I was tapping into the Hero Power. ‘Tap into the HP, tap into the HP, tap into the HP’, I said bravely to myself. It sure felt a lot better than what I usually do! Normally I just live my life like a mere dog in the street, I survive from day to day like a worthless street cur. I don’t mean any disrespect to dogs or any other animals when I say this – that’s only a figure of speech. When I say that I go about the place like a worthless street cur I simply mean that I go about the place as the sad useless self-deceiving fuck that I usually am. It’s ME that I’m talking about here, not anyone or anything else. I am owning my shit – or at the very least I’m trying to… Generally speaking, I live without honour, I live without dignity. I subsist on a diet of self-deception. I subsist on a diet of lies and evasions that I tell myself daily in order that I might not have to see the sad truth about myself.

There are no vitamins for the soul in a diet of self-deception – I guess that’s what I’m trying to say. There is no nutrition, no protein for inner growth to be found in the lies that we tell ourselves to protect ourselves from the pain that the truth brings. I’m only joking here of course, I’m only having a laugh. Of course there’s no nutrition in a diet of lies and evasions and self-deception – we all know that. The lady sitting on the table next to me has just bought herself a banana – she informs her friend in firm assured tones that she needs the magnesium. I I find myself wishing that my problems were so easily sorted! If only magnesium were all that I needed. What I need in my life is honesty – that is the thing that’s so conspicuous in its absence, that is the thing that’s missing in a big way. I have to be honest with myself – I have to look the truth in the face! That’s why it have to tap into the Hero Power – so that I can find the courage within myself to look the truth in the face.

I don’t even know what the truth looks like, to be honest. I wouldn’t recognise it if I saw it. Truth is more than just a stranger to me; it’s an alien from another planet! It’s an alien and I have a fear of aliens. I have a bit of a phobia going on there. I find myself wondering how I could ever turn my life around at this late stage. How can someone simply turn their life around and change their basic orientation like that? How can someone turn away from the stinking unholy morass of self-deception that threatens to devour them and face the unpalatable truth instead? The stinking morass of self-deception actually seems quite convivial to me, to be honest! I feel quite fondly disposed to that particular morass when it comes right down to it. I feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and that’s rather a strange thing to admit to, isn’t it?

‘Be not fond of the stinking morass of self-deception,’ isn’t that what the teachings tell us? Be not fond, be not fond. Do not succumb to the weakness that is within you. It is very hard not to succumb the weakness that lies within you of course, particularly since having this inner weaknesses predisposes us to giving way to the lure of the morass. It very much predisposes us to give way to the lures of the morass – it very much predisposes me, anyway! I know the terrain so very well you see – it’s all deeply familiar to me and at the same time as being deeply familiar it is seductively attractive. As I have just said, it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside and I want more than anything else in the world to go back to it. It’s not even that I want to go back to it either – something inside me wants to go back, some turncoat aspect of myself that is only too keen to betray me…

But as I say, for now I’m embracing the Hero Path. As I fight my way through the sticky sludge of my humdrum everyday life I chant the Chapters of Coming Forth by Day deep in my heart. The verses rise unbidden, they rise up within me all by themselves. The magical words speak themselves through me and I feel myself being filled with their boundless power! Atoms of glory course through my veins and I know myself to be more than merely human. I know myself to be the worm that flies, I know myself to be the Sacred Snake. I identify with the Divine Hawk which rises triumphant from the hidden place in the desert, I identify with the Phoenix which emerges in its glory from the funeral pyre…