“What I think is a good life is one hero journey after another.
Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure, you are
called to new horizons. Each time, there is the same problem: do I dare?
And then if you do dare, the dangers are there, and the help also,
and the fulfillment or the fiasco.

There’s always the possibility of a fiasco.
But there’s also the possibility of bliss.”

- Joseph Campbell

Michael Mervosh is a psychologist in private practice, and also the founder and Executive Director of the Hero’s Journey Foundation. The Hero’s Journey Foundation offers an array of transformational personal development experiences (retreats, web courses, weeklong intensives, weekend immersions), using as its foundation the mythic concept of the “Hero’s Journey” as described by the American thinker and writer Joseph Campbell. This phone interview took place on January 31, 2014. Some portionsof this interview have been edited".

Chris: Why did you start the Hero’s Journey Foundation? What work are you doing now and how is that work evolving?

Michael:The origins of my work with the original version of theHero’s Journey Foundation began back in the mid-1990s.I really wanted to create a comprehensive structure to bring togethernature-based settings andchallenge-based ropes courseelements within-depth personal development work, because much of my work as a psychotherapist up to that point took place inside of four walls. This is an operational presumption that I don’t think we question very much as psychotherapists. I began to find our typical professional office building space limiting for conducting certain kinds of depth work. Sometimes it can be too confining for deeper forms of self-exploration, and especially when it comes to self-expression.

Psychotherapy is work I deeply believe in; I remain very dedicated to providing this service. It has sound methodologies and adeliverable format that allowspeople to deepen, heal or grow, but thistraditional setting has certain limitations to what it can bring forthfor the range of human experiences.

I have always had a love of nature, and when I initially began my career as a family therapist, I worked for a well known inpatient drug and alcohol rehabilitation center, which was situated in aruralsetting surrounded by nature, and I was struck by that locale.The rehab center built a ropes course there to further people’s recovery by confronting their fears and self-limitations in concrete, physical ways. So that’s how I got started workingwith thephysical body innature-based experiences with groups of people. I began incorporating this nature-based ropes course activity into a particulardeepening and awakening process for people. And it was shortly after that that I was introduced to the work of Joseph Campbell.

Chris: So how did you stumble upon Joseph Campbell and what was that experience like for you?

Michael: Well I don’t remember how I stumbled upon him…I think I stumbled upon him the way you stumble upon anything, somewhat randomly or blindly as part of more general seeking process. I have always been an avid reader, and Iamalways looking to learn byreading new things. About 20 years ago I came across a book about Campbellthat was called “A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living”by Diane Osbon. I was held spellbound by its contents. To me, it wasn’t so much how I came upon this book; the important thing to me was that I had stumbled upon it. Because something happened within me as I began reading it. Something woke up.

When I started to read Campbell’s work, something came together and ignited inside of me.Now,I would often experience being riveted and inspired by certain writers, but this went way beyond that. You know, it was like what the American writer Annie Dillard once wrote:“I had been my whole life a bell, but never knew it until that moment I was lifted and struck”. There was this feeling of an internal truth telling taking place. I couldn’t say exactly how I knew it to be true, but from the center of my being I could say that it was true, at least for me. Campbell would say that mythology is not fact or lie – it’s truer than a fact. Facts may be true, but a myth is more true than a fact, because it has a resonance inside of someone that is deeper than just historical, factual information or knowledge. So reading Campbell had something ringing out with such refreshing clarity that I couldn’t just set it aside when I was finished. I had been moved forward somehow.

It’s kind of like the idea of realizing the facts about Santa Claus. You know that in the myth of Santa Clausthere is a real disappointment for the child in finding out that Santa is not an actual person, and his current existence not a literal fact (although it’s origins are rooted in a historical fact). But the myth of Santa Claus is of course far more important than the fact of whether or not he presently exists as an actual person. If you look upon Santa Claus is a real fact of existence, then you inevitably end up quite disappointed when you grow up and come to the realization that there’s no such person. But then you have the opportunity to become able toexperience it as a living myth. Then you realize that there is this spirit of a giveaway inside all of us that is universal, and this is a richer and more mature realization. But you have to go through the pain of disillusionment first to get there.

