Who Are You Now? (and a poem, “Miraculous Surrender” by iithinks)

We establish LIFE THEMES, or recurring types of situations and events, as we wend our way through life, and this thematic warp and weave of our distinctive lives varies a lot from person to person. Where one person might establish a life of Global Travel and Adventure, another might live primarily dedicated to Service activities, or someone might center their commitment around Children and Grandchildren as their most vital LIFE THEMES.  We each compose an arrangement of several LIFE THEMES that weave through our lives, daily.

 

Life Themes are the basis of how we learn and express our social ROLES.  Family roles, Work or Career roles, Relationship roles all require us to develop certain skills and strengths, and slightly different “social personas” that best enact or present these different roles in relation to our major Life Themes. A Doctor, for example, develops a “bedside manner” in the role of Doctor that calls upon specific attitudes and strengths. How we succeed with a Role, or how difficult it might be to succeed with a Role, can affect the development of our total personality and our outlook on life.

Later I will present the point of view I use with the Life Maps Process that these Life Theme based ROLES might be directly connected with what Carl G. Jung and James Hillman would call your personal unconscious Archetypes.  For now it is enough to see how your Life Themes allow you to develop different aspects of your personality and your “presentation of Self”.  A person may be a Doctor—carrying herself or himself appropriately in that role as a Healer, say—as well as a Parent, which evokes a different set of helpful attitudes and behaviors. Different Roles might even bring about some conflicts in our personal representation of Self; as when a Teacher is also the Parent of a child in his or her classroom.

So I am inviting you to identify your Life Themes this week, using the life mapping tool presented Sunday or in the right panel of this week’s blog. Then ask yourself, “What ROLES have I developed in relation to each Life Theme?”

You could make a list of corresponding Themes and Roles, as follows, for example:

LIFE THEME                SOCIAL ROLE

Education                     Teacher (or, Student)

Religion                         mystic or seeker

Work                            (leader, or writer/artist, etcetera)

Family                           Mother/Father, Daughter/son/sister/brother

Relationships                Spouse, Lover, Friend, etcetera)

These are only some possible Life Themes and Roles that might relate to them. I encourage you to discover and reflect on your own. Feel free to share your insights or stories!

************

I would also like to share with you a beautiful poem today by the brilliant blogger/ poet iithinks, called

MIRACULOUS SURRENDER

Surrender
In patient faith
Let yourself be guided
To miracles dwelling within

Surrender
Wave the white flag
Turn yourself to nothing
Become what lies beyond your dreams

What Are Your Life Themes?

 

 

Each of our lives might be described as an orchestral symphony or a stellar constellation in the sense that it is a pattern of elements–harmonizing, overlapping, and sometimes in counterpoint or opposition–that creates a unique composition of our psychic/spiritual as well as our physical makeup.

And as we each compose our unique constellations of life experience, certain recurring kinds of events develop into patterns of meaningful texture and form that together weave the unique character of the life we live.   You could call these interweaving ‘movements’ or elements of your unique life experience your LIFE THEMES. Family, Education, Romance, Travel, Work, Spirituality, Hobbies, Health, and other such Themes are the threads that form the variegated colors and shapes in the meaningful fabric of our lives.

 So what are your Life Themes?  Last week I invited you to create a list of the Shaping Moments or significant events of your life; those main situations and events that have ‘shaped the person you have become.’ (If you are just joining us or haven’t yet made your list, I encourage you to do so, now.)

I invite you to read over your list of shaping events from last week or now, asking yourself, for each of these significant events, ‘What KIND of event was this in my life?’ Some events might have been “Family” events, or “Work” events, for example. It is important for you to name what Kinds of events these were according to your own understanding.

Make a list of these CATEGORIES or Kinds of life events, and write down next to each category name a set of numbers representing events you identified last week. That is, number among your set of Shaping Events and sort these into categories of Kinds of events they represent to you. These Categories or kinds of life events are your recurring LIFE THEMES.

It is enough for this week simply to identify your Life Themes and to sort your Shaping Events into these categories. Check back Tuesday for a discussion about how you can reflect on your Life Themes as a method of Life Mapping.

PLease feel free to share your questions or stories!

Your Crests and Valleys

Dear All: I am posting Friday’s blog early this week due to a rather major event in my own life occurring Friday that I am preparing for this week. So this post will serve as the Friday post. 🙂 L.

