Jacob Nordby believes the most heroic adventure in life is
inward.
I will never forget when my own
private Hero’s Journey began.
It was one I had been eyeing,
denying and running from my entire life.
An outwardly successful
entrepreneur, I began to have metaphysical labor pains at age thirty-four.
It scared the shit out of me.
I had this deep sense that the Great
Inevitable was finally upon me.
Yes, this was an adventure of the
spirit and I was terrified of what I suspected would change my whole life.
It did.
What followed was an unwinding of everything
that once held my American Dream exterior together.
I did not like that.
I no longer knew who I was—and
neither did anyone else.
If you can imagine yourself playing
the big game as a businessman, living in a beautiful home, commanding the
respect of the community and generally viewing yourself as a stud, then you’ll
be seeing the world through my eyes about six years ago.
I thought I was living life to its
fullest.
I thought I knew who I was.
And I was wrong.
Now fast forward almost two years
and imagine that same person living in a tiny rental in a distant city where no
one knew me, working a couple of menial part-time jobs just to pay the bills,
spending lots of time by a creek with a journal and leaky eyes.
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At times you have to leave the city of your
comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover
will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.
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I was a cautionary tale and probably
the embodiment of every modern man’s worst nightmare.
But somewhere inside, I knew that
for the first time in my entire life I was walking the Path With Heart.
Somehow I trusted I would find
myself, stripped though I was of everything which had bolstered my
self-concept.
As Alan Alda once said, “At
times you have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of
your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is
yourself.”
And so it was with me.
For the first time, I could feel
that raw, solid ground under my feet.
It no longer depended upon my bank
account or credit score or approval rating.
It only required me to get up each
morning and face the world as myself and continue putting one foot in front of
the other.
I had to live honestly before my
family without the shields of masculine infallibility.
I had to let them see me try and
fail and get back up again.
I had to let them see me be weak and
then find new strength.
But that is a terrifying journey and
I don’t blame anyone for not wanting to embark on it.
Why would any man voluntarily risk
‘emasculation’ in this way?
What do I mean by that?
Here is a guaranteed recipe for a
really uncomfortable evening: Walk into a sports bar, sit down at a table with
ten guys and say, “Hey, I’d like to share something about my spiritual
journey.”
It makes my stomach hurt to imagine
what comes next.
First, everyone’s shoulders hunch
over their beer.
Eyes lock on the table. Jaws clench.
Silence yawns like an open grave
waiting for the offender to fall in and never, ever crawl out again.
Why is this?
I mean, if you said, “Hey, I just
bought a new four-wheeler,” or “I’m about ready to pull the trigger on a new
business deal,” you just provided fodder for rousing conversation.
More importantly, you fit in with
what men love to talk about—what we love about life: conquest, adventure, and
challenge.
So just why are we men so afraid to
talk about our spiritual side, let alone explore it?
Sure, there are many reasons to
avoid spiritual discovery and most of them are common to both sexes, but men
face a particular obstacle and it is time we get over it.
We are cheating ourselves out of the
most intense, rewarding challenge—and adventure—of our lives.
For most of us, the word adventure
comes as a surprise when juxtaposed with spirituality.
We are so accustomed to pairing
spirituality with images of Buddha meditating in the sunrise or women doing
yoga poses.
We imagine soft music, misty
paintings, incense in the air and hushed voices.
We suspect that it might require
owning a Prius, eating grilled tofu and memorizing Sanskrit poetry.
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We don’t remember putting on the armor that
covers our raw, wild soulful magnificence, but here we are decades later
clanking around in heavy, ill-fitting roles we don’t know how to shed —
and even if we did, we’re afraid we might get our balls cut off in the
process.
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Brothers—fellow bearers of
testosterone—hear me well!
This is no lecture about how you
should feel badly for not wanting to sit on cushions and chant.
In fact, at least for now, I’d like
you to delete “spiritual” from this conversation altogether.
Like so many other words, it comes
with too much baggage.
It makes us feel afraid we’ll have
to turn our backs on what makes us men in the first place.
You see, we are comfortable with our
boxed-in lives.
We hate the constricted feeling at
times, but we were conditioned from birth that men do life a certain way.
