Throughout your life, there is a voice only you can hear. A voice which mythologists label “The Call.” A call to the value of your own life. The choice of risk and individual bliss over the known and secure.

You may choose not to hear your spirit. You may prefer to build a life within the compound, to avoid risk. It is possible to find happiness within a familiar box, a life of comfort and control.
Or, you may choose to be open to new experiences, to leave the limits of your conditioning, to hear the call.
Then you must act.
If you never hear it, perhaps nothing is lost. If you hear it and ignore it, your life is lost.

–Jennifer James, PhD
Windows: Success is the Quality of Your Journey (1987)

 

This idea of a mythological call is a personal favorite of mine and a reoccurring theme in my life—and I’ll bet in yours too (Stephen Covey once said “what’s most personal is most universal”).

In the past when I did a “life review” and saw turning points when something was compelling me to take a leap of faith, I could only define it as a restless feeling. I really had no language for that “something” until I heard Jean Houston describe The Hero’s Journey.

Mythologist, Joseph Campbell described The Hero’s Journey in his book; The Hero With a Thousand Faces (1949). Campbell found that many cultures have a sequential pattern to their myth making—that is, the same steps play out in stories from different cultures.

The steps of the Hero’s Journey:
1) Innocence (comfortable with your situation)
2) The Call to Adventure (now aware of your challenge)
3) Initiation (you are being tested)
4) Allies (finding help)
5) Breakthrough (getting new awareness or resolution)
6) Celebration (return home, changed)

George Lucas read The Hero With a Thousand Faces and it inspired Star Wars—in fact many movies use this same template over-and-over (See any Kevin Costner movie).

The Call, is really about a passage; advancing from one stage to another. This concept has been written about by many thinkers, but none more eloquently than H.R. Moody in The Five Stage of The Soul (1997).

Dr. Moody is one of the most innovative thinkers on gerontology alive today. His unique treatment of The Call (and subsequent stages) has a spiritual basis. He states: “Sometimes The Call reveals itself in dreams.”

The Dream
In 2007 I was in contact with H.R. Moody concerning a major passage in my life. One night I had a dream I was standing in a batter’s box awaiting my turn at bat. A young bat-girl in a brightly flowered dress was mocking me as she handed me my bat. I gazed towards home plate and standing there was young Ted Williams in his prime.

His cotton uniform was cinched tightly around his trim waist with a belt and his hair was glossy black. He turned to look over his left shoulder at me standing in the circle—then winked and said: ”You’re next kid.”  In the dream I glanced down at my right foot wearing baseball cleats as it broke the plane of the chalk line of the on-deck circle…

I seldom remember dreams, but this one was too meaningful. Moody, an expert in dream analysis, describes the Judas inside all of us as; “a heedless, worldly naysayer who looks for the slightest opportunity to abort our journey and betray our highest yearnings” (p. 150).

In the dream, as I see it, the bat-girl represented my Judas—the naysayer in me. The good news is I left the safety of the on-deck circle (the passage) and headed for home plate…to take my turn at bat. It was just as Dr. Moody suggested, The Call to a larger self was revealed in a dream with a baseball metaphor.

Aging is a passage for all of us fortunate to live long enough to create histories. When we look back on turning points we can determine how, and if, The Call was answered. When we look to the future we may have more awareness to identify those feelings of being constructively discontent as, The Call.

Insights provided by scholars like H.R. Moody give us language for our experiences and like a rock climber; we have a toe-hold (terms and concepts) from which to climb higher to a greater understanding.

 

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