The basic story of the hero journey involves giving up where you are, going into the realm of adventure, coming to some kind of symbolically rendered realization, and then returning to the field of normal life.
The first stage is leaving where you are, whatever the environment. You may leave because the environment is too repressive and you are consciously uneasy and eager to leave. Or it may be that a call to adventure, an alluring temptation, comes and draws you out. In European myths this call is frequently represented by some animal stag or boar manages to elude a hunter and brings him into a part of the forest that he doesn’t recognize. And he doesn’t know where he is, how to get out, or where he should go. And then the adventure begins.
Another obvious case of the call to adventure occurs when something someone been taken away and you then go in quest of it into the realms of adventure. Always, the realm of adventure is one of unknown forces and unknown powers.
On the other hand, there may come what I call a refusal of the call, where the summons is heard or felt, and perhaps even heeded, but for one reason or another cut off. One thinks of some reason for not going, or one has fear or something like this and one remains; the results are then radically different from those of the one following the call.
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