The Journey

Our journey had advanced;
Our feet were almost come
To the odd fork in Beings road,
Eternity by term.  Emily Dickenson

That life is a journey is a truth so often repeated as to render it, if not meaningless, then at least cliché. Odd then that most of us spend much of our time holding onto, rather than moving with life. Conversely we can be so goal oriented that we may fail to see the never ending flow of our lives unfolding; the here that is now. And yet journey is all that there is or will ever be.

The mythographer Joseph Campbell made popular the idea of the hero’s journey; the universal myth we all carry. There are other myths, yet this one seems to have a deep universal resonance, as there seems to be something essential about it to the human experience. It dominates in the world of storytelling, appearing again and again in world literature as well as culture. 

Hollywood’s retelling of the L. Frank Baum’s American fairy tale, “The Wizard of Oz” has mesmerized audiences for over eighty years. The story of Dorothy, a little girl from Kansas, is so well known there is no need to retell it. However, apart from the obvious, the story has a deep understanding of what is not so obvious. For what this beautiful story reveals is the main character, in search of something that was never lost. Yet even though many of us recognize, and assent to this truth, we still go looking for answers to our personal dilemmas, when in truth we are living our own. This very quest for answers can lead us to answers that are not our own.

The sheer number of seekers in today’s world, has given rise to a bounty of spiritual teachers and teachings. The New Age movement, alone,  has become a billion dollar industry worldwide. Now add to that conventional religion, and you can begin to see the desire to know, and be comforted writ large.

Perhaps we can find the modern source of this in the sixties. The sixties which not only gave us free love, the peace movement, and the civil rights movement but also opened the door to eastern spirituality. And with the ancient teachings of the east, meditation and yoga and a new introspection, or at least the notion of. Prior to this religion offered the possibility of Redemption, however this was a hope of a life after death and one had to die to experience it. So the offerings of the “new” teachings of the east of awakening or enlightenment in the here and now, without the need to die proved to be very attractive. Enlightenment, like redemption made one firm promise; the end of suffering. So many have pursued it but few have claimed to have secured it. For most of us it led to the carrot and stick scenario, the   goal always dangling before us and yet always, frustratingly just beyond reach.

It is instructive to note that a common, albeit subtle aura of those who did claim enlightenment, is that of perfection. They give us to believe, or we wanted to believe, that they have transcended our common humanity and have therefor arrived. On closer examination what was often revealed was just another bumbling human being.  A bit like the wizard of Oz once Dorothy had pulled back the curtain on him.

One of my favourite stories about Krishnamurti came from the last years of his teaching. He was asked by a member of the audience a particular convoluted question. He replied by saying,” I am an old man and these things are difficult, would you like to come up here and hold my hand.” And with that revealed his essential humanity.

If we look at our lives from the perspective of process, that is unfolding in time, we can unhook from the demands of perfecting our lives via enlightenment or any such goal and face our humanity as it is. With this, then, we paradoxically perfect our lives in our commitment to life as process a journey of becoming. Rabbi David Copper put it succinctly when he entitled his book ”God is a Verb”,  and may I add so are we all. The bonus of looking at life through the lens of journey or unfolding, is that we may become more forgiving, firstly of ourselves and then of others. For then we can unhook from perfection via enlightenment, face our humanity and commit to process.

And yet, we as human beings are almost, dare I say, hardwired to seek, to go to find what is not present. Our Divine discontent is the drumbeat to all our seeking. in Baum’s classic tale, Dorothy goes to find and yet what she finds is what was there all along, only now she recognises it. It is a paradox to seek to find what is not lost. And yet to discover this, we, paradoxically have to seek in order to find. And so the journey and the destination are one and the same thing; each embedded in the other.

D.H. Lawrence said that ”love is the great asker”.  And I would like to add that Life, like Love also asks. Then should our response be,Yes !  Yes, to life’s unfolding by our conscious, active participation. This takes both faith and courage or perhaps they are the same thing. Faith, that we are not alone and courage enough to believe in ourselves. The path, then unfolds almost literally as we walk it.  

Along that “Yellow Brick Road”

The adventures of Dorothy down the yellow brick road was the creation of  L. Frank Baum preceded it’s M.G.M. film by many decades.   The 1930s film did not have a big impact at the time, although there is a story of infantry troops in North Africa, during the second world war, who sang songs from the movie as they marched into battle. The film then, was a slow burn that finally caught the public imagination and became one of the most watched films in history. The film emerged during a time of great peril and relayed a simple yet profound truth, that life is a journey we are all in together. That as humans we must all face our fears and foes and be transformed in the process.

