As excited as I am to develop and explore this Heroine’s Journey model, I think I’ve been subconsciously avoiding producing this second step of the Journey. This Death of Innocence step is all about trauma entering the life of the Heroine and trauma is too large a subject for me to cover in less than fifteen minutes.

Trauma is something that Western society is digging out of dark corners and shining huge spotlights on at this point in its development. Trauma is talked about on every social media platform, on every self-help show and podcast, by every psycho-analyst and pop-culture guru and even I’ve talked about it in one or two…or fifty episodes.

So, this episode is not about what trauma is nor what causes trauma. It’s going to be about how trauma affects us and how it alters our Heroine’s Journey path or how it shoots us into the Normal Existence of the Hero’s Journey and locks us there until we answer our Call to Adventure.

This is a critical junction in the Heroine’s Journey and I hope that this information does catch on at some point in the future and people begin to understand that the Heroine’s Journey path is the one we truly want for our children, because most of us that were born before – let’s say 1985 – never made it past this second step of the Heroine’s Journey.

[intro]

Hello, Spiritual Seekers, and welcome to another Heroine’s Journey episode of Think Spiritual. As always, I’m your host, Mark, and I had originally intended to begin this episode with some shout-outs to some new YouTube friends, but there ended up being so many of them that it seemed unfair to single out some and leave out others.

What’s also been happening is what I expected to happen, but I didn’t know how it would happen: I’ve been living through this step of the Heroine’s Journey – I’ve been having my own Death of Innocence time.

Lately I’ve been having what I’m going to refer to as a “reverse existential crisis”. A normal existential crisis is that realization of and the feeling of your own mortality and trying to figure out what life is all about and trying to figure out if anything comes after this life. The ultimate question is, “What is this life for?”

What I’ve been feeling lately is the weight of my own divinity and wondering what the point in all of this spiritual growth and seeking is. I’m asking the question, “If I’m a spiritual being having a human experience and if I’m always chasing after spiritual truths, when am I having the physical human experience?”

Now, I don’t have the answers to those questions yet and when I do figure them out, they’ll be my answers, not your answers, but my point of telling you this is to let you know that I’ve had a massive shift in perspective and today’s episode is going to be focused on how Trauma changes our perspective and affects our Heroine’s and Hero’s Journeys.

Now, obviously I’ve covered the Hero’s Journey extensively on this channel and this episode is part of the Heroine’s Journey series, but this step of the Journey – as well as The “Perfect” World – truly is a step in both the Hero’s and Heroine’s Journeys. It’s a “fork in the road” step and any one of us could end up taking either path – watch my videos analyzing Frozen and Frozen 2 to see exactly how this Binary Journey operates.

Back to the point, I have called this step of the Heroine’s Journey The Death of Innocence because, large or small, that is the role of trauma: to kill our unknowing, innocent ways and to wake us up to the harsh and uncaring reality of the World around us. To live fully and to mature appropriately, our “Perfect” World has to be unveiled and our rose-coloured glasses have to be broken – our perspective has to change.

Is this fair? No, it’s not.

Is this right? Well, right or wrong has nothing to do with it. It’s life. You are going to experience Trauma, period.

Perhaps this Trauma is so slight or so gradual that you barely notice it as Trauma, but it shifts your life by minute degrees and changes your original trajectory.

This type of Trauma would generally be the type that would cause a person to continue the Heroine’s Journey path.

However, it could be that this Trauma is so huge that it makes you emotionally shutdown and sets you into a loop of dull living or ever devolving patterns of behaviour.

And big Trauma like that is generally what forces people into “Normal Existence” on the Hero’s Journey path.

Take note of what I just said: small trauma “generally” causes a person to continue the Heroine’s Journey path. Large trauma “generally” forces a person onto the Hero’s Journey path. I used the word “generally” because it is possible for the opposite to happen as well.

Small trauma or a series of small traumas could cause a person to constantly dwell on the trauma and force them into a Normal Existence loop of behaviour where they never let go of those small traumas and their negative thoughts and feelings associated with them. They become stuck and refuse to grow because they keep tripping over the tiny events of their past that haunt them everyday.

It’s also possible that a person could experience a massive amount of trauma and loss and violation and heartache and, yet, they somehow manage to leave all of it in the past where it belongs. They bear the scars, it transforms them into completely different people, and most trauma overcomers use their experience to empathize with and guide others to healing.

