I named my book, The Treasure You Seek, after a quote by mythologist and author Joseph Campbell.  He said, “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”  He wrote a book called The Hero With A Thousand Faces that talks about the story of the hero and how it is told in a similar fashion in myths from all cultures and religions.  His book has inspired many including George Lucas when he was writing the saga Star Wars.

Joseph Campbell said many great things including…

“Perhaps some of us have to go through dark and devious ways before we can find the river of peace or the highroad to the soul’s destination.”

“The usual hero adventure begins with someone from whom something has been taken, or who feels there is something lacking in the normal experience available or permitted to the members of society. The person then takes off on a series of adventures beyond the ordinary, either to recover what has been lost or to discover some life-giving elixir. It’s usually a cycle, a coming and a returning.”

“As Freud has shown, blunders are not the merest chance. They are the result of suppressed desires and conflicts. They are ripples on the surface of life, produced by unsuspected springs. And these may be very deep – as deep as the soul itself. The blunder may amount to the opening of a destiny.”

“It is only when a man tames his own demons that he becomes the king of himself if not of the world.”

“But the makers of legend have seldom rested content to regard the world’s great heroes as mere human beings who broke past the horizons that limited their fellows and returned such boons as any man with equal faith and courage might have found.”

“We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”

“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.”

We are each the hero of our own story.  Everyday folks are heroes just as much as the main characters in a movie or fable.  In fact those big screen and hard-cover bound stories are actually about us.  Heroes never know what the right answer is but they follow their gut and never give up.

If we each do that in our own story we will reach the top of the mountain, inspire others and change the world.

Now go and be the hero that you were meant to be.