{"id":63,"date":"2013-04-08T18:16:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-09T00:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gypsypilgrimjourney.wordpress.com\/?p=63"},"modified":"2013-04-08T18:16:00","modified_gmt":"2013-04-09T00:16:00","slug":"re-visioning-pilgrimage-as-heroic-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rglongpre.ca\/pilgrim\/index.php\/2013\/04\/08\/re-visioning-pilgrimage-as-heroic-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"Re-Visioning Pilgrimage As Heroic Journey"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Following the roads, paths, and trails along the Camino doesn\u2019t necessarily present too many places where going forward seems almost impossible. Yet, there are places and moments on the trail where one does feel that going another step forward is beyond the capacity of the body or the mind. When a person looks at the variety of individuals who attempt and complete the Camino de Santiago following one of the many different routes that are possible to follow, there is a sense of wonder for these individuals whether they walk 100 km to get to Santiago, or whether they walk 4000 km from some distant spot in Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having a Jungian psychology background, I was familiar with the idea of the Hero\u2019s Journey which made its way into the public through the work of Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces. A hero in this context follows a journey that is more interior than it is exterior. While walking in the real world and in the moments of rest and sleep, the inner journey continues to challenge the hero. We tend to think of pilgrims as humans who talk a very long walk from their home to a religious site of significance, a journey that is purely physical. But once one becomes a pilgrim, there is no question that the hardest part of the pilgrimage is the inner journey that takes place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I walked a section of the Camino, just over 250 km from Le Puy en Velay to Figeac, I met so many who took a week or two for doing a section of the Camino with the intention of continuing on from the last stop until at some point in the future, they would arrive at Santiago. Why were they walking this way? Why were they even walking? Each person I talked to have a different answer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so it is with me. The journey as a pilgrim is not just about following a path such as the GR 65 and the Camino Franc\u00e9s, it is more of following an unmarked trail through a strange land, knowing that one is lost and that being lost is necessary if one is ever going to arrive at a place of peace, of self awareness and self acceptance. The journey is one that continues in stages, when one is ready to handle the next set of challenges. The journey doesn\u2019t end at Santiago as many Camino pilgrims have learned. The journey becomes life itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The explorer and the traveller, not to mention the tourist, may take to a pilgrimage route, but the motives for their departure, what they seek, and the significance of their ultimate destination are never those of a pilgrim. The pilgrim\u2019s progress is both an interior journey, a spiritual exercise, and a physical journey towards an actual site imbued with a divine character. The condition of the pilgrim, in fact, comes remarkably close to that of the hero. By abandoning familiar, worldly surroundings, submitting oneself to physical hardship and sometimes considerable danger, and paying homage or penance at a holy site, pilgrims, like heroes, know that they will return from their odyssey in some way renewed, or at least inwardly changed. \u2018A visitor passes through a place;\u2019 wrote Cynthia Ozick, \u2018the place passes through the pilgrim.\u2019 In describing mystical experience, Meister Eckhart used pilgrimage as a metaphor: \u2018the Wayless Way, where the Sons of God lose themselves and, at the same time, find themselves.\u2019 That, in a phrase, is every pilgrim\u2019s goal.\u201c [SHRADY\u00a0Sacred Roads: Adventures From The Pilgrimage Trail<\/em>\u00a0(1999)]<\/p>

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Following the roads, paths, and trails along the Camino doesn\u2019t necessarily present too many places where going forward seems almost impossible. Yet, there are places and moments on the trail where one does feel that going another step forward is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rglongpre.ca\/pilgrim\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rglongpre.ca\/pilgrim\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rglongpre.ca\/pilgrim\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rglongpre.ca\/pilgrim\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rglongpre.ca\/pilgrim\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rglongpre.ca\/pilgrim\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rglongpre.ca\/pilgrim\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rglongpre.ca\/pilgrim\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rglongpre.ca\/pilgrim\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}