Bridger of Worlds
The Bridger of Worlds podcast is an in-depth walkthrough between the world of matter and world of spirit. I struggled with porn addiction for close to fifteen years, and all of this led me to discovering some very crucial and beautiful things about not only the physicality of my existence, but the spirituality of it as well. Since then, I‘ve been building bridges that have served me in feeling more whole and well-integrated. I’ve now made it my mission to share with you whatever it is I’ve learned.
Themes, topics and healing modalities such as spiritual embodiment, psychosomatic practices, Shadow Work, Masculine/Feminine energetics, conscious sexuality and archetypal meanings are brought to the forefront in order to raise awareness around what is out of sight because it is only from there that new life can ever emerge.
The greatest paradox of the human condition is to live amongst duality as we seek unity. This is a podcast honoring both and in doing so, creating the loving connections and honest-to-raw conversations we so desire in our lifetimes.
Bridger of Worlds
Exploring The Hero's Journey I: Reuniting the Masculine and Feminine Within
In this soul-stirring episode of the Bridger of Worlds podcast, Ioannis Kokkinos explores the timeless myth of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey as a blueprint for deep personal transformation, emotional healing, and spiritual awakening.
Drawing from his own initiatory experiences since 2018, Ioannis takes you through the archetypal stages of the Hero’s Journey, revealing how they mirror the inner alchemy of integrating the masculine and feminine energies within us. This episode is an invitation to rediscover your sacred path, reclaim your inner power, and align with your divine purpose.
In this episode, you’ll explore:
- The deeper meaning of The Hero’s Journey in modern spiritual life
- The Call to Adventure as a moment of soul initiation
- Meeting the Goddess archetype and awakening to divine love
- The symbolic atonement with the Father and healing the inner masculine
- How the sacred union of masculine and feminine energies fuels wholeness
- The role of archetypes, mythology, and sacred polarity in self-discovery
- Personal reflections from Ioannis’ transformative path since 2018
Whether you’re on a healing path, navigating a spiritual awakening, or seeking balance between the divine masculine and feminine, this episode offers wisdom, insight, and inspiration.
Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Bridge of Worlds podcast. I'm your host, Ioannis Kokkinos. Thank you so much for joining me. If you're on YouTube watching, thank you for tuning in if you're on one of the podcast platforms. Thank you for tuning in as well.
Introduction to the Hero's Journey
So last week I talked about the wound and the womb, the masculine wound, the feminine womb, and how they serve one another in our healing, in our evolution, in our divine reunion as far as masculine and feminine polarities are concerned, it does touch base very much with what Joseph Campbell talked about in the hero's journey.
So today I will be talking about the hero's journey. It is a very significant piece, a very important modality of information that came into my life a few months before I moved to Greece.
Prior to that, I hadn't heard of Joseph Campbell or The Hero's Journey, but we all know the Hero's Journey. The Hero's Journey is basically a pattern, it's an imprint that exists in most stories, in most movies. Um, probably like the most epic stories in most epic movies carry this frequency, carry this code of the hero's journey that Joseph Campbell basically realized exists within myth, within cosmology, and we can very well apply the hero's journey to our own lives, every single one of us when and if we are called to adventure. Which is the initiation, which is the point of leaving home and leaving behind the familiar and to step into the unfamiliar and the unknown is a thread of the hero's journey that is calling you, that is beckoning you. And, in some way, shape, or form, we must answer in order to truly come into union with ourselves, with God to meet our true selves, to understand our purpose in this lifetime, our mission. There's so much there. The hero's journey. It's definitely not one episode worth of information.
As far as what I'm going to offer today is of course, my understanding of it, my perception of it, take what works, leave the rest, but also to focus on the masculine and the feminine principles within the hero's journey because they are very much alive and present when it comes to the hero's journey.
The Stages of the Hero's Journey
So there are a few milestones in the hero's journey. It actually works in a circular pattern. Basically when we hear the call to adventure, this is the point of the beginning. This is the starting point where we leave home or where we leave the familiar and the comfortable space.