My family was very involved inreligion, and I was immersed in Catholicism theologically, educationally and sociallythroughout my childhood and adolescence. Campbell spoke about his disillusionment with Catholicism because he said that religion makes the fatal mistake of looking at religious events ashistorical facts, as denotations and not connotations. He would say that it’s not about something that happened to a particular people in a particular time long ago, somewhere else. You must know religious passages as stories that can come alive and be made relevant in the cultural contexts we have today. So that disillusioning happened when I began to read Campbell. It ironically didn’t ruin my faith, it transformed my understanding of it. It really opened up my consciousness to saying “oh my God, so this is how words become flesh!”

Chris: Does formal religion still have a role in your life?

Michael: Yes, it does. Like anything that has deep roots in my being,ancient rituals hold a memory and a recognition of something that always rings true (like a good myth does). But the way certain members of the church hold laws and teachings as rigid doctrines that don’t hold any meaning for me, all the vitality gets sucked out of them, and what is left is compliance with dogmatic principles. Where is the life in that? It is also a way of being exclusive or excluding of other ways and other peoples. Or in the worst examples they do harm to seekers by shutting down and rejecting the importance and the vitality of their own inner experiences, especially when they neatly don’t line up with the given doctrines or rules. This can unfortunately eradicate complexity for the sake of compliance. And I just can’t find anything worthwhile or meaningful in that sanitizing process.

So I don’t prescribe to a religious order the way I once did, but it’s like anything worthwhile that holds meaning. It’s always being shaped into new understanding, and also what is ancient and true is always nearby. So a religious faith nearby to me, but it’s not something I actively participate in like I did as a child or even as a young adult. But I can be nourished in some religious services, and I can still find a powerful living myth in within the Catholic faith.

Chris: Having worked with you over the last few years I have noticed you have a great affinity for rituals. What is it about rituals that attract you?

Michael: To me, a ritual is something that brings presence, awareness and regard to something you are doing. It make a particular time and space become more animated, more sacred. Done well, it imbues an experience with depth and meaning. It is often offered communally as way to bring a group of people together, to take them somewhere inside that is more difficult to access on one’s own.

Lately I have been thinking about rituals as a way to accessa sense one’s own living myth. Something wakes up, something begins to happen that you can’t exactly predict in advance, like when you go to sleep and have a dream. In a similar way, the same kind of infused experience can happen to you when you watch a really good movie, or when you’re walking through a particular art exhibit in a gallery, or when the sun is setting a just the right moment. Myth becomes accessible through something like a ritual, an activity that is happening in a certain kind of exterior space that brings something ineffable and essential alive inside the interior of one’s being. And a good ritual will do just that.

A good ritualalso can wake something up that doesn’t tend to wake up any other way. You can’t simply wake up to an inner aliveness through just thinking about it in your head. There’s a big difference between mental thinking and embodied awareness, as Castaneda referred to it, when you suddenly find yourself enlivened and paying rapt attention to what is unfolding before you. So I think a good ritual engages our awareness in an unfolding story that captures our attention, pulls us in and brings us alive.

Chris: Do you have daily rituals, weekly rituals –rituals that are a part of your day-to-day life? How does that play out on a typical day for you?

Michael: Well, yes, and no. I have daily routines, and embedded in those routines are activities that I do on a regular basis for my health and wellbeing on many levels. But I wouldn’t necessarily call these rituals. I think if you do a daily solitaryritual it can become more of a routine than a ritual. For example, I do inspirational reading and physical workouts first thing in the morning, four to five days a week on average, and I have daily mindfulness practices that I do as a part of my psychotherapy practice.

These are small rituals in a way, and they really do matter to me, but they don’t hold the same magnitude of experience and depth of meaning for me as more communal and mythic types of rituals. You need certain types of settings and circumstances that take you outside of ordinary time for these rituals to take place and have their effect. You can’t predict in advance what is going to happen when you enter this type of ritual space. To me, that is what determines whether or not you are participating in a ritual that is sacred and whole.

My professional practice in itself is a certain type of ritual. I sit in front of people throughout my work day, andquite regularly meaningful human encounters take place that I didn’t see coming; so that to me feels like entering a certain ritual space at times. But the types of rituals that hold deep meaning are not so much singular or solitary events. For me, these experiences are more communal, and they happen within the context of an intentional, communal gathering space. In the Roman Catholic faith in which I grew up, the celebration of the Mass is a definite ritualized way of paying attention to things beyond the immediate surface of what is happening. These days, I think the tradition of the Talking Stick Council is a potent and worthwhile communal ritual that I value.

