On our Hero's Journey we've almost reached the end of the Initiation Phase.
After going through the Road of Trials, discovering a unifying Love, being tempted and coming back to the Journey, the Hero has survived the supreme ordeal of the Atonement with the Father.
In the subsequent stage of the Apotheosis (literally "deification"), the Hero goes beyond the opposites and reaches a divine-like state of love, compassion, bliss, and knowledge.
This is the time to shine. After all the darkness, light fills everything. Potentials show up with no effort from your side. You are renewed within, and the outside takes notes and can't but adapt.
When in your life have you felt like effortlessly riding the wave like a pro, beyond any definition or limitation, being "One With All That Is"?
Cupid and Psyche
The poor maiden Psyche is so much in love with Cupid, and so much desiring to reunite with him after the accident that separated them, to be ready to risk her own life. She goes through all the trials with which Cupid's mother Venus challenges her, including the most dreadful one: going to the underworld and take back with her a dose of the beauty of Proserpina, goddess of the underworld itself.
The enraged Venus couldn't have been clearer. "Psyche, go to Hell."
Yet, with the help of special guides, Psyche is able to bring to completion even this seemingly impossible task of metaphorically dying and coming back to life. Proserpina agrees, the maiden takes the flask with her, but on her way back her curiosity makes her open it. The veil of death lands on her eyes, and she faints like dead.
Cupid rescues her, takes the veil away, and brings her back to life.
Finally, Cupid takes her to Mount Olympus, where he prays his father Jupiter to provide his consent for the couple to marry.
Jupiter agrees, tells Venus to back off, and gives Psyche ambrosia, the drink of immortality, in front of an assembly of the gods.
Psyche reaches her Apotheosis, becomes the goddess of the soul, and can finally be united in marriage to Cupid as equals.
The Matrix
Because of the betrayal committed by Cypher, Morpheus is captured within the Matrix by the Agents, sentient computer programs created to eliminate threats to the system.
Neo reenters the Matrix with Trinity and saves Morpheus. The three of them get ready to exit the Matrix, but Neo remains stuck into it. As he fights the Agents he gains confidence in his skills, starting to remember who he is and battling as effectively as the Agents themselves.
Yet, Agent Smith ambushes and kills him within the Matrix. Neo is clinically dead, the body sensors say from the Nebuchadnezzar, the ship where he physically is. Trinity, near to his body, tells him that she loves him, and that the Oracle told her she would have fallen in love with the One.
As she kisses him, Neo comes back to life and awakes in the Matrix. Now he is at one with the Matrix, in full remembrance of being the One, and controlling such virtual reality however he wants.
The Agents fire at him, but he stops their bullets in the air and lets them fall down.
Agents Smith attacks him, but he easily fights back. With a jump Neo enters into him, expands, and makes him explodes.
Metaphorically, he has become one with his own shadow, has entered it, and has finally overcome it.
His Atonement with the Father is complete, as well as his Apotheosis.
In the Matrix, he is godlike.
Flashdance
Alexandra, eighteen years old, works as a welder during the day, and as a sensual dancer in a bar by night. She would love to become a professional dancer (Call to Adventure), but has no formal training and no family to support her. She has learnt to roll up her sleeves and toil for getting what she wants.
One night her employer Nick sees her dancing at the bar and gets intrigued. At work, he starts to use sweet talk with her, but she turns him down.
Following the advice of her old mentor Hanna, a previous classical dancer, Alex goes to the local Dance Company to fill in an application. She gets discouraged when realizing that she should mention all previous dance schools, and she leaves without applying (Refusal of the Call, I).
One night, after finishing work at the bar, Alex is assaulted by a man. Nick intervenes and saves her (Supernatural Aid, I), and the two fall in love.
Nick tells her how he took the decision to divorce from his now ex-wife.
"I realized that by marrying her I had taken the safe route. And by staying with her I was doing what was easier to do, not what I had to."
"What was that?"
"Let go. Start over again. Figure out what I wanted to do and go after it."
"In the end you got it, didn't you?"
"Yeah."
"How did you do it?"
"I took a deep breath. And I jumped."
Also thanks to this conversation (Supernatural Aid, II), the day after Alex gets courage and applies for an audition to the Dance Company (Crossing the First Threshold).
