STAGES OF TRANSFORMATION: Ordinary World

In my new book Reel Transformation: Your Life Now Playing I talk about the Five Stages of Transformation that all of us go through. These stages can be found in any good story where the main character grows and changes. We find them in the Bible, in fiction, and in movies of all genres.

Joseph Campbell wrote about these stages in his book The Hero’s Journey. He wrote about 12 Stages, and from those I have extracted five stages that we go through over and over again in our life if we are open to change and growth.

In any story, movie or life in order to see any evidence of change we must have a clear understanding of the before and after…the beginning and the end. The beginning of every story originates in what Joseph Campbell calls the Ordinary World. All of us start out in our Ordinary World. It might be a physical place, but it also includes our frame of mind, our beliefs and our habits. Even once we’ve gone through all five stages and return home…that new home becomes our Ordinary World that we will eventually get called out of again if we are to continue growing and evolving.

Our Ordinary World is our comfort zone. It is what feels familiar. Often we are so comfortable that we are reluctant to leave or change, even if we are unhappy. Yet there will be a Call that comes to invite us to venture out of the Land of Familiar to explore new possibilities. An example we see in the Wizard of Oz is Dorothy in the black and white world of Kansas. She lives with her aunt and uncle and her dog Toto. This is her familiar world, but she is not happy there. She experiences challenges and feels a tug of Divine Discontent when she wonders what life would be like somewhere else…over the rainbow.

Your Ordinary World could be your job, your family situation or even some beliefs that you have been comfortable holding that perhaps don’t serve you anymore. For example, if you’ve been feeling a tug to quit smoking, your Ordinary World is that of a smoker. If you are a young adult living at home with your parents, then that is your Ordinary World. At some point you will be called to leave that world. It’s not bad where you are, but we are always called to grow and that usually requires we leave what feels ordinary and comfortable to embrace something new.

Some more examples from movies: Neo (Matrix) in his world as a computer programmer, Luke (Star Wars) living with his aunt and uncle, Katniss (Hunger Games) struggling for food in District 12, Marlin (Finding Nemo) living in fear in his corner of the ocean.

EXERCISE: Getting in touch with your Ordinary World.

Think about the world in which you live at present. What are your physical surroundings? Where do you live and work? What beliefs are you holding? What daily habits have gotten all too familiar? There is nothing wrong with where you are now. Now think about where you’ve been? How have you changed and how has your ordinary life changed? You are not the same person you were 10 years ago, or 5 years ago and maybe even 1 year ago. What has changed? How have you changed? Our Ordinary World changes many times over a lifetime.

Watch for a post to follow where we will explore THE CALL to leave our Ordinary World and explore new adventures.

If you are interested in reading more about these stages you can find Reel Transformation: Your Life Now Playing at: https://www.createspace.com/4814039 and on Amazon.

PUBLISHING MY BOOK

I am getting my book Reel Transformation: Your Life Now Playing ready for publication and I am over the moon excited!

I had the idea for this book over a decade ago. I started noticing a pattern in many movies. It seemed many of the protagonists would leave home…either physically or metaphorically and then go through lots of challenges that I call wilderness experiences. At some point they go through an awakening and return home transformed. It is the quintessential Hero’s Journey.

Inspired by Moody and Carroll’s book The Five Stages of the Soul, I condensed the stages of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey to the Five Stages of Transformation: 1) Home in the Ordinary World, 2) The Call, 3) The Wilderness, 4) The Awakening and the 5) Return Home.

We see this Hero’s Journey in films of all genres. Films like The Wizard of Oz, The Lion King, Harry Potter and Star Wars. George Lucas wrote Star Wars deliberately using the template of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, but many other film makers simply set out to create a good story and end up using this template unwittingly. It is easy to see this journey in adventure films, yet it can be found in comedies, animated films, romance and science fiction as well.

The story that came to my mind as a minister was of the Prodigal Son. Compare this parable to the classic film The Wizard of Oz.

The Prodigal Son felt dissatisfied with his life at home and demanded his inheritance. His loving and generous father gave it to him and the son left home. Dorothy was dissatisfied with her life on the farm in Kansas. She longed for a life over the rainbow and a tornado swept her to Oz. Both Dorothy and the Prodigal son felt a sense of dissatisfaction with their life and longed to be somewhere else. Dissatisfaction or ‘Divine Discontent’ is often what calls us out of our Ordinary World.

The Prodigal Son ends up squandering his inheritance and finds himself cleaning the pig pens, homeless and without friends or a home. For a Jew who believed pigs to be the ultimate symbol of loathing this was truly a wilderness experience. While Dorothy had friends who helped her in Oz, she had numerous wilderness experiences. She was attacked by flying monkeys and had a wicked witch out to kill her.

The Prodigal Son had an awakening when we ‘came to himself’ and realized that he was the son of a loving Father. He made the decision to go back and ask his father if he could be a servant in his home. Dorothy wanted to return home almost as soon as she arrived in Oz, and she needed to go through some life lessons so she could figure out that she’d always had the power to go home.

Both the Prodigal Son and Dorothy return home transformed people.

All of us go through these stages of transformation at some point in our life and usually we go through them over and over again. My book, using examples from movies, talks about these stages and shows you how to use something you love to do—watching movies—to assist you in your own growth and transformation.

So keep an eye out on Amazon for Reel Transformation: Your Life Now Playing.