There are so many different approaches people take to reconstructing their history of significant life events.  I have met a woman over 70 who recalled just seven shaping events over her rich life experience, yet I also composed a Life Map for a 21 year-old young man who identified over 130 events, with many significant events happening every year.  Next week this should start becoming more clear as we will shift to looking not just at single events or time frames but at recurring KINDS of events in your life, or Life Themes.

For now, I invite you to reflect on the list of shaping events you have thought about or charted on a timeline this week. (Please see the Life Mapping Tool in the right panel and you might wish to check Sunday’s and Tuesday’s posts this week to ‘catch up’ on what we’re up to this week if you are just joining us.)  As you reflect on this particular list of life moments or phases you have recalled as your “shaping” events, do you recognize any obvious patterns or trends?

One life mapper, Mercedes, realized as she composed a timeline of her significant life events how her most challenging times almost always culminated with an event she associated with a Life Lesson. Another person, Hope, realized she had suffered from a long series of Meltdown phases as a result of some major family dysfunction, yet she always found ways to lift herself out of these Meltdowns by engaging in a Nature related event.

What obvious trends come to light for you from reflecting on your own history of shaping factors?  Were there happier periods involving specific kinds of events? Are there trends relating to romance or family? Did your family move a lot while you were young (for example) and if so, are there patterns in the history of events associated with these moves? Overall, do you recognize patterns or changing developments over time in the overall history of your “shaping factors”?

I invite and welcome your feedback, stories and insights!

The Times of Your Life

So, have you composed a list of the significant events of your life that have shaped you as the person you are today? (If not, I invite you to take some time to reflect. You can read Sunday’s post for some background.) This list does not have to be assembled in chronological order, though it may help to plot these events along a timeline, as in the example that follows:

 

Age _#1__#3__#2__#4__…___current age

6y     8y   16y  16.5y  …

This timeline simply reflects the order in which you recalled the events (#s) and your year of age when it occurred. Allow yourself to recall events forward or backwards along the timeline, gradually representing the significant shaping situations and events of your life up to now.

If you prefer to represent these shaping experiences in terms of phases (for some or all of them), then you can demarcate time frames along your timeline, as follows:

Age _#1___#2___  … _current  age

{2-5 y }      10y

The important thing is to represent your life events and situations in a manner that is meaningful to you, so that when you look at the record of events plotted along this timeline it reflects the punctuating moments or phases of your Life Story.

For each event or time frame, be sure to write a brief description of the event (in a separate log) so you can reconstruct which events you recalled quickly while reading across your timeline.

If you would like, you can add computer icon images to represent meaningful factors you associate with some of your events, as follows:

                      

Age  _#1___#2__…__ current age

4 y           6y

 

For now it is enough just to represent a set of shaping events from early childhood up to today. This will start your process of reconstructing your life as a Story with meaningful experiences, challenges, joys and sorrows. Everyone has a Life Story to tell and reconstructing that story can help to illuminate patterns or trends that reveal your significant lessons and gifts.

I welcome your insights and questions.

Your Shaping Events

Thanks to those who are checking in to follow this site. I invite you to try out the life mapping tools being presented here. They are being presented in a sequence meant to allow you to gradually review where you are at, how you got here, where you appear to be headed, and–if you like–how you can reclaim and manifest your life dream! So start a life mapping journal… This is a sampling of ideas from my book Life Paths (in process of being finalized for marketing / publication). I am traveling until July 8 but I will continue to post regularly on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays (see Weekly Process tab). I apologize if my replies might take a bit longer during this period until July 8. Better Endings to you all, Here/ Now! – Linda

To begin composing a Life Map for yourself, you may start by simply reflecting upon the “shaping” events and situations of your life up to now. The Life Maps Portfolio Handbook, which is a companion self-help Handbook for LIFE PATHS, will provide you with a method for recording these events in a more systematic format than I will give you here, but basically what you can do is make a list!

Ask yourself, what have been some of the most significant events of your life, those that have impacted your life greatly or that have shaped you as the person you are today? I invite you to jot down a bullet list of these events, including a brief account of what each event was about and how it has influenced your life.

Here below is a template you can use to record your shaping events. This is just a heading page; you may write it out for your use.

Everyone is different in terms of how many events you might record. I’ve worked with a 76 year old who recorded only 7 events and with a 21 year-old young man who recorded over 130!