Nick comes to know it and asks a favor to a friend of him from the Arts Council, so that Alex can at least get the audition (Supernatural Aid, III).
Alex receives the invitation, but once she discovers that she got it because of Nick's recommendation, she gets furious with him and refuses to show up (Road of Trials and Refusal of the Call, II). She's accustomed to work hard and earn her merits, and she can't accept such a shortcut, even if getting the audition doesn't automatically mean that she'll be let into the Dance Company.
"The truth is, you're scared to go to that place, aren't you?!"
"I am not."
"Yes you are. And you're using me as an excuse not to go."
"Get out."
"You're pissing it all away. Don't you understand? You give up your dream, you die." (Supernatural Aid, IV)
Alex tries then to reach out to Hanna to seek comfort from her, but discovers that she has died just the day before.
After a bittersweet conversation with a fellow adult dancer, whose artistic dreams got exhausted and crushed over the years in that same night bar (Supernatural Aid, V), Alex decides to show up at the audition (Atonement with the Father).
The dance number she performs is the sum of the best pieces of dance that she has learnt and practiced, including some breakdancing that she has seen on the streets of her city. The rhythm is breath-taking, Alex is the embodiment of pure energy, and her steps are jaw-dropping for the commission. She is let in (Apotheosis).
Alex runs out of the Conservatory full of joy and finds Nick waiting for her with a bunch of roses.
Here the movie stops, and we are left wondering how her life will continue.
For sure Alex has passed beyond the limiting thought that she had to do everything by herself in order to earn it.
She has learnt to accept the help of people that, in the great scheme of Life, are there to support her on reaching her dreams. She has overcome something fundamental in her behavior and let go of her past identity for a new Higher Self to show up, hence her Atonement and the consequent Apotheosis.
By conquering the hearts of experienced dance trainers and being accepted in a Dance Company without prior formal training, she has started to remember how divine she really is.
And here, we already see the seeds of the Ultimate Boon that we will discover more in depth in the next blog post.
My Story
Immediately after I accepted that I had to learn to ask for support, and that I had to let go of a past self that wasn't serving me anymore, synchronicities start to pop up one after the other.
The Consultancy Company, whose owner was the professional I've called 'my Mentor' in a previous post, gets a sudden burst of requests from their clients for training on agile and traditional project management, and asks me to be a Trainer.
Four days later I conduct my first agile training for them.
Three days more, and I have my first session with my therapist.
One week more, and out of the blue one of the fellow professionals who had taken the Masterclass with me pays me the equivalent of one month's work. I was already freely supporting her with my tech skills with tools to boost her online presence, and she asks me if I wanted to do it more formally. As an evidence of her commitment, and to thank me for the work already done, she sends me a payment for the month to come without even asking to me.
This pumps me up and makes me consider the possibility to perform several gigs at once, as freelance consultants often do.
Three weeks later, the Consultancy Company sends me as a trainer for the Project Management Professional (PMP)© Certification to the Polytechnic University of Milan, within one of the Polytechnic's 2nd Level Specializing Masters titled "Project Management of Structural and Infrastructural Works".
The course consists of 8 full days distributed over a period of a couple of months.
It involves both in presence and remote students for whom an appropriate online platform has been created.
I'm excited, because I can unexpectedly start using the techniques I had learnt in the Masterclass to engage the audience and provide them with an exceptional experience.
I notice with surprise that this course is the same that I wished I could do through the Masterclass, yet with some profound differences.
In fact, I don't have to create the course material, since it is provided by the Consultancy Company that prepared and refined it over the years. I don't have to look for an audience, since the students are provided by the Polytechnic. I don't have to care about the technical environment, tools, and general setup, because the Department Personnel takes care of it.
I simply have to relax, have fun, and share with the students my passion and the existing knowledge coming from my past experience as a project manager.
And, from this course only, I earn the double of what I had invested in the Masterclass six months before.
Later on, I'll be credited by those students as the instructor who was more at ease with the course online tools and platform, and who had made them feel more engaged and interested, regardless of the complexity of the subject that I taught.
And the magic doesn't stop here.
In those same months I conduct several 2-full-days trainings on the agile principles and the Professional Scrum Master (PSM I) Certification in various locations in Italy, on behalf of that same Consultancy Company. In this case, to make lessons lively and engaging I take profit from my previous experiences as a 'hybrid agile project manager' and as a Scrum Master in the Company. The students use to say, at the end of the lessons, that they had gone through a transformative experience.
