Finding your strength to conquer your story.
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Who is it that commands and directs your life? Is it the blind hand of fate, or perhaps the providential eye of an almighty being? Perhaps its just your boss at the 9 to 5. If you had trouble answering without a moment’s notice, then we need to talk.
You see, our culture does not have a rite of passage for men, and hardly any direction at all, leaving us with new generations who don’t know how to ‘be a man’. And while the statement, ‘be a man’ seems a bit old fashioned, there is something that we can definitely aspire to be, the hero of our story. I believe this is a major problem for the modern man who is fraught on all sides with challenges to his identity, being tempted to rely on popular magazines and movies for some kind of information that might by way of intuition integrate into some ‘true’ or ‘real’ embodiment of the heroic man, but are we really buying that story?
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We don’t know how to be a hero, we hardly know where to start, or what to do in order take command of our life, our relationships, our own dignity.
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I’ve been using tarot cards on a daily basis as a kind of ‘quote of the day’ practice. Nothing woo-woo about it, except for the uncanny accuracy the readings often have, but I’ve learned a lot about myself by reflecting upon the archetypal images held in the tarot deck. For those who do not know, archetypes are like grand ideal forms that we have a familiarity with. For instance, when you read the word ‘grandma’, you probably picture a sweet old lady offering you a slice of pie, or something to that effect. Whatever you imagined, that is your archetype of a grandma.
Now that this is understood, I’d like to tell you about 2 cards in the tarot that have a special significance to us in this conversation about being the hero of our story. The first is The Fool, who is often seen initially exactly as they sound, like somebody who can be suckered, air-headed and unaware of the ways of the world. This is a powerful image that exemplifies the state we all begin with when we decide we want to be the hero of our own story. We don’t know how to be a hero, we hardly know where to start, or what to do in order take command of our life, our relationships, our own dignity.
The first thing The Fool does is leave everything behind in a kind of exploration beset on all sides by peril and it isn’t long before the frivolity of his youth is set aside in an attempt to gain something truly tangible and valuable. This is where The Hermit comes in. The Hermit is on a mission to separate the real from the fake, already getting rid of things he didn’t need on the journey, he relegates himself to a place of deep contemplation, the desert of emotion, the desert of distraction, the mountain of loneliness in which he realizes that there is no gift of wisdom that will come without the investment of pain, loss and sacrifice of that which is passing in order to exchange it for something of lasting value. The Hermit is no longer The Fool who thinks that the world owes him a living, or that everything is just going to fall in his lap, but instead represents seeking and finding that sprit of enlightenment that transcends all dogma and written outside wisdom. He begins to emanate his own vital power from within. The lamp in his hand, The Hermit has his own truth to bare and his own light to shine.
The reality was to be so different and much more human, full of hardship, loss, loneliness and darkness, the devil’s night, the cold and the wet, the agony and the nightmares.
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The image of The Hermit is the embodiment of the last couple of years of my life, especially as I saw my six year marriage come to an end, got rid of my belongings and hit the road to strip myself of the entanglements of the sardonic American dream in search of a truer illumination. This is why the book I’ve written is called The Hermit: Enlightenment From The Gutter, because I was not living an inspired and heroic life, but rather had tried to wrap myself in the passing comforts of the mundane world and decided to take my first steps on what anthropologist Joseph Campbell calls, “the hero’s journey”.
Campbell says of this hero in the phase of The Hermit, “A hero ventures forth from the world of the common day into a region of supernatural wonder; fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.” – The Hero With A Thousand Faces
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As for me; I began this journey like the Fool of the tarot and I fancied that I would spend forty days in the wilderness and return as some transfigured sage who had cloistered himself away from the wicked world and all of its distractions, unstained and miracu- lous. The reality was to be so different and much more human, full of hardship, loss, loneliness and darkness, the devil’s night, the cold and the wet, the agony and the nightmares. But only those who can make it through the void of that lonely night get to glimpse that very first sliver of light in all the wondrous shades of pink, purple, red, and violet. Only those who have tasted the poison and survived know how to turn it into a gift.
