Hero or Heretic?

by Gregory Allen Butler

Is there a difference between a hero and a heretic? Or between heroism and heresy? They all are derived from the Greek word, hairétikos, which means "able to choose."

When we are conscious, beyond the control of the mind and all of its conditioned programming, we can make choices. When we question what has meaning for us, we can make choices. But when we don't delve deeply into life and its meanings, and live solely on scripts from the past, we are no more than robots or sleepwalkers.

Joseph Campbell explains it this way: "The usual person is more than content, he is even proud, to remain within the indicated bounds, and popular belief gives him every reason to fear so much as the first step into the unexplored."

Are you content to stay within the indicated bounds? What if real love is at stake? If you fell in love with somebody, so deeply in love that you couldn't even sleep at night because of the pain of longing, and you were told by your parents, or religious authorities, that you couldn't continue the relationship because of a difference in religion, what would you do? Do you follow the indicated bounds or do you follow the dictates of your heart?

I remember when I was in high school band; I went outside the bounds of convention. I was a tenor sax player and I started improvising what I was inspired to play instead of following the sheet music in front of me. I had never done that before, but for some reason, this time I was compelled. I didn't care what the band director would say and its consequences, I just played.

The band director liked it. When it was time for us to give our next concert, he had me stand in front of the band and play my improvised solo with the band's accompaniment. He even had me play another solo accompanied by piano, any music I desired. Sometimes the road less traveled gets positive recognition.

And then there's negative recognition-heresy. I remember 29 years ago when I took my mother with me to a spiritual center of an Indian spiritual master for Thanksgiving, instead of going to the traditional family Thanksgiving dinner. That was so outside the bounds of family tradition that we had hell to pay when we got back home. Even a minister was summoned to visit my mother at home, to talk about "the teachings of the church." She held her ground and said that she felt God was in the hearts of the people she had Thanksgiving with.

Emerson had a similar example in his own life which he recounted in his essay on Self-Reliance: "I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, 'What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within?' my friend suggested, --'But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, "They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil.' No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature."

Emerson's living from within is the prerequisite for the hero, at least according to how Joseph Campbell would define it, but it is also how so many get the label, heretic. And Emerson was called that, too, as were countless others who were living totally from within, following their heart.

Questions help to reveal the path on the life within. Soul-searching questions like "Who am I," and "Why do people suffer?" These probing questions uncover meaning, and the meaning creates the motivation and energy to act, often in new and original ways. Depending on who is the observer, this person would either be a hero or a heretic. The more the call to action is beyond the understanding of the observer, the more likely the stigma of heretic will be applied.

Why do we live such programmed lives? Why can't we follow the dictates of our hearts? Is it that we are afraid that we're being foolish, that people will mock us, will judge us? Are we afraid of being misunderstood?

That's quite a price when real love is at stake. When people pull back from their real life's purpose because of what people might think, that is a huge price.

Are you familiar with Dr. Edward Bach, the founder of Bach Flower Essences? He wrote in Heal Thyself, "It cannot be too firmly realized that every Soul in incarnation is down here for the specific purpose of gaining experience and understanding and perfecting his personality towards those ideals laid down by the Soul. Let everyone remember that his Soul has laid down for him a particular work, and that unless he does this work, though perhaps not consciously, he will inevitable raise a conflict between his Soul and personality which of necessity reacts in the form of physical disorders…"

Bach practiced what he preached. He left behind a lucrative medical practice in London to study the vibrational energy of plants. Mainstream doctors thought he had gone mad and put up great opposition to his work. Dogs bark at what they don't know.

Don't you think the world would be a happier place if everyone were following his or her bliss? What if nobody did? Can you imagine the unhappiness of that world? The difference is like going to a dance only to find out there isn't any music. Everybody is bummed out. And then somebody discovers, or hears music from a band in another room down the hallway. And soon, everyone is dancing to the rhythm of the music. All the negativity is gone.

Do you hear the music? Are you dancing yet? The band is waiting but you're on the wrong dance floor.

Meher Baba once silently said, "Being is dying by loving." That is the essence of the hero's call to adventure-putting a death to the old false self, and experiencing what it is to truly be alive, through love, by following the heart. Hearing the music down the hall.

I think the cries of heresy from the old world we have left behind are motivated by a fear that they too, someday will have to step into the unknown. Archie Bunker will have to leave his old familiar chair in front of his television.

More often than not, people hear the call to their destiny, and refuse it. The unknown is too dangerous. Joseph Campbell, writes in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, "Refusal of the summons converts the adventure into its negative. Walled in boredom, hard work, or "culture," the subject loses the power of significant affirmative action and becomes a victim to be saved…All he can do is create new problems for himself and await the gradual approach of his disintegration." That adds a new depth to the famous words: "Give me liberty or give me death." There really is no turning back once you see your vision of what life is meant to be.

In the end, whether you are seen as a hero or heretic, is irrelevant. What matters is your own truth, your own inner reality. Hero or heretic depends on the perspective of the onlooker. Those who see you, and are inspired by your vision and courage, will call you a hero. Those who are frightened and threatened by your going outside the bounds of convention will call you the heretic.

Do not be concerned with what other people think. This is your life. It's a sacred opportunity-an opportunity for a drop to discover its infinity as Ocean.