The Hero’s Journey Stage 8— The Innermost Cave
The Dark Night of the Soul, the Innermost Cave, 3 Days in the Grave, your journey has come to this and yes, now it’s time to die.
The entire first half of the hero’s journey has been leading you to this critical moment. To this point, the journey has been forcing you out of your comfort zone, revealing the unintegrated aspects of your identity, and moving you toward the dark night of the soul where you’ll face a final surrender.
The question is, surrender to what?
The innermost cave is an interesting concept. It implies that there are dark places in ourselves where we simply do not want to go, but because it’s endemic to many of the myths we know so well, that tells us it’s an essential part of the process.
It tells us that the journey to this point has been causing us to let go more and more, leaving us with no other option than to deal with the one thing that’s been holding us back all along. It’s the shadow material finally integrating with the light. It’s those places where fear has gripped us for so long, and the time for disintegration has come.
Jonah in the belly of the whale for 3 days, Christ in the grave for the same amount of time, Andy Dufresne crawling through 500…
