Brock Kawana
Professor Harrison
English 202
11 April 2010
The Monomyth: In My Own Words Through My Own Experience
Well now that you, the reader of my research paper, have made it this far you may be wondering, “Why is he asking me this question one sentence into the paper and what the hell is this monomyth he speaks of in the title?” If you clearly know what I am talking about when I say the word monomyth, then you may be like me and this idea has completely consumed your thoughts in life by the way it can relate to everything. For those of you who do not know what this idea of the monomyth is, I decided I would go looking for the definition in the Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary for you and me both.
Yet, even to my own surprise there was not a definition of the word itself and to an even greater extent there was no finding of the word, monomyth, at all in the dictionary. However, that is the innate beauty of the word itself with there being no definition on paper for monomyth. It lets monomyth have the most genuine of meanings. Each person who embarks on their own journey defines what I call their own monomyth. Thus Merriam-Webster cannot associate a clear meaning behind the decisions of who we are and the person we create and thus become within ourselves throughout our journeys in life.
Joseph Campbell is credited for bringing the monomyth or hero’s adventure, as it is also referred to as, out of the darkness and into the light. In my own experience, to understand where we are going we must look into our past. With that thought in mind, before Campbell there was a man by the name of Carl Jung. Jung became the heir apparent to take the nostalgic Freud’s place in the psychoanalysis field (Boeree).
Jung’s main theory was divided into three congruent parts of our own psyche: The first being the ego, which Jung relates to the conscious mind. Next, he spoke of the personal unconscious which deals with anything that is not presently conscious but just as well can be. This also includes memories that have been suppressed along with the ones human beings can recall easily (Boeree). The final thought of Jung’s theory is our collective unconscious. The collective unconscious is what makes us human without us even knowing it. It is a knowledge that all human beings are born with yet do not know it exists (Boeree). It occurs with love at first sight, déjà vu (the feeling that you have been here before), and with the immediate recognition of certain symbols throughout our life could be identified with our collective unconscious (Boeree).
In congruent thinking with the collective unconscious I am reminded of what we use throughout our heroic journey. No, I am not referring to a golden sword to defeat the illustrious dragon or clicking our red-sparkled heels together three times to go home. According to Jung’s theory we are for lack of a better word: schizophrenic beings, in a more inconspicuous manner. As humans, we have a set of archetypes that we use in our collective unconscious. These archetypes Jung described are models of people, behaviors or personalities (Cherry). Each archetype has its own function throughout our life. Jung believed in his four main archetypes that he presented, (the self, the shadow, the anima, the persona) but also stated that there was no limit to how many archetypes one was able to use (Cherry). In a more clear understanding, think of archetypes as characters we use day in and day out. With this understanding of archetypes, Jung is putting a name to each emotion and letting us grasp who we are in that moment in time.
“We can only get to know ourselves while we are conscious and aware. Once we are able to change ourselves by understanding ourselves, we become extremely precious to others, and then magically, all other beings become precious as well (Rock).”
The monomyth is used in television we watch, movies we go and see and stories that we read such as: Harry Potter, Lord of The Rings, Star Wars and The Lion King. These are only a few examples of how the monomyth is seen. The monomyth is composed of seventeen individual steps that let us become ourselves. It begins with Call to Adventure and ends with Freedom to Live. There are three different stages of the journey. It begins with the separation which after we cross our first threshold we go into the initiation phase of the journey. Once we have a reason to refuse to go back to where we began we begin our return. We must have a reason to not want to return because that means we have found something better on our journey. I will illustrate these seventeen steps throughout my story thus proving the point of the monomyth use throughout our daily lives.
In constructing my research paper I have come across many different types of articles. At first the thought of finding one’s self led me to believe that it would have to involve some aspect of religion and a greater higher being much like the reading in Siddhartha. However, I have realized that my instincts were wrong and that there are many different ways in which we can come to this immaculate realization.
After discussions with family members, teachers and students from all types of backgrounds it seems to be my hypothesis that when it comes to this age of roughly 16-24 some of us as individuals start to question our beliefs. As humans we can learn from one another. We act out as our own personal Dr. Phil’s to others thus going off our own personal experiences. “Be careful whose advice you buy but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form is nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth (Schmich).”
In my own thinking, I want to know more about the world, more about this God person I have been told about since I could comprehend words and just a general knowledge about life. It is a thought that has fascinated philosophers for thousands of years and that’s just it; their all ideas no one can really prove. When it comes to anything dealing with religion we cannot say what is correct and incorrect because none of us were there to see it. This is why it is simply stated as faith.
When I started to read a journal article entitled, Journal of Personality, I began to start to see the stereotype of religious faith that the author was presenting. In a case study it had shown that friendly and disciplined people are attracted to religion (Wink). As soon as I read this it infuriated me in my own right because I do not consider myself to be a big religious person. I am saying that after I had just gone to church this past Sunday for the first time in eight years; it was quite the experience. However, the article threw a curveball when the author stated that it could be religion itself that makes these very same people more disciplined and friendly (Wink). This was an interesting thought because it is not the type of people going to these religions but the religions working on these very same people.
These religious people have to be open to the experience of finding their spiritual identity. Nevertheless, people must also be open to the experience of identity when not using religion. The same journal reference talked about how humans can use non-church related or a combination of both in the act of a revelation. The openness to the experience should positively correlate with the path to finding our spiritual identities (Wink).