This is not about asking you to remember EVERY significant event from your rich life; there is no absolute or correct list.  All you need at this stage is a representative set of kinds of events in your life that have meaningfully influenced who you are today.

Shaping Event   How It Has Affected Me

__________    ________________

 

So, this week’s Life Mapping activity is just about composing this list of some of your Significant Life Events. I welcome your insights or questions.

Check back Tuesday for some discussion about this reflective life mapping activity.

Life Path Stories

“What, to you, are the typical stages or phases — if any — of a normal human lifetime, whether or not they are typical of yours?”

When you review your response to this week’s prompt (above), what is your “go to” Life Course Schema—Is it mainly Linear, Cyclic, or Seamless? More importantly, in what ways might this model influence your perception of life events or your decisions and behavior, either with regard to your own life, or others? Allow me to share a few stories from some life mappers today.

When I began studying Life Paths by conducting interview research, I placed an ad in a local paper that simply stated: “Mid-life Crisis?” followed by my contact information. I interviewed eleven people who responded to that ad. Each of them expressed a LINEAR Life Course Schema.  John, for example, had lost a series of jobs to downsizing in the airline industry. He felt debilitated because he had trained for that career and felt, in his early 40’s, that his career was a failure. This is so common that people who believe in a LINEAR stage model of life may have difficulty dealing with change, which may feel like a disruption of the one-education, one-career, one-relationship life progression they hope or might have grown up expecting to maintain. That is why a LINEAR model is less appropriate or a bit dicey, at least, in today’s world of flux. We need a flexible model that allows for change and adaptation.

I found in my interviews  that people who had experienced an early family disruption like their parents’ divorce or a natural disaster often adapted by developing a CYCLIC Life Course Schema instead of a LINEAR one. Sandi, for example, who has been a globe trotter most of her adventuresome life, said she feels she has been living several lifetimes in this one; and she means that literally, as she holds a strong belief in reincarnation. Hers is a CYCLIC adaptation that allows for a great deal of creativity and flexibility.

Then there was Esther, also a person who has lived in several countries in her life. Her big move from a Nordic country as a child to the US for an athletic opportunity and then to marry and raise her family in the US was possible because her philosophy of life—her SEAMLESS Life Course Schema—allowed her to take major leaps when the opportunities arose. Esther described life as like a chain with links that form unpredictably; they fit together in retrospect but until a new experience ‘happens,’ you won’t really know what is around the bend, and this is good.  Esther eschews setting goals; she much prefers to welcome change and the rich opportunities they manifest in her life.

   One note: You might find that you hold one Life Course Schema with respect to one ‘angle’ of your life experience and another for a different dimension of your life. You might then be able to “borrow” from one side (read, archetypal orientation or role perspective) to aid another side of you to help make a decision or deal with a change. Please put this idea on the back burner for now; it will resurface when we talk in two weeks about your recurring Life Themes, and then later, when I invite you to Meet & Greet your own ‘ensemble cast of mythic archetypal characters”!

I welcome all of your insights and stories!

(Dear fellow bloggers, Tweeters and readers: I am traveling for the next 18 days. I will continue to put up posts but it might take longer than usual to respond to your cherished and welcome comments. – Linda)

Is (Your) Life a Spiral, a Line, or an Ellipsis?

A majority of adults in Western countries have been conditioned to think of “a life course” in terms of a LINEAR model. This stems from several psychological theories of ‘developmental stages’ which our parents grew up with and passed on to their children. Erik Erikson, in Childhood and Society (1950) proposed the most widely accepted Linear Stage model of eight ‘psychosocial stages’ that he believed was universal, for all people everywhere; a biologically and socially normal series of stages we must all pass through.  Infancy, Early Childhood, Play Age, School Age, Adolescence, Young Adulthood, Adulthood, Old Age: Does this sound familiar and seem “right”? (Earlier Western models were also mainly LINEAR; like Shakespeare’s “All the world’s a stage…with seven stages”; even so far back as in the Medieval Ages there were 5, 7, or 11 stage-models that were considered normative).

Erikson said that during each of the eight ‘maturational’ stages he identified in 1950 we have a challenge to meet; for example, Productivity in Adulthood, or a search for Identity in Adolescence.  But this LINEAR Life Course Schema also sets up a one-directional, gradual, “progressive” Life Path. If a person gets married but later divorces, or gets a job but then loses it, then this LINEAR model registers these life changes as disruptions of the one education–one marriage/family–one career trajectory it sets up as the goal for a “successful” life. All of the people who told me in my life mapping interview studies that they were experiencing or had experienced a “MID-LIFE CRISIS” expressed a LINEAR model similar to Erikson’s.