The hero’s journey is a template, whose characters and situations can be detected as underlying structure of many stories in both high literature and pop culture. Joseph Campbell called it, ‘The Hero with a thousand faces”. The stages of the journey have been well documented, writer Carol S. Person has trimmed it down to six. Her hero begins the journey as an Innocent and ends as a Magician. Not all the stages are in every story, for often the hero fails or dies  thus these are the hall marks of, some of Shakespeare's plays and Greek tragedy.

In Baum’s story we meet Dorothy who is both, innocent and orphan and thus is completely unaware of what is about to befall her. She is an innocent in that, when we first meet her she is expecting the world to take care of her. It’s only when she meets the nemesis in the form of Miss Gulch that she realizes that she must not only take care of herself but,” her little dog too”. Miss Gulch is the harbinger of death for she threatens to disturb the cosy normality of Dorothy’s life. Her first response then, is to escape and she dreams of “a place where there isn’t any trouble”.  This is an emotional escape and it fails. Then she tries to actually run away and this fails. Finally she tries to run back home and this fails as she is locked out of the shelter that Aunt Em and Uncle Henry are sheltering in. With this she is knocked unconscious and the adventure begins. To be knocked unconscious is to literally enter The Unconscious and thereby confront a reality beyond the point of view of the limited ego. 

Once Dorothy arrives in this “other world” she must face again what she was trying to escape in her conscious reality, Miss Gulch. Only now Miss Gulch has been transmogrified into the more terrifying Wicked Witch of the West. This is when her mentor arrives Glider the witch of the North who empowers Dorothy giving her the Ruby slippers and points out the way to go, down the yellow brick road. All along the way she will be stalked by her nemesis but will be supported by friends and allies she meets on the road. These friends and allies are in fact thinly disguised aspects of herself, as is Miss Gulch. For the Tin Man is her undeveloped emotional self, the Cowardly Lion her undiscovered courage and the Scarecrow her capacity as a problem solver.

Along the way there are many obstacles and false trails; one of which is a lesson on taking short cuts as the small group get off the path, and make their way through a field of poppies. And here what threatens is sleep, that is falling into unconsciousness and losing volition or agency. Fear maybe gone but sleep takes its’ place. A significant station, as it were, in the Hero’s journey is to enter the dark cave of fear and confront death. This Dorothy does in her quest for the witches broom and thus she comes face to face with every fear she has ever had. Interestingly there is a twist in this tale for when the final confrontation occurs the witch is not destroyed by fear but by a spontaneous act of love. That is Dorothy accidentally diminishes the nemesis by trying to save a friend, the Scarecrow who the witch has set on fire. She throws water on the flames, (not fire with fire) and the witch, her own fears, are “liquidated”. The story doesn't end here for Dorothy has still to learn that the thing or person she sought to save her is an imposter. The Wizard of Oz is revealed to be, in the words of one of the characters a humbug. Or to put into today’s language, “full of it”. Or, perhaps, that is just another bumbling human being. The Wizard even fails in his task to take her home, and is set adrift unable to control his own vehicle. This is when the point of grace arrives, once again in the form of Glinda, who points out to our hero that she has always had the capacity to go home via her Ruby slippers.  And I’m sure you know the rest. But why wasn’t Dorothy told of her ability to do just this? The answer, Glinda tells us, is because she, that is, Dorothy would not have believed she had this gift. That is a simple and powerful truth, as we go on life’s journey to discover who we are. In short, we have to go in order to find out we didn’t have to go.

Our hero then always returns to a place of beginnings and in the words of T. S. Elliot,” knows it for the first time”. And yet that return is not empty handed, for the Hero has a boon for the world they return to, and in Dorothy’s case the boon is that; we are all that we need and here  that is and now is  home.

So in this powerful children’s film we experience many phases of the hero’s journey; where the end is the beginning and the beginning is the end. All the elements of that archetypal journey are here, some more emphasised than others. Dorothy begins as an innocent orphan and ends a magician, a wizard herself. She may have had the ability all along, yet only through the Journey would that ability be made conscious and therefore claimed.

There are many versions of this story both ancient and modern. Star Wars is a modern masculine expression, where the nemesis must be met with force and destroyed. And given our collective shadow, in times of peril, we can only hope that we find compassion as a weapon against our deepest fears and fantasies. And just like Dorothy throw water to save a friend and inadvertently dissolve our collective fears, ( wicked witches) and watch as they melt at our feet.