And it works in a circular motion. Basically we face the ordeal, which is the problem. We meet a mentor, a teacher, a guide that will help us along our way. Then we have the meeting with the goddess, which is where the feminine archetype comes into play. And then we have the death, the symbolic death, the ego death, we have atonement with the father. This is where the masculine archetype comes into play. We have the gift, we have the boon, we have the battle, right? We have the last effort, the last struggle to claim the prize, the reward and return home.
That's why it's a circle. So we actually go back to the point of origin with the reward, which can be a material thing. It can be a prized possession, but more often than not, it's actually knowledge. It's something we didn't know before had we not left home to go on this journey. And a new sense of love, of course, a new sense of knowing who we are on a deeper level and a more intimate level.
Meeting the Goddess and Atonement with the Father
So I mentioned meeting with the goddess. I mentioned atonement with the father, and this is what I wanna hone in on here today because as you know, masculine and feminine polarity work, energetics, hieros gamos, sacred marriage, all this is my love language, along with symbolism and archetypes, but they are symbols and archetypes in themselves.
And it touches base with last week. It touches base with the womb and the wound, because basically when we meet the goddess on the hero's journey is yes, we can see it from the more surface level lens. Like a biological man leaving to go on an adventure, he meets a woman.
There's a love there, there's a romance, but that's actually not the end of the story. He actually has to continue on his purpose and his mission. This is why she's only about halfway within the pattern of the circle of the journey, because falling in love and meeting a romantic interest within the hero's journey is actually not the end of the story because the hero must come to know himself fully before he can fall in love, before he can devote himself to the goddess. Because right now, in the journey, his devotion is toward his mission, is towards his purpose.
Self-realization, but really realizing God, realizing the father, which is the atonement aspect of the journey, which comes a little bit later. Atonement with the father. If we dissect the word atonement, it's actually at-one-ment. So it actually literally means to become one with the father.
And again, all this is symbolic. So the father represents the spiritual, the intangible, the immaterial, whereas the mother represents the material, the physical and the tangible. So on the surface, as I said, it could be a biological man that leaves home, goes on an adventure to meet a woman, and so on and so forth. But symbolically speaking, once again, we can apply this as our very own masculine and feminine energies and the masculine and feminine energies of those around us.
So when any human being leaves home to go on a hero's journey or heroine's journey and has a meeting with the goddess, this is a profound moment of divine love through the physical experience.
Because the mother, the meeting with the mother, the meeting with the goddess is actually meeting with the mother nature. So we leave the familiarity of home, stuff. , Possessions and things. We touch base again with the original materiality, which is basically our nature world.
Before we had things, before we had internet, before we had technology, before we had infrastructure, right? It was trees, flowers, plants, rivers, seas, mountains, spices foods, right? So this is the meeting with the goddess from the symbolic perspective, and it is to realize a profound love that exists outside of the home as well. So what this means is we've actually come to know a type, an expression of love that does not come solely from our care givers, which can be, of course, very much present.
When we leave home and we leave our loved ones behind. It doesn't mean that there's no love there, it just means that that person that is being called to go on an adventure is to realize another type of love as well, which is really the love of God, the love of source, the love of connecting within themselves to meet that source, to meet that God, uh, expression of creation. So that's what meeting with the goddess means. And here the goddess, of course, is also representative of the womb.
So I talked about last week when the masculine wound comes in to cut, to get rid of old life, to create space, that space is actually the womb where we must reenter energetically and spiritually speaking. In order to become reborn, we need to go through a gestation phase, so that is the meeting with the goddess phase and then atonement with the father, which is basically the most difficult aspect of the journey, which again speaks to the masculine wound and the strife and the struggle that we experience from the father as an expression of his love, because it's that type of strife and ordeal that's going to take us out of ourselves in order to come to know what we can do because of this situation, this difficult, challenging situation that we find ourselves to be in. If not for that difficult, challenging situation, we will not be able to tap into our inner resources, our inner potential, and inner strength in order to overcome that challenge. This is the meaning of the atonement with the father, phase of the hero's journey.
Symbolism and Archetypes in the Hero's Journey
And again, this is archetypal because when we are moving through the unknown outside, this will also in turn affect our inside, right?
