Empowering Personal &
Professional Transformation

Excerpt from Once Upon a Place featured in Spirit of Change Magazine:

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​Two ideas feature at the core of all quest stories: these are the Abyss and the World Journey.

The Abyss is one of humanity’s oldest and most tenacious ideas that has been used for millennia to describe a place that is deep, inaccessible, extremely dangerous, and somehow at the core of understanding. In some ancient texts, it is synonymous with the deep ocean and is often portrayed as the sea in films today. But its broader meaning encompasses all the dark, deep places we go when we embark on an adventure to find answers. It’s where the obstacles lie and the challenges are found, often in the form of a beast or monster that must be overcome. The Abyss shapes the idea of what a challenge means.

The World Journey is a much newer term, adapted from Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. You may be familiar with the storyline, or plot, of the Hero’s Journey, as it was coined by the Sarah Lawrence College professor of literature in the twentieth century. In it, the hero goes through a sequence of experiences designed to help them face and overcome the many challenges of life, often in the context of a quest or adventure. Campbell presented a structure for this process, and it has become a reliable plot outline for the stages of character development in modern film and stories, such as J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings or George Lucas’s Star Wars. Campbell’s process leads toward self-actualization with deliberate stages that create a plot which leads a man (or sometimes a woman) through each step in specific order to experience certain hardships and, ultimately, achieve epiphany or personal growth.

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...And I would argue that while those original stories, especially those collected and recorded hundreds of years ago by Charles Perrault and the Grimm brothers, were indeed dark, frightening, and often overtly violent or callous, they should not be sugared over simply because they are scary, depressing, or harsh. They served a much needed purpose by symbolically painting a reality that most people experienced and still do experience in their lives: namely, challenging situations that push us to our limits and are, in fact, our very best opportunities for change and growth. Those storytellers and parents long ago knew that persistence allows us to become strong and resilient adults. That facing our fears can make us compassionate, forgiving, and joyful. That making difficult decisions instills in us a feeling of accomplishment and maturity. And, that experiences of confusion and uncertainty can open our minds to new ideas and creative expression that allow us as individuals, and as societies, to flourish.

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