When Healing is a Hero’s Journey

When Healing a Hero’s Journey

As someone who spent much of their life involved in the New Age and occult, I’ve had to do a lot of spiritual healing. While I saw process as a journey, it it didn’t occur to me that healing is a hero’s journey until I heard this Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona quote:

All of the healers that I worked with emphasized that you have to present your wish to be well in such a way that they spirits would admire you, that the spirits would be impressed, that the spirits would say, wow you’re someone I really want to help. In short, you have to become a hero. You have to create a heroic journey for yourself toward wellness, from sickness. And everyone loves a hero. Spirits are no exception. Whatever your heroic journey is, the more impressive it is, the better for you.

The Spirit of Healing by Lewis Mehl-Madrona, MD

I love this quote and what it says about healing – though I probably should point out that, as a Catholic, I look at things very differently than Dr. Mehl-Madrona.

Where I Differ

The main difference between my outlook and that of Mehl-Madrona is that I don’t work with ancestors but I do believe that saints and angels can intercede for us. And I love the idea of becoming the kind of person a saint or an angel might want to pray for.

But I didn’t share “The Spirit of Healing” (affiliate link) quote because of what it says about supernatural beings. I shared it because of what it says about us.

Healing IS a hero’s journey – so if we want to make that journey, we have to be heroic.

Heroism

Because I felt I needed to really understand what Mehl-Madrona is saying here, I looked the word heroism up in Merriam-Webster. The synonyms provided included words like bravery, courage, daring, fearlessness, gallantry, heart, moxie, nerve, prowess, valor, and virtue.

These are the kind of traits that most of us think about when we think about being heroic. But the actual definition (or the definition I liked best) of heroism didn’t really talk about character traits. It talked about “heroic conduct exhibited in fulfilling a high purpose or attaining a noble end.”

To me this means that in order to be heroic we have to (a) know where our journey or quest is headed and (b) be willing to actually do things in order to get there. I think this way of looking at heroism makes a lot of sense.

Where Are You Going?

When it comes to inner healing no two people will have the exact same destination or goal.

Some of us want to be better parents or spouses or humans. Others want to feel better or achieve a specific vocational objective. There may even be several different goals. But I think it helps to narrow it down to one or two.

I prayed and journaled on my goals and I decided that I want to continue to share on my experience and do the necessary research to come to understand that experience through my Catholic faith.

So that’s where I want to end up. The next step is to figure out how to get there. To me, that’s where the courage part comes in.

How Courage Looks

For most of us, the kind of courage healing calls for doesn’t look like anything special.

It might, for example, simply look like going for a walk when the weather’s bad. Or working in the garden when we’re afraid of snakes. Or going to Mass when we don’t really want to. And in 2021 it’s going to look like me, doing all of those things.

Anyway, that’s what courage looks like for me. While it might look like something totally different for you, I’m willing to bet we have this in common. When somebody sees us gardening or showing up or whatever, it looks pretty ordinary.

Very few people would even realize that what we’re doing takes courage – or that it’s part of an epic, hero’s journey to healing.

But it is.