Did you express a CYCLIC model with this week’s Life Mapping Tool (see right panel) instead of a LINEAR one? Do you tend to think of life in terms of 7 or 10 or 12 (or other) -year cycles? How does this help you or influence you? Several contemporary life course theorists—e.g. Fredric Hudson and Mary Catherine Bateson/ including me, based on my life mapping research—find that a CYCLIC model often helps people to adjust to life’s changes with greater flexibility and creativity. When one loses a job or a relationship, which is so common in our “post-modern” lives, a CYCLIC Life Course Schema can help a person to think of this life change as an opportunity to “start over” rather than as a disaster.

Or perhaps instead of either a LINEAR or a CYCLIC model, you might think of life as not necessarily structured at all, without any fixed or predictable stages or cyclic phases? If so, you are not alone! A SEAMLESS model is a fairly frequent contemporary Life Course Schema that co-exists in our postmodern cultural reality alongside LINEAR and CYCLIC models. I found that people expressing a SEAMLESS model tend not to like to set too many ‘fixed’ goals in their lives; they like being surprised and want to see where things go instead of limiting themselves. At the same time I also found that people with Life Metaphors (see last week) like “Life is a Flash in the Pan” or “A Mere Sliver of Time”—guess what?—tend to also express a SEAMLESS Life Course Schema. Maybe that’s because they feel more like they are living “in the Moment”? I wonder.

Anyway, the Life Course Schema you hold may impose profound influences on how you set your goals, make your choices, and respond to life changes.  Can you change a Life Course Schema if you don’t like how it is affecting you? Yes, you can!  You can create a new Cycle, add a new link in a chain of events, or, at least, lengthen the span of time you associate with a ‘stage’.  How? I invite you to journal, contemplate, or talk with your loved ones and friends about this. Of course, you are always welcome to share your insights, questions, and your stories here! Check in Friday for some stories I will share from some other life mappers’ experiences.

Your Life Course Schema: Linear, Cyclic or Seamless?

In addition to Metaphors that can shape our understanding of life and our interpretation of life events, there is an even more ‘totalizing’ way that we cognitively frame how a lifetime—including our own–is structured. Theories of the “life course” abound with frameworks that define how we construct our Life Paths.  From interviewing many people from various backgrounds, I have uncovered three overlapping (culturally co-existing) contemporary models of how our lives are structured. We can call these “life course schemas”. The three contemporary types of life course schema models are: Linear, Cyclic, and Seamless.

This week’s Life Mapping Tool (see right panel) asks you to reflect on the prompt: “WHAT, TO YOU, ARE THE TYPICAL STAGES OR PHASES, IF ANY, OF A NORMAL HUMAN LIFETIME, WHETHER OR NOT THEY ARE TYPICAL OF YOURS?”

How you answer this journaling prompt reflects how you conceptualize life in terms of a Life Course Schema. And which of these models you tend more to think in terms of can affect where you see yourself as “at” with respect to the larger picture of how you conceive of where you are Now, how you’ve come to being where you are, and where you’re headed.

{I invite you to take a few minutes now to journal your immediate response to the above prompt.}

Does your answer have five or more “stages” (like Birth—Childhood—Teen Years—Adulthood—Late Adulthood—Elderly) or a similar set of stages? This is a LINEAR model or Life Course Schema.

Does your answer refer to a series of repeating “cycles” or phases (like 7 year cycles, decades, or 12 year cycles, or a similar series of periodic phases)? This is a CYCLIC Life Course Schema.

Does your answer suggest that there simply are NO typical stages or cycles that everyone goes through in similar ways (like saying life “just happens” relatively randomly, so you need to be able to adjust to the unexpected) or a similar idea? This is a SEAMLESS approach.

For now, I invite you to journal, contemplate or talk with a loved one about how you may have come to your specific Life Course Schema model (is it from your parents? or from some other set of influences?). On Tuesday I will share some more about how each of these Schemas might influence your life, both for the positive and as a limiting construct.

I welcome your response to the prompt or any other insights. You may use the Comments button below or  send me your longer response.