I will then be conducting countless sessions for the PMP and the PSM Certifications over the next few years, training a total of more than 250 consultants and professionals.
Finally, in March 2017, four months after my crisis, I get the possibility to sign a long term contract with one of the Consultancy Company's clients with the role of Scrum Master, a team's coach.
It's a challenging and exciting engagement, since it requires the ability to use the agile mindset, at that time mainly applied in IT and Software Development, for the development and improvement of mechanical parts and systems in the Food Processing and Packaging Industry.
It requires the ability to quickly understand the client's goals and multinational culture, to setup a proper product roadmap, to tailor agile concepts and tools to their environment, and to integrate agility with the previous traditional project management approaches that the company was accustomed to. It requires a mix of coaching, mentoring, and training on the job.
That hybrid blend of hard and soft skills, credentials, titles, and amount of different companies I had worked for, that looked so cumbersome and difficult to understand to prospective employers in my previous industry, all at once starts to show up as an incredible added value, together with my fluency in English.
The only thing that has formally changed is that now I am presenting myself as a freelancing consultant, not a prospective employee.
The client is positively impressed, we sign the contract, and the week after I start working for them. Their offices are located 100 miles from Milan, which requires me to spend the full week far from home. But after all what I have been through, I recognize it as a sign and an exceptional opportunity, and my wife agrees and supports me. I'm in awe.
For the next 3 years and a half in a row, I will have no empty day on my freelancing consulting schedule, except for the ones that I decide to take off. I work in an extraordinary environment where I contribute to the company's growth and agile maturity. I work with real people on multiple multinational teams, coaching them to go beyond their company's and their own expectations.
I grow as a consultant and as a coach. I start a side business as an agile coach for a software development company in the Fintech industry, guiding them on their agile journey, and I begin my practice as a transformative coach, starting with their Scrum Masters.
I remained in this Apotheosis, this divine state of being, for several years.
I had faced two of my greatest fears, jumping into the unknown of freelance consulting and being acknowledged in fields different from the ones I had been trained into, and I had survived.
I had just moved from the mindset of being “this, OR this,” to the discovery that I am “this, AND this, AND this, AND…” with no limitation except for what I decide to explore.
The world outside seems to finally dance at the same rhythm of what is dancing inside me.
And, I was soon going to discover that the “inside” and the “outside” were not so separated as I was used to think.
Your Story
When in your life have you felt like effortlessly surfing the wave like a pro, beyond any definition or limitation, sensing that you were "One With All That Is"?
Focus on a moment when you felt this sense of glory and overwhelming joy right after the experience of your Atonement With The Father. How would you describe it?
Beyond Your Story
Go back to that moment of divine-like state of love, compassion, bliss, and knowledge that you've described above. How much of your ego was there, self-incensing and self-indulging, and how much instead were you trusting, and relaxing into, a larger Wisdom to take care of everything?
What if what is required of you is just to show up, be present and willing to undertake whatever Life/Universe/God/The Source/The Whatever offers to you as an opportunity, without prejudice and with an open and trusting heart?
What if your nature of 'divine being undertaking a human adventure' consists of remembering that whatever shows up, positive or negative, is just the illusory appearance of a reality that, beyond the veil, is always whole, and that you are always safe?
For 24 hours, experience your life as if the point above is true, and write down what you notice. Repeat as you like.
Is this post lighting you up? Are you willing to Open Up to Your Potential?
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Love,
Danilo
The Journey so far:
(1) The Ordinary World - When “Ordinary” rhymes with “Uneasy”
(2) The Call to Adventure - How to Go Past Your Doubts and Answer Your True Call
(3) Supernatural Aid - When You're Ready To Go, Helpers Show Up
(4) Crossing the First Threshold - The Door Is Open, and You’re Already Through It
(5) Belly of the Whale - First You Take the Journey, then The Journey Takes You
(10) Apotheosis - Being One With All That Is - This post
Gisela's Hero's Journey - This post
The Pursuit of Happyness – The Hero’s Journey Beyond the Story
(12) Refusal of the Return - Are you ready to show who you truly are?
(14) The Rescue from Without - Helping Hands to get back Home
Copyright © Danilo Tambone. All rights reserved.
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