We don’t remember putting on the
armor that covers our raw, wild soulful magnificence, but here we are decades
later clanking around in heavy, ill-fitting roles we don’t know how to
shed — and even if we did, we’re afraid we might get our balls cut off in the
process.
There could be nothing further from
the truth.
This is a call to the greatest
adventure of your life.
I’m talking about a conquest so
intense that it will require all of your courage and strength and stamina.
I’m talking about a hero’s journey
into the most powerful version of you.
One that will tax you to your limits
and demand that you take the fullest measure of yourself.
And isn’t that what we so deeply
want?
Isn’t that what we secretly long for
when life becomes a predictable cycle of work and routine and comfort?
Don’t we really wish something would
come along and seduce us into a heroic journey that will not let us rest, a
journey worthy of us?
What if you ventured off the common
map and were forced to blaze your own path with heart?
This is what I’m talking about and
it has nothing to do with weakness.
It has everything to do with
learning what it means to be a spiritual warrior—and then living it out.
Adventure, my friends.
High adventure, indeed.
I am here to tell you that a hero
lies within you.
A creative, inspired being inhabits
your man’s body and it wants full expression in your life.
It wants you to stretch yourself to
the limit and end your days on earth satisfied that you had the best possible
run.
This is what it means to become
aware of the suffocating web of cultural conditioning and expectations.
This is what it means to face and
embrace your fears of vulnerability so that you can experience the electric,
breathtaking energy of who you really are.
I’m not asking you to apologize for
being a man in this lifetime.
You showed up here as yourself, in
your body, absolutely laden with talents begging to be developed and potential
insatiable to be revealed (now, ask yourself, just who is this being who showed
up as me?
That might be the very first step on
your own expedition).
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Your foes are the forces which say you must
not stand up, stand out and discover the treasures of your own adventurous
heart.
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Since humankind began telling tales
of epic adventures around campfires and in the agora and in novels and on
stages and movie screens, something in us has always risen up to cheer the hero
who ventured into the unknown to face insurmountable odds and returned weary
but victorious.
You probably don’t need a sword or
Viking ship in your daily life anymore.
Your dragons don’t guard castles and
you probably haven’t been required to fight to the death with any villains
recently.
But you are still a man and that
spirit lives within you.
Your foes are the forces which say
you must not stand up, stand out and discover the treasures of your own
adventurous heart.
◊♦◊
And now let’s return from this
fanciful language and bring it home.
You, as a man, are being asked to
find yourself in the thicket of work and responsibilities and all the tangled
rules which dictate how men must be.
When you do, you will love your life
more than ever before because you will know who you really are.
This adventure will lead you into
deeper love, richer expressions of your talents and more exciting ways to be
yourself.
Now every time I used the words
inspired or authentic or vulnerable, replace them with “spiritual”.
You see? I don’t differentiate
between these anymore—and nor should you.
Spirituality isn’t reserved for the
temple or meditation room.
This is about real life all the way,
baby!
If you were honest, what practical
dragons block the path and keep you from this adventure?
Stay tuned.
There’s a lot more to this story, of
course, and I’ll be back to share more notes from the road.
Oh, and you should know that my own
life is unspeakably richer now.
I no longer wake up at 3 am with a
knot in my gut wondering “…is this all there is?“.
Every day has become a new step on
the path with heart–an intense, honest journey which delights, terrifies and
inspires me to be more than I thought possible.
In very real terms, I now enjoy my
career, a true partner relationship and many other features of my life are now
light where once they were heavy.
These are the real-world rewards of
answering the call to inner adventure.
—–
(Author’s Note: The
“Hero’s Journey” was explored in-depth by Joseph Campbell in his book, The Hero With A Thousand Faces.
He shows us how this theme is repeated in collective myths and legends from
Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey to Lucas’s Star Wars. This
perennial archetype continues in popular culture in movies like The Matrix.
In the introduction to his book, Campbell summarizes the hero’s journey this
way- “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of
supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive
victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the
power to bestow boons on his fellow man.” The Hero archetype lies
dormant in modern man and asks us to rouse it from slumber so we may experience
lives rich with meaning and satisfying challenge.)
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