The Odyssey. Story for the Second Half of Life 

The Odyssey retells the earthy and  profound adventures of the Greek hero Odysseus as eaching stories which old insight and guidance for our own present-day journey.

Homer’s Odyssey is the great story of homecoming.  Since ancient times, The Odyssey has been known as the journey that each of one of us – having been out and about, struggling one way or another, pretending to be this and that – must take to return Home, to who we really are and what we are supposed to become.

On his winding odyssey, Odysseus meets magical and powerful beings, who are not shy about mddling in his affiars. Some see him for who he really is and help him; they bring him wisdom and attainment and unlock creative possibilities.

Others, aggravating and difficult strangers, try to do him in: Odysseus gets sidetracked, enchanted, waylaid.

Some truths he learns easily and others he resists. In all of this, Odysseus is not so different than the rest of us.

Homer is at the sould of storytelling, but he was far more than a wondrous storyteller. It would be hard to overstate his vast influence. His two epic poems, The Iliad and The Odyssey, are the first grand narratives of the Western imagination; for the nearly 140 generations since he recounted these adventures (from about 750 BCE),  philosophers and warriors and tellers of tales have claimed the hero Odysseus as one of their own, at the ancient roots of their diverse traditions.

Homer was said to be a wanderer, which meant that his stories were not provincial, not limited by time and place. He was unlearned, so that he was not tied to the offical story of the times. And he was by tradition blind, which, in the conventions of mythology, suggests that he saw what others did not.

And indeed, for ancient audiences, Homer’s stories of great but flawed heroes who wrangled with fabulous monsters, sensuous witches and evil foreigners (not to mention those etulant gods and goddesses who shamelessly meddled in human affairs), percolated with profound meanings. In fact the true focus of Homer’s stories is like a working perspective on life, a way of being in the world, a most practical way of traveling the journey Home.

A myth like The Odyssey plays out on several levels. The travels of Odysseus take place in the realm of the psyche, as if in a dream. And,, as in a dream, we play all the parts. We are not only Odysseus, the bedraggled traveler who becomes a hero, but also the brutish Cyclops, shrewd Circe and the rest. With each adventure, the characters of our internal drama jockey for position.  But perhaps more startling, these stories are the stuff of what we call the outer world as well. So often, psychologically minded people look inward for meaning, when staring us right in the face is the Cyclops himself, barely disguised as the overbearing boss or street tough.

Odysseus is nothing if not a practical man, a traveler in the real world. From him we learn the nitty-gritty facts of life about the long journey Home.

Join us for a truly transformational three day vacation for the mind at the wonderful Amalfi coast

Ticket costs Euro 2595 excluding VAT

You can have a preview of The Odyssey on a special website here

You can reach Peter for a skype meeting about questions you have by mailing him at peterdekuster@hotmail.nl 

TIMETABLE

09.40    Tea & Coffee on arrival

10.00     Morning Session

13.00     Lunch Break

14.00     Afternoon Session

18.00     Drinks