So when we are in a comfortable, familiar setting, our psyche is also feeling comfortable and very cozied up and, , everything is good. But when we start to move through the unknown on level of the outside of, you know, a different country , a different place, a different job across, uh, the world, right?
Um, this will of course affect the inner psyche. This will affect the psyche in ways that will render it a lot less comfortable and a lot less safe. So. Here, the feminine and the masculine actually meet and come together because the masculine of the outside, the challenging the ordeal, the, the unknown of the outside in fact affects the feminine of the inside because the feminine is the inner experience and this is where she will start to feel unsafe which will in turn. Ask , the masculine energy, the masculine polarity to basically step up and offer safety for the feminine and offer the container for the feminine.
So this actually represents divine reunion within the psyche of the person going on a hero's journey. Yes. There's a lot going on outside. If we're watching movies, we're reading books, we're reading myth, we're reading cosmologies, there's like a lot going on outside with battles, serpents, dragons, obstacles, um, injuries. But as far as storytelling is concerned, is basically all archetypal. It's all symbolic within ourselves. We're not gonna go out there right now in the year 2025 and battle a dragon, right? But the dragon is a symbol. The dragon is an archetype and for those of us who have been initiated by Dragon Energy, because let me tell you, that's very real.
And those of us who have heard that call and who have answered the dragon, that in itself is a hero's journey and that speaks to the psyche. There's no literal dragon that we're fighting. Right. But the dragon is within us. And there's a lot of stories about slaying the dragon, but there are also a lot of stories about riding the dragon. It's actually both.
So obviously the dragon battle is one example of so many that can show up within a hero's journey.
Uh, there are many, many, many, many stories. There are many, many myths, many versions of this hero's journey, and it's so fascinating to find this recurring pattern within many myths and stories. , Yes, it's one formula, but it comes in many versions. And a hero's journey can definitely, as I said, show up in real life, which doesn't mean you're gonna go to some country and enter a castle to save a princess or anything like that, which is again, another version of this hero's journey. But it speaks to these symbols and these energies and these psychic components of within ourselves.
Personal Reflections
And the hero's journey has served me very much because I personally have been on a hero's journey since 2018 when I moved to Greece.
I'm not gonna get into that in this episode, but I will eventually talk about my experience in my version, my filter of the Hero's journey probably soon so that I can tie it back to this episode. But I wanted to talk about this, 'cause as I said, it did talk about last week's episode and there are so many ways that we can work with the masculine and the feminine within ourselves as far as healing is concerned, and balancing this inner dynamic that very much affects the dynamic of the relationships of our lives.
We are pretty much shifting between polarities on a day-to-day basis, uh, whether we are on our own or relating to others and doing what we need to do on the mundane level.
And this is why it's important. I find it's such an important piece of the hero's journey. The point of the meeting with the goddess and how that this is not the end of the story, that on a journey of self-realization. And if we are needing to go solo, to go quiet, to go dark, it's a phase of life that maybe not everybody experiences, not many want to experience it. It's just interesting to me to see it in plain sight how just falling in love is not always the answer, right? I think we're conditioned and we're very culturally pressured to find the one, to be in partnership, we have to fall in love to realize like everything.
Maybe, maybe I'm not saying no, I'm not saying yes, but in all the great myths and stories, we see that we actually need to fall in love with life. We need to fall in love with God. We need to fall in love with our creator, the source, the great spirit that actually just exists within us. That is the true meaning of self-love. Self-love is not just looking in the mirror and liking what you see or, taking a spa day or, , taking care of yourself.
That is a part of self-love. But the true meaning of self love is actually facing your deepest, darkest, most shadowy shit, loving yourself through those. But that love comes in synergy with the love of our creator. What created us, which is God, source, the Great Spirit.
It is only from that feeling of love from within ourselves that we can actually give a part of us to someone else, we can actually reunite with the goddess outside of us because the meeting with the goddess initially is within ourselves. The atonement with the father initially is with within ourselves.
It's once we go back home, that is basically the end of the story. The end, which is the new beginning, and it's from that new beginning. Where we are meant to actually fall in love, meet the goddess outside us, or the God if you're a woman, and atone with the father outside us. Because the within becomes the Without.
