Is There Any Such Thing As An Ordinary Person?

None of us is ordinary. But sometimes we get deluded into thinking we are.

There's this idea in our society that most people are ordinary. In Restoring Pride, Richard Taylor summed up a view that I've heard over and over again: “Most people are, in the most ordinary sense, very limited…They walk across the stage of life, leaving everything about as it was when they entered, achieving nothing, aspiring to nothing, having never a profound or even original thought... This is what is common, usual, typical, indeed normal. Relatively few rise above such a plodding existence.”

But I don't think it's true that most people are ordinary. Truthfully, I don't think anyone is ordinary.

The truth is that we all have a True Identity. My friend Jamie Winship, who introduced me to this concept, has done remarkable things in his life. After a distinguished career in law enforcement, he was recruited by the CIA to pacify militant Islamic extremists. He spent the next few decades working with some of the most dangerous individuals in the world in places like Iraq, Jordan, and Indonesia. In one story among many, he and the US military fighter whom Jason Bourne is based on were dropped almost into the middle of a camp of 200,000 militant nomads in the Sahara desert. The leaders of the nomads initially planned to kill Jamie and the other two people on his team. A few days later, he had won them over.

But here's the crucial part about Jamie's story. If you ask him, he will insist that he's nothing special. He'll tell you that anyone can do what he does. As he opened one speech to middle schoolers at a summer camp: "There's people in this room that can change foreign policy. There's people in this room that can stop conflict in other countries. There's people in this room that can end—not work in human trafficking—end it." 

We all have a True Identity…and we were put on this earth to do amazing things.

But if that's true, why aren't all of us out there now, lighting the world on fire? Why aren't all of us blazing new trails as amazing painters and poets, as transformative leaders and policy makers, as founders of the next great nonprofit or startup?

I think the key to this mystery lies in the great psychologist Carl Jung's idea of the hero's journey.

What is the hero's journey? Broadly speaking, it's composed of three key elements.

First, the hero is born with the seeds of greatness already planted within them (for instance, Hercules (or Heracles) had his incredible strength). From the moment the hero is born, they are marked out. They have skills and abilities which set them apart and which prepare them for a unique and powerful destiny. But these abilities are often latent or untrained.

Second, the hero has to fight the dragon. In Jungian archetypes, the dragon is the monster of monsters. It is the symbol of fear, of confusion, of chaos and danger and evil. It is the medusa, the sphinx, the cyclops. But the dragon doesn't have to be an external threat. It can be an internal foe as well. When the hero has to venture down into the underworld, or down into a lightless cave (and thereby face their primordial fear of darkness), that too is a manifestation of the dragon. 

The key to the hero's journey is that the hero has to dig deep and slay the dragon. They have to conquer their fear, their confusion, their worry and their terror. They have to face the enemy—internal or external—and defeat it.

Third: when the hero beats the dragon, they get the treasure. In many ancient myths, the treasure is gold or jewels or diamonds. In stories in which the hero is male, the treasure can be a beautiful maiden. But in The History and Origins of Consciousness, Jung's protégé Erich Neumann stresses that the treasure can also be spiritual. The treasure can be deeper spiritual insight or consciousness. It can be the clarity that comes with facing down our fear, recognizing it for the liar it so often is, and seeing the world more clearly as a result.

For Neumann, this treasure can even be a second set of divine parents. In the Disney movie Hercules, it's only when Hercules faces the dragon (which means, not simply beating Hades, but having the courage to go down into the Underworld to rescue his beloved) that he is invited to go and live with his divine parents Zeus and Hera.

For a spiritually path-agnostic description of the battle with the dragon and the treasure that appeared afterwards, I turn to Eckhart Tolle. In The Power of Now, Tolle writes that he was in the midst of a deep and long-lasting depression. And then:

"I felt drawn into what seemed like a vortex of energy. It was a slow movement at first and then accelerated. I was gripped by an intense fear, and my body started to shake. I heard the words 'resist nothing,' as if spoken inside my chest. I could feel myself being sucked into a void. It felt as if the void was inside myself rather than outside. Suddenly, there was no more fear, and I let myself fall into that void. I have no recollection of what happened after that."

I chose Tolle's description because it sheds light on what I think is an essential component of the spiritual battle with the dragon. Unlike a physical battle, the spiritual hero's journey is not won with swords but with surrender. It does not mean violence; it means peace. It does not mean slaying the False Self (our fear, anger, guilt, and shame); rather, it simply means letting that False Self go so that we can more clearly see the world and our True Identity.

After Tolle's spiritual battle with the dragon, he said that he felt reborn.

"I was awakened by the chirping of a bird outside the window. I had never heard such a sound before. My eyes were still closed, and I saw the image of a precious diamond. Yes, if a diamond could make a sound, this is what it would be like. I opened my eyes. The first light of dawn was filtering through the curtains. Without any thought, I felt, I knew, that there is infinitely more to light than we realize. That soft luminosity filtering through the curtains was love itself.

"Tears came into my eyes. I got up and walked around the room. I recognized the room, and yet I knew that I had never truly seen it before. Everything was fresh and pristine, as if it had just come into existence. I picked up things, a pencil, an empty bottle, marveling at the beauty and aliveness of it all. 

