Many spiritual maps point us inward, into the cave, into emptiness, into the blissful oneness beneath it all. And then, just as importantly, they point us back out again into time, into relationship, into ordinary human life.
One of the metaphors that has touched and inspired me most comes from the movie Hook, 3-minute video clip attached. Peter Banning is a forty-something attorney, husband, and father whose life has become heavy and joyless. A turning point arrives and the adventure begins. He is taken to Neverland, that timeless “never never” place beyond ordinary life, where the Lost Boys become his guides, his shamans, his Yodas. There, through meeting Peter again and again through his resistance and doubt, they eventually succeed in guiding him back to his intrinsic innocence, beauty, and perfection. He remembers who he is. He can fly again. He can crow. He has remembered his essence.
Yet, like Luke stepping away from the galaxy, Peter has temporarily stepped out of time and the world. Once his return to radiant being is realized, something organic happens. He feels the pull back into life. He returns to time, to family, to ordinariness. When Grandma Wendy asks, “So your adventures are over?” Peter replies, “No. To live, to live will be an awfully big adventure.”
Zen describes this journey simply:
At first there are mountains and rivers.
Then there are no mountains and rivers.
Then there are mountains and rivers again.
Advaita Nonduality echoes this movement:
The world is an illusion.
Only Brahman (true nature, radiance, love, emptiness) is real.
The world is Brahman.
Joseph Campbell names it the Hero’s Journey.
In IFS terms, Peter begins blended with parts and suffering in resistance. In Neverland, identification loosens, unblending occurs and essence shines through. Then he returns, not diminished, but Self-embodied. Nothing is missing. Mountains and rivers are back. Radiance shines through. The world is Brahman.
Maybe this return to ordinary life, revealed as beauty, radiance and perfection, is in no way the end of the adventure, but its true beginning in living life itself.
Hook 3-minute video clip celebrating “The Return”: https://youtu.be/4xhiW_CNA7A?si=JfpNIg36KCW5qo_9
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