The following is an excerpt from The Hermit: Enlightenment From The Gutter (readthehermit.com). In this passage from the book, I am trying to make my way down from out of the rural mountains of Northern California in the snowy chaos of December on a 600cc sport bike:
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At first rev, the engine died, not enough juice to keep it from seizing. Second rev took the rpms to eight-thousand and the speedometer to reading forty miles per hour. I jerked, slid, and lunged with fierce anxiety, using my legs to push along the embankment. I scraped for every inch of for- ward motion with the bike seizing and screaming back and forth, my right leg pushing off as I went dangerously up. I had gained a certain momentum and rhythm and was determined to make it work. I bolted the bike to the dry patch and lunged again a long stretch up and thought I could make it to the top so I gave it all I dared to give it. Just then, a large old brown Ford pickup truck came down and around the corner and I had to decide whether to be struck head on, or to dump the bike in front of the truck. I had no choice, but to fall. I had been struggling along for over two hours and had not seen a single vehicle and it just so happened that the first one I saw was the one that nearly took my life and squelched my conquest of the hill from hell.
I looked around and saw no suitable place to try to get help; there was no cell service, no nothing.
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Without missing a beat, I got up from my crash and walked over to the window of the truck where a surprised woman sat. “How does the road look ahead?” I asked as pleasantly as only a person in shock could ask. “It’s worse than this ahead, you need to go back the way you came”. I thanked her and without an offer to help, or a word of any further pleasantness, she drove off around my bike as it lay there on its side on the steepest part of the hill just ten yards from the crest where the sunlight had carved through the snow and into the now dirt road. There in my helmet I began to scream, fuuuuuuuuck! fuck fuck fuck fuck! fuuuuuuck! I came to my senses as best I could. I asked myself if this was the part of my story where I sit and cry like a child, or where I do something extraordinary and carry on? I resolved to not be defeated by this goddamn hill, but I needed a moment: I was now freshly wrecked and warned by the brown-trucked harbinger of doom that things would get worse. I lightly limped in my boots to the crest of the hill, took off my pack and just sat there, leaving the bike in the center of that icy road. I sat for fifteen minutes just trying to be still, to be optimistic, to not worry, but I was in serious danger of being stranded overnight in the middle of nowhere.
The bike was closer to the oncoming side of the road than it was to the proper side, but the ditch was shallower and had an okay run to complete the journey to the top. I tried to lift the bike, but in the position it was in, it kept sliding down on its fairing and I could get no grip with my flat-footed boots. I tried again and again, worrying I might throw out my back from the strain. The bike wouldn’t budge. I stood back and stared at it, full of frustration and agony, wishing I was somewhere else, wishing I could see my kids, wishing for any- thing but this; but here I was, not in any other place, and I needed to do something. I walked to the embankment and found a busted tree branch as big as my arm and wedged it underneath the back tire. I resolved that if I could just get the tiniest amount of leverage from the fixed position of the branch, I could prop the bike up and deal with the next issue of making the rest of the way up. With everything I had I was able to lift the bike up enough to wedge my slipping foot and knee under the fallen side of the bike. I had just that moment to adjust my hands’ positioning and to prop up further, and I did. I was relieved to be upright. Having mastered the art of janky backwoods snowbound sportbike salvage, I made quick work of the last ten yards using the ditch method and onto the dirt road I arrived.
There is a life to be lived out here on the highway and in the middle of nowhere.
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I sat and rested for half an hour just staring blankly into the trees. The sun began to fade and I was not close at all to any passable road. I took a walk down the road to see how it looked and to my chagrin saw that it was worse than all roads prior, absolutely impossible to cross. I looked around and saw no suitable place to try to get help; there was no cell service, no nothing. Moment to moment it got colder and I started to wonder if I would be camping up against a tree without protection from the elements. I just sat there watching the sun slowly fall and cast the shadows of the tall trees over me, the gorgeous winter wasteland closing around me like the jaws of a great beast.
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It’s time for you to claim your place as the hero of your own story, to learn what you need to learn and do what you need to do to separate yourself from the manifold illusions that keep your head foggy and your heart full of yearning. The world is full of too many people playing the part of The Fool, but why would you accept that role in your own story when you can be the hero?
There is a life to be lived out here on the highway and in the middle of nowhere. There is a flower that blooms only for those brave enough to seek it out in the misty hills.
Find it.
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Works cited:
Roberts, Gabriel D. The Hermit, Enlightenment From The Gutter. First Edition. Seattle, WA, 2015. Print.
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Second ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1972. Print.
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Photo: Jenn Zahrt of Rubedo press