[David]

Thanks for tracking down the quote, Stephen!

And James, thanks for sharing the quote from the Thomas Gospel.

I was curious, so I looked it up:

If you (plur.) produce what is in you, what you have will save you. If you do not have what is in you, what you do not have [will] kill you. — Thomas Gospel, Logion 70

I guess my answer to your question(s) would be… yes. It’s all of those. The point of the Hero’s Journey, from a psychological point of view, seems to be coming up against all of the unintegrated aspects of your own personality and either integrating them into your larger self, or being destroyed by them. Even the negative power has to be integrated before it can be tamed — at least from the Campbellian and Jungian perspective.