Every culture has a story about a journey. The hero, who we identify with, leaves home and goes on a journey through mythic lands, encountering amazing people and objects along the way, and in the end, after making some kind of accomplishment (slaying the dragon, taking land, marrying the beautiful woman), the hero not only finds whatever she or he set out to discover, but also discovers something about his/herself.
You are on two journeys at once.
One is the journey we call life. It’s traffic jams, gossip with coworkers, phone calls from family, meals out with friends, pushing a child on a swing set, and blobbing on the couch with your favorite TV show. It starts when we leave the womb, and it ends in our death. It’s the stuff that makes up life, when we think about what living a life is day-to-day. That’s the external journey: the things that we find ourselves part of either through our own design, or simply by accident. For the most part, we go through our daily life without thinking about it. If one takes a few deep breaths and looks around, one realizes the world spins without us, that life goes on without our approval, and that-is-that. The journey on the outside is a collection of experiences that come without anything mystical happening.
Then there’s the other life, something private, something internal. This is the journey of our secret nature, or what some call our soul or human spirit. This interior is where the unconscious takes its journey, and the landscape is a bit different from what is outside of ourselves. This stuff on the inside is a stew of every fantasy, every wish fulfilled or unfulfilled, every dream and nightmare.
Our outer journey is about us living in the world. Our inner journey is the world living inside us.
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