When it comes to religion the common result of belief is to have faith. So, my question is why would not finding our own selves take faith as well? When I began to read more positive articles that were guided among words by professional speakers I began to fall in love with Scott Ginsberg’s message that he was trying to tell the world. That life isn’t about finding yourself, it is about creating yourself (Ginsberg). I think that embodies my research and not contradicts it as some may say from the title. We find ourselves through what we make of our own selves in our own separate from each other’s journeys. Our journeys may cross paths at points in times but we must remember that myself and everybody else are living our own lives and nobody can take that away from us.
When I came across the book Siddhartha last semester I felt as though I was supposed to read it almost as if there was a reason Marlen gave it to our class. It told spiritual journey of a Brahmin man who leaves his family and starts a new life of his own. The complete essence of the book is beautiful. It is what I am trying to sum up for you in this research paper. The story of Siddhartha was not about the Buddha itself, however it was about finding the Buddha in you (Sarkar). This is my own personal belief in what we all should be attempting to find in our lives. The Buddha itself explains that happiness is the main goal to achieve. To achieve happiness however you must create a world of happiness around you, thus others have to happy too.
Being raised in a Catholic-Christian nearly all white suburban town has led me to completely want to change my views upon the religion aspect. I started to read into Buddhism and what it does for its followers. I think this could help people in my same shoes. I think our parents picked our religion for us when we were younger but now that we are older and matured we have the ability to decide what to believe in.
There are three main practices of Buddhism religion: Sila, which applies to good conduct virtue and morality (Henry). The second main training would be Samadhi, which helps with concentration, meditation and mental development (Henry). Finally, the third practice relates to discernment, insight, wisdom and enlightenment which is titled Prajna (Henry). This also relates to the eight-fold path and the four noble truths of the Buddhist faith. In order to end our own suffering we must follow the eight-fold path (Henry). It will lead us to peace of mind and to our own selves within us.
As humans, we are what we become. We can blame it on how we were raised, where we came from or the people around us but all of those factors to the person you will become now made you themselves. We can only go so far on our own. We must learn to learn from each other. We all have a story to tell with our own experiences.
After nit-picking around my topic for weeks upon weeks and trying to find the words I was looking for. I finally have done just that. My main thesis point now constitutes how we use the monomyth, hero’s adventure, throughout our daily lives. After taking Literature 121 last semester with Marlen, without even realizing it, I guess this topic of the hero’s adventure subconsciously stuck in the back of my head when thinking of this research topic. I had a dream the other day that I was in a conference room with Marlen and Andrew and we were just talking about my topic and I kept reiterating about finding your true inner-self and how happiness is life. Then it hit me when I awoke they just kept saying it was all about the monomyth. I do not know if the dream was symbolic or what, but it seemed to speak to me in a whole new way because I feel more passionate again about my topic.
My main point in this hero’s journey is that freedom to live is the final act in the seven-teen stages of Joseph Campbell’s monomyth. This research deals with an autoethnographical approach to myself. This is due to the fact that it is my own journey that I am telling through my own eyes thus it is in first person. So, for my research methodology I will obtain my own thoughts throughout my journal that I had kept during this adventure and also I could interview others who were with me during that period in time. Even more, I would like to get the point across that we are always on a journey as one ceases another journey will start right back up again; even if we do not know it ourselves. I could ask those very same people questions of how they felt themselves during that time? What they did to help themselves? I am not the only one who was on a journey. We all have our own journeys which takes me into my next point.
I think it would also be important for me to interview other students as well being my friends or even more perfect is the students in Literature 121 because they are learning about this now too. I want to find out their journeys and what they did to overcome it and how we can learn from one another. I could also get personal and ask if they involve a higher being in their journeys. Even more so I want them to explain each main point of the stages from the departure, to the belly of the whale, and the ultimate boon each foreshadowing their own significance. A good way to protect these participants is by doing it anonymous. I do not need their name but more of their experience.
I figure I am going to do this in more of a creative project rather than the fifteen page research format. I think this idea is just begging for a mult-media project because that is all that is running through my mind as the more involved I become into this project. I want to be able to show all seventeen steps of the monomyth and how we can relate to them as humans living on this earth.
After: I feel as though there are a lot of ideas running through my head and instead of talking about them I would rather go do them right now while my mind is intrigued and excited. I think my paper just got a whole hell of a lot bettter with these ideas and it will be pretty cool to see how people answer the surveys and to analyze myself in this project. I am excited.
Works Cited
Gaines, Patrice. “Finding Inner Peace Through a Window of Hope.” National Catholic Reporter. Apr. 2002: Vol. 38, Issue 25, p. 32. EBSCOhost.
Gier, Nicholas F., Petta, Johnson. “Hebrew and Buddhist Selves: A Construction Postmodern Study” Asian Philosophy. Aug. 1993: Vol. 65, Issue 2, p. 360-374. Academic Search Complete. EBSCOhost.
Ginsberg, Scott “Life Isn’t About Finding Yourself, It’s About Creating Yourself.” Life Isn’t About Finding Yourself, It’s About Creating Yourself. 3 Jan. 2006 EzineArticles.com. 17 Feb. 2010
Henry, Julie. Info Guru. Weblong. 15 Dec. 2009. Catalogs.com
Raymond Rock, E. “How to Find Yourself (How to Look Within).” How to Find Yourself (How to Look Within). 21 Mar. 2008 EzineArticles.com. 17 Feb. 2010
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Simona, Luigia. “Adolescents In Different Contexts: The Exploration of Identity Through Possible Selves.” Cognitie, Creier, Comportament/Cognition, Brain, Behavior. Sept. 2009: Vol. 13, Issue 3, p.221-252. EBSCOhost.
Schmich, Mary. Wear Sunscreen. Chicago Tirbune: 1997. 1 June.
Sarkar, Eisha “Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse.” Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. 19 Jan. 2010 EzineArticles.com. 17 Feb. 2010 .
