Why Movies Lie about the Hero’s Journey
Movies teach us that by the end of an hour and thirty minutes, someone can have a journey and come out on the other side a changed person for the better. We all are aware of the fabrication of reality that is involved in movies, but what we don’t understand is the extent the subliminal messaging in them programs our subconscious understandings of the world around us.
Namely, the concept of time being linear, and the only way forward, is forward.
“We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.”
~~Siddhartha, Herman Hesse
We see this in the very nature in which society is run– after we’re done with school, we’re expected to get a job, get married, have children, and live in a house with a white picket fence– content with living in this familiar pattern of what we call maturing. This is what we are trained to think. This is the sequence of life, and it happens in steps.
But what if you are like me, and you go back a step? You experience something that you’ve thought you’ve already moved on and learned from? This is certainly not in the movies– the protagonist going back to the same lair to defeat the same dragon, for, maybe, the fifth time. It is more accurate of the human condition, but, sadly it does not make good entertainment.
In 2019, I was an overweight biracial girl at a predominantly white college, dating someone who was really fit. He ran every day, and I was amazed with his self-discipline and motivation.
I was also filled with an overwhelming feeling that he deserved someone more fit, and more attractive: I thought he was terribly, terribly, out of my league.
One morning we were lying in the quad of my school enjoying the sunshine. He had brought a plaid blanket for us to lie on. The sun warmed my body pleasantly, and I stretched out on the blanket to catch as much of it as I could. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the way he looked at me, and I noticed a subtle smile cross his lips.
“Hey, Brian,” I started to twirl my then long hair around my forefinger, the way a young high schooler does when she’s nervous. “What is it that you like about me?”
He ran his eyes quickly over my body, and I held back a shudder, uncomfortable with his gaze. He smiled warmly at me, bearing his white teeth, and gave a boyish shrug. “Big boobs, big butt, what more can I ask for?”
I smiled back at him instinctively, but it did not reach my eyes. It quickly perished as his turned to watch a girl walk by.
That was all he liked about me?
In the Wrong Place
I started this journey of healing shortly after breaking up with him, along with the myriad of realizations that I had about myself as a result of that relationship: I now knew about myself that I was insecure; that I was afraid to voice my concerns with people out of a fear of being too needy; that I was constantly throwing myself behind others out of a deep fear of discovering who I am.
I created mantras for myself to help heal these aspects of myself.
I played them while I did homework:
“I am infinitely whole, and infinitely content with my own company. ”
While I worked out in the gym:
“I am infinitely strong, and am sure of my gut, listening and abiding to it, moment-to-moment.”
While I slept:
“I am an infinitely in control of my emotions, moment- to- moment, and infinitely have the courage to express myself to others, free from fear of rejection, free from fear of abandonment.”
And as the years passed, with frequent reflection and self-evaluation, I witnessed the evolution of myself. I was both pleased and excited with my progress– feeling that I had truly “healed”, I started dating again.
“…’did you too learn the secret from the river: that there is no time?””
~~ Siddhartha, Herman Hesse
One evening, I drove to Boulder to have dinner with someone that I had met online. We had been messaging for a few months, and I was excited by the prospect of connecting with someone, and sharing my experiences. When I first saw him, I was stabbed with a bitter pang of disappointment. He was shorter than I had expected him to be, and because he had always used a filter to send me selfies, he looked way different than I was expecting. I stopped my mouth midway into a curl, and I stood, shocked at myself.
Hadn’t I been healed of this materialism? Thinking negatively of his appearance, that was certainly not a pure thought to have–perhaps he was a decent guy with a good heart, I told myself.
Disturbed with my shallowness, I sat at the table with him. The restaurant was filled with other couples that evening. As I ran my eyes across the room, they caught the splashes of green from the plants scattered across the room, as well as a couple of other wandering eyes. The chatter of conversations, clinks of silverware against plates, bounced around the tiled floors.
The Screaming Reflection
There were too many mirrors in that restaurant, to make it appear larger. I couldn’t escape the disapproving look of my reflection. I did my best to keep my eyes on him.
“So, what do you do for a living?”
“Oh, I’m just a part-time server at my Dad’s restaurant,” he waved his fork in the air dismissively, began to pick at the bread on the table. He did not attempt to say anything more.
“That’s…cool,” I mustered. “You must meet a lot of interesting people.”
“No, not really. Everyone is annoying, always complaining about their order being wrong after not reading the description of what the food is.” He leaned back in his chair so that the front two legs weren’t on the floor. “Always asking to send the food back, like it’s my fault you ordered wrong.”
He’s probably been doing it for too long, I thought, and only sees the negative in people. “How long have you been doing that for?” I ask.
“Five years now. Just a job while I have my gap semester in college.”
My reflection nodded at her date with a puckered face. She turned to look at me, puzzled by my continued presence on this awful date.
Why was I trying so hard to make this go well? Why did I want him to like me, when I clearly don’t like him?
I realized then that I was not nearly in the place that I thought I was in, that I was still seeking the approval of some strange man who I had met online. My reflections eyes interrogated me as he continued to talk about himself.
“People can just be so inconsiderate, and rude as hell,” he groaned.
