About Hero’s Journey
“All men by nature desire to know”
Hero’s Journey is a practice organisation under the stewardship of brothers, Luke & Matthew Farren. Oriented towards the Truth in service of the highest good, our offerings presuppose a pre-modern vision of man as ordered to communion with reality.
We’re dedicated to help others like ourselves - the fallen and the lost, find that which brings hope and meaning through the classical dialectic as it was originally intended - who's purpose is to bring forth the direct apprehension of truth, goodness, justice and beauty. The dialectic is the lost art of educing innate wisdom from within the individual and is foundational to Western civilisation and both the philosophical & religious traditions that have sustained it.
We have come to understand that enlightenment, the direct knowledge of the Truth of one’s being, is our heart's desire. Our promethean fire, the consciousness within us that longs to unite with it’s ultimate source, who’s inability to do so is the cause of a spiritual disease, is returned to it’s source, bringing true homecoming and a profound change in the way that we participate in life.
It’s the cyclical self-sacrificial pattern of the heroic god/man that promises & delivers resurrection through unswerving singular commitment to the truth of our personal reality in it's temporal finitude and all that it entails, that unshackles us from imprisonment within the world of appearances, as described in the parable of Plato's Cave and later, embodied through Christ's life, death & resurrection, in which & through which everything is made right.
As such we regularly put on Enlightenment Intensive retreats who's sole purpose is the common goal of enlightenment - the direct & unmediated contact with self, life or other. It is a rare chance in life to address life’s big questions such as ‘Who am I?’, ‘What is life?’ & ‘What is another?’ that bring us squarely into our life and embodiment through the practice of ‘dyads’, a highly effective & distilled form of partnered self-inquiry centred on Socrates greatest gift to mankind - the dialectic.
Having witnessed more than 60,000 forty minute dyad periods between us, we have come to recognise that it’s the fidelity to the 'pattern', the through line of one's life, death & resurrection, the logos, which ensures the embodiment of a continuing incarnation where humanity is divinised and divinity is humanised. Transcendent, sacred and absolutely personal to each of us, it is ours to be revealed and our life's calling & meaning. Here, we have the chance to fulfil our destiny, bringing true Kingship and order from the unruly & fateful chaos of the wasteland, bestowed to us by grace.
Living in a time of overwhelming sophistry where we are drowning in ‘bullshit’, what John Vervaeke calls “The Meaning Crisis’’ - an enmeshment within a deeper & pervasive collective historical crisis that colours our cultural cognitive grammar, the revival of the classical dialectic within the Enlightenment Intensive retreat reopens the door to genuine participation in beauty, truth, justice and the goodness that lies innate within us all, transcendent of all, uniting all. Reconnecting us to the wisdom within our culture, obscured by the 'Age of Enlightenment', an anti-enlightenment movement, the championing of the dialectic is a resurrection from the depths of the world soul in it's hour of need.
Addressing the current Western post-modern predicament, both EI's & dyads are a means of closing the agent-arena gap that engaging in Eastern spirituality and a secularity based on material science only widens. There may no longer be the need to go to India or the jungles of Peru for a wisdom that was on offer here, all along.
“No insight is gained.. by imitating methods which have grown up under totally different psychological conditions. In the course of the centuries the West will produce it’s own yoga and it will be on the basis laid down by Christianity”
Although we have complete faith that the Enlightenment Intensive will do exactly what it purports, and it is up to the participant to discover the truth for themselves without anyone educating or 'trip laying', we recognise that presenting the Enlightenment Intensive as a stand-alone event is not something that's in accord with the truth of reality as it's lived & borne out. It's highly effective spiritual technology, yet it depends entirely on the aforementioned principles that precede it which are eternally true, true inside the retreat and outside of it.
The retreat is not a silver bullet and may demand us to live in accordance with these principles in our lives, that is if we have awakened to anything at all. The agapic, reciprocal & erotic nature of love we may find is as Iris Murdoch famously defined - 'the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real' and the antidote to self interest. If one tries to integrate this into one's life on one's own terms, expecting oneself to retain complete personal agency of one's life direction, as has been popularised by psychology, whilst not willingly submitting to the 'pattern' and it's principles once they have been disclosed to us, we do ourselves spiritual harm and misunderstand the purpose of the retreat and of our life. It is strong spiritual medicine for adults and is only an initiation, a baptismal event that's best done within community, ideally a religious tradition that connects one to one's culture and is orthodox.
In support of the ongoing heroic journey of revelation & discovery and forgiving our forgetful nature we host weekly online dyad groups for those that have attended an Enlightenment Intensive and offer ancillary practices within workshops & retreats, including somatic resilience practices that help us relate with the trauma that so often arrests us as we come into contact with our inner reality and practices that bring harmony within the psyche - uniting soma, psyche and spirit through the logos.
In 2025, we are offering trainings to those that would like to help out on Enlightenment Intensive retreats and in 2026 to those who feel called to ‘master’ them. Please get in touch if you’d like to be considered as an applicant.
The Alchemical Brothers
Matthew Farren
Matthew started a daily practice of meditation and prayer in 1992 as part of 12 step recovery programme, first taking the Buddhist precepts with a Soto Zen lineage in 1995. After 20 years of daily practice, he had come to a dark place of depression.
He experienced an awakening to his true nature within two days of a Self-Inquiry Immersion, having a direct experience of being, something indescribably fulfilling. His immediate response was to share this with others.
Matthew trained as an Enlightenment Master with Lawrence Noyes in the US, devoting 4 years facilitating Intensives with Zen master Daizan Skinner with further training from Jake and Eva Chapman in the UK. He was a Zen teacher in a Rinzai Zen tradition and studied Jungian Depth Psychology. He now holds Hero’s Journey Self-Inquiry Retreats worldwide, with his brother and co-founder Luke Farren.
Together they have further honed and adapted this method to increase it’s effectiveness explained via the Hero’s Journey mono-myth, a way understandable to the western psyche.
In 2021 he spent 6 months in the Peruvian jungle working with ayahuasca and other plant dietas.
Matthew teaches and offers - Focusing, embodied meditation, dreamwork, Clearing, mentorship and 1:2:1 ongoing practices. He’s based in Dorset, enjoys art, walking, camping, swimming and surfing.
Luke Farren
Luke is a Co-Founder of Hero’s Journey, an Enlightenment Intensive Master and has trained with Lawrence Noyes, Jake & Eva Chapman and Daizan Roshi. I am a 10,000hr+ meditation practitioner with 30 years of practice, a former teacher within the Rinzai Zen tradition and have completed a foundation in Jungian Psychology. I had a direct experience on my first 3 Day Enlightenment Intensive and when I returned home and looked at my meditation cushion, I burst out laughing. I'd meditated for years & realised that I'd been a good meditator, but had not had an awakening experience - the stuff the old Zen guys wrote about. When we touch into our fundamental resource and learn to live from this place, it changes lives.
My mission is to help others to connect to their internal wellspring and draw deeply from it through simple and practical methods. Ones that facilitate a wholeness within the psyche and help one live a full life.
I regularly master Hero’s Journey Self Inquiry retreats alongside my brother Matthew, teach somatic resilience, focusing & embodied meditation, coach 1-1 sessions and host archetypal voice dialogue workshops, shadow work workshops and weekly dyad self inquiry groups to individuals and organisations.
I live with my wife and family, in Brighton, UK and enjoy painting, fishing, surfing & cycling.
Please contact me if you would like a one to one or group session.
https://www.lukefarren.co.uk/
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