And guidance is a key element here. It’s something that, if you look closely, will either be ignored or – more likely – be completely missing from the person’s life who is now stuck in the Normal Existence of the Hero’s Journey. I think this is actually why the larger percentage of us end up on the Hero’s Journey rather than continuing the Path of the Heroine – we weren’t given proper attention and guidance. We were left to wallow and struggle most likely due to the high probability that even our own parents and teachers and other elders in our life weren’t awakened or mature enough to give us the guidance we needed.

Which has left a large portion of us who are adults now that aren’t guiding our own children properly, so, guess what? More people who need to go on their Hero’s Journeys to awaken their emotions and ultimately their spiritual centre of being.

Now, thankfully, there are many guides and mentors out there and, thankfully, the internet gives us far more access to them today than in past decades and centuries. Thankfully, human evolution, and perhaps the Earth itself, is slowly raising our levels of consciousness much earlier in our development. Thankfully, there are movies out there such as Inside Out that point out how important it is to deal with one’s emotions at early stages of development – that movie, by the way, is completely a Death of Innocence and a Denial of the Broken Glasses film and I’m going to cover it very soon.

Also, there are more and more awakened individuals out there who are called to help children deal with traumas and emotions and spiritual development at early stages and ages. I can only hope that it leads to a world full of more Heroines and Heroes and fewer stuck and suffering individuals.

Not that we’ll ever end up living in a perfect world – as I emphasized in step one of this Heroine’s Journey series. The fact is, we don’t want to live in a perfect world because a perfect world would create weak Heroes and Heroines – if it would create them at all for that matter.

As much as I hate to say it, trauma of any sort is an absolute necessity for us to grow and achieve even a semblance of our highest Self. Without that Death of Innocence, we would stay in a childlike, Garden of Eden state of never knowing Good and Evil.

Without that Death of Innocence, we would remain weak and unrefined and inexperienced.

Without that Death of Innocence, we would be unable to fulfill our Purpose.

Now, I don’t want to go into a huge diatribe about Purpose, but Purpose and The Death of Innocence are closely linked. Purpose is not something that merely falls into our laps. It’s not automatically supplied to us at birth:

August 1974:

[God] Oh, look, there’s Mark. His Purpose is going to be to talk about his life and experience and the Hero’s and Heroine’s Journey on YouTube.

[Angel] What the hell is YouTube?

[God] What? Do I look like I’m omniscient?

I’ve often said that each of us has one specific purpose and that is to simply be. We are here to experience physical life and living and that’s it. However, our bodies and our brains generally need something to do – at least until we fully comprehend being – and it’s at that point that we have to take up the burden of whatever Purpose we choose.

Yes, we choose our Purpose. Purpose isn’t something we have – as I said, it doesn’t fall into our laps and we’re not predestined to do some specific thing. Purpose is something that we are  and we give Purpose to the world. Just by living you are fulfilling your Purpose and you are providing people, places and things with Purpose – you are here to witness and experience everything you’ve seen and done. You’re here to watch this video or listen to this audio right now, thus providing me with purpose.

I don’t have to be sitting here talking to you. I didn’t have to create a Hero’s Journey series. I didn’t have to develop a Heroine’s Journey model and subsequent series. If I hadn’t done all of this, someone else most likely would have.

It’s certainly possible that I was somewhat compelled to begin this work, but what was it that truly compelled me? Was it not my own Death of Innocence moments and my subsequent traumas that motivated me to begin to encourage people to be their own Heroes and Heroines, to save their Self and become their best and highest Self?

So, yes, someday you may well choose a Purpose and there will be people to witness and experience your growth and path to your best and highest Self.

And what will compel you on that Journey? What will be the driver behind almost every decision that you make? Will it not be your childhood conditioning and the traumas related to that very conditioning?

It’s mind-altering to think that the very traumas that damaged you are also the very traumas that have shaped you into the very person you are right now.

Does that not alter your perspective on the path your life has taken?

And I hope it does dramatically alter your perspective, because if it doesn’t you very well may lose sight of the fact that your Perfect World doesn’t exist and that your rose-coloured glasses have been well and truly broken. And if you don’t acknowledge that fact, you could be heading down a dark and twisted path.

But that, my Dear Heroines, will have to wait for the next Heroine’s Journey episode of Think Spiritual.

Thank you so much for watching or listening today. Please like, share, comment, criticize and subscribe to the channel at your leisure.

I have been your host, Mark, this has been an exploration of the second step of my Heroine’s Journey model and I know that if you continue to change your Self by working through your past traumas that you will find your victory, you will find your freedom, and you will choose a Purpose that will ultimately bring great change to your world.

Goddess blessings upon you.

You have all the weapons and knowledge you need within you and I will see you on the next episode of Think Spiritual.