“Why are you still here?” she flailed her arms at me to get my attention away from the man. “If you followed your gut like you said you would, you’d listen to me and leave. “
She grew exasperated with me, and began to get louder with her indignations.
“…’Yes, Siddhartha,’ he spoke. ‘It is this that you mean, isn’t it: That the river is everywhere at once, the ferry, at the rapids, in the sea, in the mountains, everywhere at once, and that there is only the present time for it, not the shadow of the past, not the shadow of the future?”
~~Siddhartha, Herman Hesse
The waiter came by. “Was everything to your liking?” he asked. My food was too spicy, and I left it on my plate after a couple of bites. I didn’t dare ask the waiter to take it back, and instead asked for a box so that I could throw it away in secrecy. By the time he came back with the box, I was sweating and nauseous.
Between the complaining of my date, and the berating of my reflection– the room had become too noisy, and started to spin.
“Will you be needing anything else?”
“Get out!” she screamed.
“I have a headache!” I blurted. The waiter looked at me in confusion. I turned to my date. “I have a headache,” I repeated, this time to the right person. “Thank you so much for the meal, but I need to go and lie down. Have a good night.”
I grabbed my purse, but left the box of leftovers. He might’ve called after me, I don’t remember. The original pang of disappointment at him had mutinously shifted to be towards myself– I was not where I thought I was, and I was heartbroken– with myself.
I’ve had this lesson many times over the years, and every time I am rekindled with a new aspiration to go back and properly fix what I thought I had failed to fix so many times before. I believe many people have this mindset about themselves.
Recently, however, I have come to a new realization on what healing truly is.
The Cracks in the Cave
You are not something to be “fixed.” Healing is not a “one and done” situation where you can complete it, move on from it, and be unaffected. Those who claim such are in a state of denial.
Healing is a lifetime commitment, where you will journey again and again to the same cave and find the same cracks. Your job as a sovereign, immortal spirit of light, committed to evolving and healing is to not mend these cracks, but acknowledge their presence and be thankful for role they play in the cave’s ecosystem. You are to clean out the dirt that lays in these cracks so that the river may flow through them, and so that the fish that live in them and thrive.
And as you clean, you will find that you’re not as afraid to look at them as you once were.
Our truest nature is that of an ancient, divine being of light and love. But in this realm, we are in a constant battle with our humanity. We chose this struggle for ourselves. We knew it would be hard– this is why they call it the “school of life.”
We embody our true self, our Christos self, when we embrace and live in a constant state of compassion. We acknowledge that we are limited by our flesh of humanity, for the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. While we are human, we will always be bombarded with human thoughts. This is where we learn grace, and learn to forgive ourselves for these doubts, misgivings, and feelings of dismay and desperation.
Insecurity, wanting to belong, wanting to be wanted. These are all being human.
No amount of healing will ever eliminate all of your human consciousness from your physical vessel.
“…’when I had learned it, I looked at my life, and it was also a river, and the boy Siddhartha was only separated from the man Siddhartha and from the old man Siddhartha by a shadow, not by something real. Also, Siddhartha’s previous births were not in the past, and his death and return to Brahman was not in the future.”
~~ Siddhartha, Herman Hesse
Instead of moving forward with your journey with the intention of never having a negative thought, emotion, or experience again, let’s move forward with the understanding that we will always have these, but be aware of their source– the human character you are using in this life, in this realm. For you are not human, but you are playing the role as one.
We are the river– our true self flows across time in a perpetual state of being and existence. Like the water, we exist across thousands of realms and dimensions simultaneously. Our true selves are present always and everywhere– there is no past or future, only this present moment.
The Vampire’s Wisdom
Because of movies and the false understanding that we only have one life to live, and that we must keep moving forward to evolve and better ourselves. This is a false creed that has harmed us as a collective. Time does not move forward like a line, and neither does growth.
It’s a constant cycle.
In any media in which there is an ancient being that watches humanity from the shadows, vampires come to mind for example, they often say that everything happens in cycles, and time repeats itself. That they watch humans make the same mistakes and never learn across the eons.
This is partially true.
It is in our nature as our role as humans to err, because the point of us having this experience is to learn from error. As we do this, and process and heal from these experiences, it is our highest self that grants us the ability to grow and evolve from them. We may have similar experiences in our lives, but they always get slightly better than they had been before.
And sometimes you’ll make mistakes you’ve made before, and get angry with yourself, and think that you should’ve done better. Don’t get too upset, your character is human.
This is how you know you’re on the right path of growing.
Not because you don’t feel pain or loneliness anymore, or because you don’t have doubt anymore. But because you’ve began to understand the role of these emotions and experiences, and have cultivated your power to transmute them into something that better serves you, and, by extension, the collective consciousness.
When growing a garden, the master gardener does not get upset when weeds grow in the same bed as his poppies. He understands that the weeds are doing the only thing they know how to do, it is in their nature. Instead of attempting to kill the weeds, he plants accordingly, so that the weeds grow alongside the poppies, and one does not overtake the other.
Every harvest season, he makes bouquets with the poppies, but also with the weeds and sells them in town.
The children in the town love the weed bouquets most because they blow on them to make wishes for their future.
“…’Nothing was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has existence and is present.”
~~ Siddhartha, Herman Hesse
The Wayward Minds Collective 
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