Call to Adventure: An Easy Way to Use the Symbolism of Mythology to Initiate Inner Transformation and Break Free from Limiting Stories
Restless, stagnant, or desperate for change?
Myths offer a blueprint for psychological transformation, helping you break free from the constraints of your ego and your culture.
Symbolic representations of the psyche, myths narrativise the ways that facing and integrating unconscious forces expand awareness and transfigure the personality.
In this article, I’ll explain how you can awaken to the mythological symbol of the call to adventure and view your life through the lens of the hero’s quest.
This will give meaning to your struggles, increase your awareness of how psychological growth unfolds, and provide you with a reliable template for initiating your own personal metamorphosis.
First, I’ll explain how Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell envisioned myths as symbols of psychic transformation.
Myth is the language of the Self
For Jung, the Self is the totality of the personality – the integrated whole of the conscious and the unconscious. It is the divine spark in each individual that seeks wholeness.
Joseph Campbell described mythology as the language of the Self speaking to the ego system. The ego must learn this language if it is to transform.
Remember, the Self is the totality of the personality, while the ego is the constrained fragment that we live from. For the ego to become more whole, it must acknowledge and integrate unconscious or repressed elements.
As the Self desires wholeness, it sends the ego messages that will move it towards wholeness in the form of symbols of the unconscious. The ego can reject or ignore these symbols out of fear or longing for comfort, but as a result it’ll remain confined and limited in its capacity for experience.
If it takes heed of the symbols, it will initially experience fear and pain as it’s forced to confront the things it’s repressed or hidden. However, as these elements are integrated into the ego, its potential for joy will expand.
Campbell’s description of myth as the language of the Self (the spark in us that desires growth) is fitting, for the symbols of myth function as pointers towards spiritual and psychological growth.
If we can learn to live symbolically, we will be able to willingly initiate our own development.
We can also understand myth through the lens of Jungian individuation.
Myth is symbolic of Jungian individuation
The hero's journey is a symbolic representation of individuation – the process by which the conscious ego faces and integrates unconscious and repressed parts of the psyche.
For Jung, your untapped potential lies in these unconscious elements – your shadow – and integrating them is key to realising the greater personality.
To set you on a path to psychological transformation, all you need to do is apply the mythic pattern of the hero’s call to adventure to your own life.
If you feel lost or constrained, you’re likely in the mythic wasteland.
The wasteland
The hero’s journey often begins with a sense of something lacking or a yearning for something more. In Jungian terms, this yearning is the Self, the divine spark in us all that longs for wholeness.
The hero may find themself in a sterile culture where old values or stories constrain them. Some myths describe this with the image of a wasteland. This represents the conscious, unindividuated ego that you inherit from your parents and your culture.
To summarise so far: the psyche longs to grow and transform, but the current conditions of the conscious ego make growth impossible. Either something must interfere, or the hero must willingly leave the confines of their conscious ego.
To escape the wasteland, you need a call to adventure.
Call to adventure
The hero resides in this wasteland until a disruptive force or call to adventure arises. It may come in the form of a challenge or problem, an unexpected event, or an inner need.
The point is that it will shake them out of their ordinary world and initiate a journey into the unknown.
The shadowy realm of the unknown is full of danger and promise. Remember, for Jung, the riches of your untapped potential lie in the unconscious.
If the hero accepts the call, it will start them on a path where they’ll face the dark shadows of their spirit.
They have a choice: remain paralysed in the immovable grip of their known world or venture out into the unknown and awaken to their destiny.
When you live symbolically, you recognise anything that confronts you with your unconscious elements as a call to adventure.
If you want to escape your predicament and truly change, you must accept the call.
The journey into the unconscious it initiates is the beginning of your growth.