The without becomes the within. The without is the Father. The within is the mother. They are two sides of the same coin. I'm being repetitive because this is essentially what Divine Union is and why I'm so passionate about this kind of work, in this language. I know it's a very specific language. It's quite niche, but when we talk about masculine and feminine, we're talking about duality, but we're not talking about duality as opponents.
We're talking about duality as compliments. And we have to realize that within the masculine is the feminine is already there, and that within the feminine, the masculine is already there. And the yin and yang represents this beautifully. Right? When we see the symbol of the yin and the yang of the Taoist tradition, we see the little black dot in the white portion.
We see the little white.in the black portion, in the a white dot, in the black portion, the black.in the white. Portion. You, you catch my drift? White in black. Black in white.
So this is how I've perceived and taken in and absorbed the hero's journey. As far as the meeting with the goddess is concerned and the atonement with the father, it's probably because I'm just so interested in masculine and feminine energetics, but also I feel like they are the two most important milestones of the journey, because it's between the meeting with the goddess and the atonement with the father, that the ego death happens.
And atonement with the father is that stage of like, I can't take it anymore. , I'm not cut out for this. I'm not good enough for this. Who am I to say this? Who am I to do this thing? I this is not my path. This is not my purpose. This is not my destiny, right? So that is where the ego really comes into focus, which is the programming, which is the conditioning that basically is the death.
That is what actually needs to die. When we say the symbolic death and the hero's journey. Is that conditioning and programming of actually, yes, you are made out for this. Yes, you are cut out for this. Yes, you were born to say this and do this because you're on the journey. You heard a call, you answered it.
You have no idea what the fuck is going on most of the time. But you're following the trail. You are hearing for the cues, you're looking out for signs, and those of you who are currently on a hero heroine's journey, you know exactly what it is I'm talking about because these are the sacred breadcrumbs that we have to follow.
It's not at all obvious. It's not at all easy. When we drop our normal life, our normal routine, leave everything behind, leave everyone behind in order to answer something that we hear deep within ourselves, and we can only hear that like nobody can speak to that even our loved ones, even those that love us, you know, want the best for us.
It does not mean that they will technically understand this call and this inner knowing of, I have to follow this path. I have to go there, I have to go do this job, I have to go live in this house. I have to go live in that neighborhood. I need to leave. I know I just came to this country, but I need to leave to go to that country.
Like there are, there are so many experiences and versions of the Hero's Journey and thankfully Joseph Campbell figured out the pattern, figured out that yes, it's different for everybody, but there is something that we can actually follow that will serve basically our evolution and our psyche as, like I said, we're not gonna go out in the year 2025 and like, you know, battle demons and monsters and, save princesses and become kings and emperors of, the lands or whatever, right? I'm just speaking to like a lot of stories and movies, but all that is to happen symbolically. All that is to happen energetically, and sometimes we need to do something. Uh, to go on the outside, yes, we can like meditate and attune , to symbols and archetypes and energies, which is very much a part of that experience.
That's been very much a part of my hero's journey experience. But you actually need to take action and go somewhere. You need to go somewhere to be activated, right? Which I was talking about last week. Why I'm in Crete. I needed to come here to activate something specific. I need to leave Crete at some point.
Go somewhere to activate something specific. I've been to other places to activate something specific and on surface level. It may seem like the most mundane and normal thing, but within the psyche there's so much transformation happening. If we are in fact really showing up to our inner process and really just holding space for what it is that is coming through.
Conclusion and Call To Action
So I'll leave it here, I'll leave it here for today. Uh, there's a lot more to say as far as the hero's journey's concerned, so I would love to hear your hero's journey, heroin's journey, if you have one. If you're on, if you are on one, if you've completed yours and returned home with the boon. Please share your comments.
Please share your stories on YouTube. If you are on YouTube, please hit that like subscribe button. I so greatly appreciate that. If you're on one of the podcast platforms, even y'all on YouTube, please share the content to someone that may need to hear this.
I am on TikTok, I'm on Threads, I'm on Facebook, I'm on Instagram. I'd love to see you over there as well. I will be back next week with a brand, a new episode, as always, every Thursday. And in closing, as always, please remember that you are the medicine and I'm just the messenger. Thank you very much.