I live at the crossroads of a migration path. Situated a few miles north of Boulder, Colorado, with a view looking west toward Rocky Mountain National Park, I see with great frequency huge flocks of Canada geese, snow geese, white pelicans, blue herons, sandhill cranes, and even bald eagles, migrating north or south, depending on the time of year. It’s common to see bears, coyotes, deer, and on rare occasions mountain lions migrate down from the mountains through my neighborhood (I live near a river wildlife sanctuary) in the perpetual search of food.
North, south, east, and west—I stand at the center of a symbolic mandala, a living medicine wheel of life.
Like our totem counterparts, we humans also migrate throughout the course of our lives. This journey, however, is rarely a straight line, nor is it influenced by the tilt of the Earth’s axis as it spins in its orbit around the sun. For humanity, the metaphorical landscape often dictates the literal direction, frequently punctuated by roadblocks and obstacles (more commonly known as stress) that repeatedly test our internal fortitude. Mythologist Joseph Campbell called this symbolic human migration “the hero’s journey,” and rarely is it traveled in flocks, gaggles, packs, or prides. The hero’s journey is a solitary migration along what can best be described as “the spiritual path” we take until we return home once again, to celebrate our victories of the heart with close friends and family.
Home, I have learned, isn’t always the point of origin of one’s journey. Rather, home is a metaphor for homeostasis, known the world over as inner peace.
I suppose, upon first glance, my own migration looks pretty typical, if not predictable. (Young college student seeks big ski adventure in Rockies!) Yet as a psychologist, I’ve discovered that nothing is typical in anyone’s spiritual path, my own included.
I was born and raised in a wooded hamlet in the New England countryside, about as far as one can get from the state of Colorado. Growing up as the child of two abusive alcoholic parents, I survived these tumultuous years by escaping frequently into the woods behind my house—a forest that was miles deep. To a young child, it seemed endless, but never foreboding.
During these trying times, Mother Earth quickly became a healing sanctuary. Spring, summer, autumn, or winter, nature was a year-round refuge for my soul. It may sound corny (or, worse, like a line borrowed from the movie Dances with Wolves), but the trees became my friends. The birds and wildlife became my extended family. I christened the forest as my cathedral and the spirits of nature—best symbolized by the hummingbirds I found there—as my guardian angels.
Nature became a stabilizing presence in my life, a perception not uncommon to sages, mystics, luminaries, and wisdom keepers the world over. I vowed that one day, as an expression of gratitude, I would pay tribute to this ageless wisdom by writing a book, perhaps even making a movie, something—anything—to honor the healing power of nature.
In my teen years, things got so bad at home that I made a promise to myself: When I became of age and could afford a passport, I would escape to Australia, the farthest point on the planet. If funds were in short supply (and they were), my backup plan was to hitchhike to Colorado and never look back.
As it turned out, I ended up attending college at the University of Maine at Orono, which, in hindsight, was clearly essential to my spiritual path. There I was introduced to the works of Campbell, Carl Jung, Lao Tzu, St. Francis, and other luminaries whose philosophy of health went well beyond the absence of disease and illness. It embraced a spiritual nature, a holistic perspective, not unlike that which I observed in the forest.
I came to realize that the cornerstone to wellness is the health of the human spirit, what I call the “muscles of the soul.” These include, but are not limited to, patience, optimism, forgiveness, persistence, imagination, courage, humor, and compassion. For Campbell, someone who walks his or her life in balance by exercising these muscles, mastering a graceful balance between ego and soul, is a “hero.”
As a child growing up under “Mommy Dearest” conditions, I never once considered myself a hero. Yet I also refused to see myself as a victim. And over the years I have met many remarkable individuals—men and women who will never make it onto cereal boxes or magazine covers, but who are formidable heroes none-theless. Upon hearing their stories, I am compelled to ask them how they “got back home,” how they found inner peace. Hearing their responses and the ways they’ve employed their muscles of the soul, I am reminded of a line by Winston Churchill, “If you’re going through hell, keep going!”