Chris: Do you think you know what your work is in the world? And is that an important thing for people to know?

Michael: That is an interesting question; I actuallydo think I know what my work is, and even so it is also always evolving. It’s important tome to knowwhat my work is in the world. But I can’t really say for sure if it’s important for other people to know their sense of work in the world. I suppose it depends on the individual and how they make meaning in their world, so I really can’t say for sureif that needs to be an important knowing for others. But I imagine so.

I do believe work is an important thing for us to place value on in a culture. It can givesomeone a definite sense of purpose, place and worth among other people. These workplace contexts and environments are often quite meaningful in a social way. I do see many people who seem to have a sense of their work and place in the world, and I definitely see a lot of people who just kind of do their jobs as a necessary means to an end, just a necessary part of their lives. So work can just bea means to an end, but for the former, it is definitely a means in itself.

David White is a poet who has written about the importance of work in the world. He says that work of any kind is an important function in that it creates meaning, and it is a vehicle that takes someone beyond themself. So I think work can be a way that we have worth, value and a place in the real world, so from that standpoint work is quite important.

We are a privileged generation of people in the Western world, especially over these last few generations. Many of us have had access to higher educationsthat craftedspecialized knowledge and skill sets. This opened us to opportunities where we could choose what our work could be in the world. We have been quite fortunate in that regard, as everyone is not exposed to the same level of educational and employment opportunities.

I pursued my own education and career path consciously and purposefully. Along the way, what helped shape that was doing summer work in a typical steel mill in Pittsburgh - the same mills that the rest of the men in my family had labored in for decades. I was literally working in the mouth of hell:rigorous labor, lots of grit, grime and intense heat. I worked hard, made good money, and maybe could have gotten into the union and had something that would have been a means to a financial end – but then shortly after that, the unions collapsed and the mills as we knew them went down. In a way, I am grateful that I couldn’t enter the union, that would have been a terrible mistake.

Chris: You know one thing I noticed that came up a lot during a recent Hero’s Journey intensive was this concept of SHOULD. The way we use this word SHOULD,on ourselves and on other people. Do you feel that word has a place in our lives? Is it always problematic?

The examples I’m thinking of are“I should do this” or “I should do that” which typically, I believe for myself, is a signal that there’s somethingdeep down that I probably actually don’t want to do. OrI don’t feel like it really aligns with what I am moving towards. So does it ever have a role, a positive role?

Michael: Sure! Is the word should ever useful?. I think you really shouldn’t let your kids play on a high traffic street! (Laughing.) There are certain ‘should’s that really are for our own good. You shouldn’t go inside a lion’s cage,you shouldn’t play with rattlesnakes (unless you are attending a spiritual revival!). You know, I think these kinds of SHOULDS are really common sense table wisdom things that help us to avoid unnecessary dangers in the world.

Chris: But some of those are also “SHOULD NOTS”, right? I assume there are probably some corollaries that are “SHOULDS”. But in talking to ourselves, wemght say things like ”I should love my wife more”.

Michael: Well yes, and your wife would certainly agree with that! (Laughs.) Campbell talked about this very thing. He had a saying,“a dragon has many scales, and written on each one is ‘thou shalt’ ”. I see SHOULDS as a mind game created bythe ego as a way tocircumvent or over-ride complexity. It does this by directing our energy in a forcing current that is basically willful, wearisome and debilitating over time. It places us in a numbing compliance mode, and it also keeps us from diving deeper, beyond simple concepts and rules, areas where we must wrestle with contradicting life currents within us. So we take on the problem of guilt about not following the rules to avoid other inner trouble, that might be more daunting or threatening to explore. Then we are left to “SHOULDER” things, carrying unresolved matters that weigh heavily on us;we often become burdened by a vague and pervasive sense of guilt, of believe that we’ve been bad.

I want to go back to something you just mentioned about yourself. We live by SHOULDS when we don’t know ourselves well enough to know how we actually want to live…and therefore we are reduced to living how we “should” live instead. We follow moral guidelinesor commandmentsnot just to be good people or to avoid being bad, but also because of not having a more complex understandingand more authentic knowing of who we are, with all of our complexity and contradictions.