ABSTRACT
The mystic-hero’s undifferentiated union with God and participation in the Trinity in perfect contemplation have driven the return journey to loving reintegration with the everyday world. This chapter follows the completion of the archetypal hero’s journey as it is displayed in Ruusbroec’s teaching on perfection in love, which he calls the ‘common life’. The common life is the ultimate expression of Ruusbroec’s titular ‘spiritual espousals’, the marriage of mystic-hero bride and divine Bridegroom, and it is the clear realisation of the culmination of the archetypal hero’s journey described as marriage and inheritance of a throne. Ruusbroec’s mystic-hero is espoused in the divine Unity and shares the loving action of the divine Trinity of Persons in God’s immanent kingdom. Ruusbroec’s characterisation of the common life as perfection in both contemplation and action also parallels the culmination of the archetypal hero’s journey in mastery of the two worlds, the world of the journey and the everyday world. With this, the mystic-heroic journey is complete.
