"Yes, I have tricks in my pocket. I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion." This first line of The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams sums up the approach and intention of Love Will Lead Us Home as well as any I can imagine.
Love Will Lead Us Home is a book that is partly truth and partly fiction, a hero's journey based on the structure described in Joseph Campbell's, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. On these pages, the author will guide you through a complex labyrinth from what may be seen as ordinary everyday reality to a new insight just beneath the familiar. The non-fictional heroes of our adventure are you, the readers bearing the pleasant and unpleasant stories of your life and times. The fictional heroes are colorful citizens of the several fairytales, myths, and stories we explore on our quest for the treasure we seek, the Holy Grail, the peace that passes all understanding.
When we follow a fictional character on a journey, we enter an immersive experience that can help to understand and process our own life experiences in the safety of our hearts and minds. In Love Will Lead Us Home, we allegorically join with Dorothy Gail and seven other characters of L. Frank Baum's Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Briefly, the story describes Dorothy embarking on an inner journey of self-discovery brought about by a head injury. Whether one wishes to see this experience as a representation of a near-death experience or an illusion caused by the trauma, the story provides a rich landscape for us to explore a personal internal journey of self-discovery.
Due to social conditioning, we all become wounded early on in many ways. Yet, in most cases, nobody intends to harm us; it just happens as collateral damage. Therefore, an inner journey is necessary to discover, accept, forgive, and heal misconceptions about ourselves. This can be a painful process but also one of tremendous liberation. As we peel back the layers of illusion, we begin to see more clearly. By exploring the Land of Oz through Dorothy, we discover all the inner "selves" we were told are not good enough, from the fear of our darkest shadow to the brightest light of our spirit. Yet we have always been perfect, whole, and complete in every way.
The greatest wound we receive from the beginning is the source of all fear. We cannot possibly learn to love ourselves and others as long as the dark shadow of fear blocks the light of our love. So many of us are afraid of love because we feel unworthy. From the beginning, many social and religious teachings tell us that we are born of sin and, therefore, guilty and shameful by nature. These crippling beliefs are not fear itself, but they are its authors. In Love Will Lead Us Home, we carefully examine, expose, and dissolve the root source of all fear from the safety of myth and fairytale.
In its unique and effective way, Love Will Lead Us Home will provide you with a powerful formula that can help you shift the trajectory of a planet locked on course to an unthinkable destination.
