities, we are simply enmeshed as a part of nature. All we must do is remember what we have always been and will always be.
As we remember what we are, we become more aware that we are not separate, and in doing so, we begin to create a new narrative egregore, and unlike the egregore of the Hero’s Journey, it is one that is characterized by relaxation and unconditional acceptance. Part of the concept of heroism seems to rely on the idea that the hero is someone who is in control, who bends reality to their mission, to the fantasy of life as they, individually, subjectively see it. The hero cannot accept the world, and so they strive to change it, to fix it. But being ecological is not a matter of control; being ecological means understanding that there’s nothing that will not be returned to balance.
Of course, the pathway to balance is not always a kind one; it often is characterized by grief and suffering and so we reflexively resist it. As we have pathologized grief and suffering instead of understanding them as components of the lived reality of being ecological, we try to avoid them, which leaves us few options except for embarking on a journey to save the world, never quite fully recognizing that the world will go on and that all our actions, invariably and inevitably inflict suffering upon the world. This is perhaps the most challenging part of being ecological: that we realize that we are part of a much larger ecological process that depends on a never-ending cycle of life, death and rebirth. It’s happening right now, in your body: countless organisms are coming in and out of existence as you read these words. And it is happening all around you, the ecological process never stops and so suffering never ceases. This was true for our ancient ancestors and it will be true for the inheritors of our genetic legacies as well. And yet, for all the suffering that exists, the world is immaculately beautiful still. And for all this suffering, being ecological is not nihilistic; it is simply being connected to the reality of what we are.
One of the things that forest bathing has taught me is that being ecological invites the temporary abandonment of both hope and fear. When I release myself from the judgmental constraints of my ego story, the “I” that typically defines me begins to gently fade away. Banishment of my ego is not my intention— I know it will return. In this space, I’m simply finding a way to experience what I am in full immediacy, without self-referencing thoughts to interrupt the ecological awareness that is shared between all beings. When I am not myself, I become a part of all things, and in this place, I can be fully of the world and fully in the world. There is no hope that it will change for the better, there is no fear that it will change for the worse. There is only presence and an enmeshment in the ecological phenomenon that rushes through all things.
Even in this space, perhaps there is something hopeful still, but not a hope that is generally considered. When we remember what we are, when we remember how to identify ecologically, we recognize that while the ego-stories we collect throughout this one human life will fade away someday, what we are has a beautiful sense of absolute belongingness. The body that is you is transforming the world inside of it, and someday it will be transformed as well. Before this life and after your death, all that is you will reincorporate into the emergent phenomenon of this ecological reality. In other words, before you were you, you were Earth. After you cease to be you, you will still be Earth. And right now, here in this moment, you are Earth. In this story, there is no hierarchy and therefore no need for striving or heroism. In this egregore, there is no separation at all. What would it be like to have made an incredible journey without a single step?
* Cover photo by Amos Clifford