Andrew, a former student of mine, is one such hero. At the age of 13 he became a quadriplegic from a freak accident. Alive in a dead body, he confided in me that all he wanted to do then was die. He spent the next grueling eight months in a spinal cord rehab hospital angry at the world, and particularly at a nurse who would come in each day to tell him a joke to make him smile.
“If I could have used my hands, I would have pulled the covers over my head, but I couldn’t,” he told me. “For several months I would simply swear at her. This did not deter her. Often, I would pretend to be asleep. This didn’t work either. One day, upon hearing her recite a joke, I found myself laughing. The joke wasn’t even that funny. That day I knew I was on the road to recovery. Humor has been my salvation ever since.
“Most people today take themselves way too seriously,” Andrew said. “If I can laugh, given my situation, so can everyone else.” Now 35, happily married and a father, Andrew is grace personified. Like stars in the night sky, men like Andrew inspire me in times of personal darkness.
As for my own journey: I arrived by plane in Colorado in the spring of 1979 on a college ski trip. Like so many people seduced by the Rockies, I knew immediately I had come home, though it would be several more years before my mind, body, and spirit were all happily situated under the same roof.
Two years later I met another hero at a conference for the American Holistic Medicine Association. Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, the keynote speaker, was renowned for her work with dying cancer patients. She electrified the room as she spoke masterfully about holistic wellness and the integration of mind, body, spirit, and emotions for optimal well-being.
After the applause faded, she drew a circle on a flip chart.
“This,” she said, “is a symbol of health. To be healthy means to be whole—to be whole has a spiritual quality to it.”
In fact, as I’d discover later, the word health comes to us from the Old English word hal,meaning whole or holy.
“To focus on health we must acknowledge the human spirit. There is no other way,” Kübler-Ross told us. Sadly, she acknowledged this area is so often neglected that we rarely integrate, balance, and harmonize all aspects of our being. She added that her work with dying patients was her effort to help them deal with the spiritual part of their lives—the facet that deals with relationships, values, and purpose—so that they could leave this world in peace. So they could make their own hero’s journey, even in their final days, to wholeness.
The Hero's Journal. When you awaken to your spiritual path, you find certain themes, quests, moments of joy, and even certain “guardian angels” keep showing up over and over again.
Around my neck hangs a piece of silver and turquoise in the shape of a four-pointed star. In Peru, this mandala goes by two names—the Andean cross and the Peruvian chakana. Modeled after the constellation of the Southern Cross, to me it signifies the four directions, the four seasons, the four aspects of wellness, and perhaps many more subtleties waiting to be explored.
This chakana was given to me by a Peruvian shaman whom I hired to guide me on the Inca Trail on my way through the rainforest to the ancient hidden city of Machu Picchu. It’s one thing to acquire knowledge from books by Campbell or Jung; it’s a real treasure to learn wisdom directly from the wisdom keepers, and Pablo was an extraordinary wisdom keeper. Our time together became yet another chapter in my hero’s journey.
What I’d initially planned as a simple vacation became a trial of sorts, as I struggled to film the final scenes of Earth Songs, a documentary I had begun two years earlier. The subject is the healing power of nature; the project is the fulfillment of that promise I’d made so many years ago.
Mountains and waterfalls are easy to capture on film. Wildlife, however, doesn’t return for second takes. In fact, birds and animals often skip these scenes altogether. The filming had not been without its frustrating moments and missed opportunities.
But on the last day of the trip, as I held the turquoise talisman in my hand, a beautiful hummingbird landed on my shoulder and stayed there several seconds. He then flew in front of the camera for a stunning cameo. My shaman guide smiled at me.
“It’s a good omen,” Pablo said. “The hummingbirds soon begin their homeward migration north. You will be in good company as you fly home.”
And I am.
The executive director of the Paramount Wellness Institute in Boulder, CO, Brian Luke Seaward is an expert in the field of stress management and a pioneerin the field of mind-body-spirit healing. The author of the bestselling Stand Like Mountain, Flow Like Water, he recently produced and directed the documentary Earth Songs and serves on the faculty of the University of Northern Colorado-Greeley.