"That day I walked around the city in utter amazement at the miracle of life on earth, as if I had just been born into this world."

He had found his spiritual treasure. His eyes had been opened to the essence of the world and who he was.

So let's look at the notion of True Identity through the lens of the hero's journey.

First, your True Identity is always within you. It is who you were when you were knit together in your mother's womb, and it is who you will be when you take your last breath upon this earth. It cannot be lost, thrown away, or abandoned.

But in order to access our True Identity—in order to perceive it—we have to take some sort of action. I'll reiterate that this is generally not action in the traditional sense. The dragon fight is not a fight with a sword, or the slaying of an external monster. Instead, I think of it as a form of radical surrender. It is not a slaying but a letting go.

Christians get at this through our conception of baptism. To be baptized is to be born again and to be made new. It is to have a new and fresh relationship with our divine Father. It is, in this essence, the dragon fight. But baptism does not require a battle. Instead, it simply involves a turning away: from our fear, from our anger, from our guilt and our shame and our False Self. The essence of baptism is not that we do something to earn God's love. It is that we adopt a radical new mindset in which we can feel God's eternal and unchanging love for us. Similarly, it is not that we are gifted with a new identity. It is rather that, by the act of letting go of our False Self, we can see with new eyes. We can see the True Identity that God has always known us by. 

But there are other ways to win the battle with the spiritual dragon besides baptism. I've been baptized; and while I found it a powerful experience, that wasn't when I discovered my True Identity. That happened when I was sent a video by Jamie Winship, watched it, and then (at the suggestion of my mentor) mustered the courage to ask God by what name He knew me. Other people have found their True Identities through rituals, through trips into the mountains (solo or with a trusted spiritual guide), or through initiation retreats.

Beyond the repudiation of our fears and our False Self, I think one essential component of the hero's journey is the guidance of a spiritual mentor who's already been through this process. The spiritual coaches I know have a phrase: you cannot lead a person to a place that you yourself have not been. I think a spiritual mentor who knows their True Identity and has a deep relationship with God (or Spirit, Source, their highest self, the Universe, etc) is a powerful aid to this whole process.

I think the idea of a spiritual hero's journey represents part of the answer as to why there's so much suffering in the world. We live in a society with very little genuine spiritual mentorship. Most of us are told (by society, if not by our parents) that we are very ordinary and that God is very distant. Is it any wonder that so many of us live lives that could pass for ordinary, even if we ourselves are the furthest thing from it? So many of us don't take the spiritual hero's journey because we don't know how or even that it exists.

I'm living proof of this. In my 20s, I did corporate marketing for an agency that gradually seemed to grow less and less ethical. If I did any good in the world in those years, it wasn't much. I learned about my True Identity relatively recently, and that knowledge absolutely transformed my life. But I'm still far from perfect. Every level that I go deeper with God, I find myself with more capacity to do good…but apart from the sheer joy of this process, it also shows me that I'm far from reaching my capacity. I'm doing more than I ever have to try to alleviate suffering on this planet, but I still feel residual fear and anger clogging up my mental hard drive and preventing me from living completely in tune with God as often as I wish to.

To clarify, I'm not saying that this is our fault. We cannot learn what we were never taught. Whether I was depressed and angry (in my 20s) or full of joy and peace and love (more recently), I've only ever tried to do the best I could with the tools I had at my disposal. I think that's true of all of us: I've never known someone who didn't try their best with whatever tools they had available. But while it's not our fault, I think it is our responsibility to fix; partly for ourselves, and partly for the world.

So what's our action item for this week? This one is tough for two reasons.

First, there are a lot of ways to find your True Identity. In the Church, there are mentors and books and courses (though I have no idea how widespread they are) designed to teach people how to actually live in relationship with God and to know their True Identity. Disciples of other spiritual paths find their True Identity in other ways. Before I became a Christian, my mind was opened to the voice of God through meditation. I know friends who lead spiritual seekers on multi-day retreats into the mountains. Other organizations such as the Mankind Project offer spiritual initiation rituals. The organization run by my two spiritual mentors, The Undaunted Man (disclosure: also a client of mine), offers profoundly powerful spiritual 1-on-1 coaching for men and spiritual men's groups. 

Which is to say: because the concept of a True Identity is deeply path-agnostic, there is no one action item that we can all take to find our True Identity.

The second reason that deciding on an action item this week has been tough is that Heal the West has readers all along the spiritual path, from neophytes to seasoned leaders. Very few action items would be appropriate for everyone.

So, in lieu of one action item this week, I have three suggestions.

First, if you've already found your True Identity, consider ways that you can help those still seeking to do the same. 

Second, if you still don't know your True Identity but would like a deeper relationship with God (however you define that), consider an initiation ritual or mentorship program in the spiritual path of your choice. Ideally, the ritual should be designed by someone (or the mentor should be someone) who has a close relationship with God and a deep sense of their own True Identity.

Third: if you're not yet searching for your True Identity (or perhaps don't even believe in the concept), that's okay. If this is you, I invite you to consider a daily meditation practice. Every spiritual tradition with which I'm familiar says that the way to hear the still small voice is to learn to quiet your mind.

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