Pearson - The Hero Within

A computer expert once complained to me that many people, after buying their first PC , call the hot-line number outraged because their computer wont work. What they mean is that they do not know how to work it. He noted that when we buy a car, we do not expect it to drive itself. We have to learn to use itand then get a license to drive.

All of us have tremendous richness within uspotential that, when tapped, can help us find greater success and fulfillment in our lives. However, few people today learn how to access their own inner potential. The Hero Within is a primary text for the emerging field of inner resource development (IRD)a field devoted to giving the keys to the kingdom back to ordinary people so they can live extraordinary lives.

Most of us know that when we buy a computer, we at least should read the instruction manual, if not take a course. However, when it comes to our psyches, we often simply expect that they will run themselves. It is tacitly assumed in our culture that we need to look within ourselves only when something goes wrong. Then we call in an expert (psychiatrist, psychologist, minister, guru, etc.) to identify what is sick, inadequate, or sinful about us that is causing the problemjust as we would look for a defective part in a machine, so it can be replaced.

The success of self-help books in our time reflects a constructive desire on peoples parts to take responsibility for their own mental health and spiritual development. However, most such books also focus on teaching us what is wrong with ourselves and then telling us how we can get better. Just as with a computer, we may not need to be fixed; we simply may need to learn to understand what we have going for us and how to use it in the current stage of our journey.

The Hero Within can be thought of as an operating manual for the psyche, or as a map or guidebook for the journey. It describes six inner guides, or archetypes, that help us on our way. With their assistance, we can traverse the predictable dilemmas of the maturation processa process that continues throughout our lives. When we learn how to access this inner support, we also become less fearful about the future. It becomes clear that we have within us everything we need to handle whatever challenges we encounter on the path.

Moreover, life has become too complex to cede ownership of knowledge about our inner resources to psychologists and other experts. Success in todays workplace requires all of us to develop emotional and spiritual intelligence. Archetypesthe fundamental structures of the psychecan help us decode our own inner workings, as well as the inner lives of other people, groups, and social systems, so that we can rise to the challenge of contemporary life.

Work on archetypes was pioneered by the Swiss psychiatrist C. G. Jung, who also formulated theories about psychological type, the individuation process, transference, projection, and synchronicity. Jung described archetypes as deep and abiding patterns in the human psyche that remain powerful and present over time. These may exist, to use Jungs terminology, in the collective unconscious, or objective psyche; they may even be encoded into the makeup of the human brain. Jung discovered these archetypes in patients dreams as well as in art, literature, and sacred myths. He developed treatment strategies such as dream analysis, active imagination exercises, and awareness of the archetypal dimension of waking life to heal his patients, sometimes from very serious emotional or mental illness. But whereas Jungs work was motivated by a desire to heal dysfunction, The Hero Within employs Jungian ideas and approaches to help well people learn to thrive .

In much of the world today, ordinary people face choices beyond those available to all but the most privileged in the past. For most of human history, specified sex roles, set career patterns, and predictable behaviors determined by ones class or ethnic group defined how people lived and even what they thought. Sex roles are now much more blurred, and ethnicity no longer limits who and what we can be. The pace of economic and social change will cause many of us to pursue several careers in one short life-time. Moreover, we have the freedom to choose to live out very different lifestyles. All of this requires more of us. We need to be more flexible, to be able to keep more balls in the air, and to make an infinite number of choicessmall and largeabout who we are and how we want to live.

The modern world is so complex that we all must understand our own psyches and their potential. Unfortunately, it remains true that most of us receive no systematic training to acquaint us with our inner desires and resources. In fact, most people do not gain any real self-knowledge until or unless they get depressed or have some other difficulty great enough to send them to a psychotherapist for help.

Today, many of us realize that we bear some responsibility for our own physical health. It is not enough to trust the doctor to make you well when you get sick. It is at least equally important to exercise, eat well, and live a healthy lifestyle to prevent illness. When we are ill, most of us know we should read up on our illness, seek a second opinion when it seems warranted, and not simply give our power over to the physician, however competent she or he might be.

The same principle applies to mental health. Psychospiritual fitness is just as important as physical health. In providing expert information to the lay public, The Hero Within gives knowledge of the inner life back to readers. The point is that we can be safe and at home in our own psyches, and we also can learn the basics of what we need to know so that we can have access to the richness of our inner lives.

The Hero Within model can be used to increase peoples emotional and spiritual intelligence. It is appropriate in a variety of settings because it allows for communication that is deep and authentic without prying into the details of peoples personal lives or histories. It also can help individuals connect to their spirits and souls in a way that neither promotes nor violates their particular religious commitments (or lack thereof). Through this approach, they can go inward to find out not what is wrong with them but what is potentially very right, thus contributing to higher self-esteem and better functioning.

This third version of The Hero Within builds on the framework of the first and second editions. I was inspired initially to write The Hero Within out of a concern that we would not be able to solve the great political, social, and philosophical problems of our time if so many of us persisted in seeing the hero as out there or up there, beyond ourselves. The book was meant as a call to the quest, a challenge to readers to claim their own heroism and take their own journeys. This call is not about becoming bigger or better or more important than anyone else. We all matter. Every one of us has an essential contribution to make, and we can make it only by taking the risk of being uniquely our own selves.

Underneath the frantic absorption in the pursuit of money, status, power, and pleasure and the addictive and obsessive behaviors so prevalent today are, we all know, a sense of emptiness and a common human hunger to go deeper. In writing The Hero Within , it seemed to me that each of us wants and needs to learn, if not the meaning of life, then the meaning of our individual lives, so that we can find ways of living and being that are rich, empowered, and authentic.