Better Endings to You! Linda

 

Tunnel Vision? Life Metaphors, Like Night and Day

l always invite a person to begin their life mapping journey by expressing a Life Metaphor. Then, later, I ask them to consider how that Image relates to their own current life or their life history. Then at the very end of their life mapping “time out” reflections–usually over several months–I ask them again:

WHAT, TO YOU, IS A HUMAN LIFETIME LIKE?

How So? (Please Explain your Life Metaphor Image).

The images people offer before and after they take some time to reflect on their life as a whole–where they’re at,how they got here, where they appear to be headed, and what is the Life Dream that would manifest true Fulfillment in their life–are like Night ad Day. For example, in Spring 2012 I conducted a university class with 89 students (1/2 at a time) through a complete Life Mapping process.Here are just a few of the “Before” and “After” Life Metaphor images they expressed:

 

This class was in 2012, not long after the US Great Recession of 2008 and during one of the most depressed job markets Americans have faced. When I compared the students’–mostly college Seniors–Before and After Life Metaphor images, I was actually a bit shocked at first. Almost to a person, their Before images indicated Uncertainty about their Future Life Path possibilities, just at the point that most of them were about to graduate from college.  Their After images, also almost to a person, reflected Clarity, Light, Hopefulness, greater Self-Confidence, and Enthusiasm.

Folks, that is why I’m doing this; this blog and the Life Paths book and self-help companion Handbook that have emerged from developing the approach I call the Life Maps Process.

So, here’s a 3-step technique for you to try. First, if you haven’t already engaged with this week’s Life Mapping Tool (see the right panel), please respond to the prompt:

What, to you, is a human lifetime like? What image comes to mind? HOW is a lifetime Like that image?

Second, ask yourself (you may journal your reply): WHY do you believe you “get” this image, now? In what ways might this Life Metaphor image reflect elements of your own current life or your life history?

Next, for your third step, I invite you to IMAGINE. Envision a time or a place in your future when/where you feel ultimately FULFILLED. You have found and realized your Bliss; you are Living Your Dream, Now!

Okay, so from this perspective, from the Vantage Point of your Life Dream fulfilled:

WHAT, TO YOU, IS A HUMAN LIFETIME LIKE?

How So? (Please Explain your Life Dream Metaphor Image).

I invite you to take some “time out” to entertain these questions. I welcome and would love to share your story!

Your Life Path—Hard Knocks or a Golden Spiral?

What, to you, is a human lifetime like?

When you close your eyes and look for an IMAGE of what a lifetime is like, 

what IMAGE do you see?

Also, HOW is a YOUR life like this image?

I invite you to imagine and then journal your response.

Feel free to share your image with us here,

or at least keep a record of what you have seen.

Your Life Path—Hard Knocks or a Golden Spiral?

 

What is the difference between a negative and a positive life experience? This is a riddle, friends. Haven’t you noticed how there often appears but a hairsbreadth difference between an experience that can “break you” or “make you”? In life maps coaching, I see this a lot with people. Two people can experience very similar events, like a car accident or an illness, yet their understanding of or response to those events can be like night and day.

Two people who engaged in life mapping are Scott and Will (pseudonyms). Scott expressed a Life Metaphor when he told me twice, “They ought to give me a Ph.D. in the Hard Knocks of Life!” Will expressed a more positive, very detailed Life Metaphor, after closing his eyes to meditate on “What is a human lifetime like?” His image: “Life is a golden spiral with launch pads on various rings of the spiral that propel one to ever higher levels of realization!” Hmm. Two people, two very different metaphors for life. Why, do you suppose? And, does it matter?

Scott’s life map traces a long series of Ups and Downs, especially with Work-related and Health-related events. He went through several years during which he would take a new job, move to where the job was, then lose the job and move back to his parents’. Scott had a car accident in the middle of all this which led to chronic back problems. He confided that with every loss in his life, he increasingly turned to “partying” with alcohol and drugs in an attempt to mask his pain. Life is Hard Knocks, says Scott, and certainly his life pattern conforms with that opinion.

Then there’s Will, a retired pastor from the United Church of Christ. After choosing his religious vocation as a young man, Will graduated from a seminary, married his best childhood friend and “soul mate,” and then he conducted a successful career as a pastor for some 40 years before retiring, still active in his faith and father of two successful sons. Will’s life map  traces a series of extremely positive events, as we would expect. Still, Will’s map does record three deep ‘troughs,’ widely spaced but difficult times of Descent, in Will’s terms. These were times of soul searching. Dealing with a diagnosis of diabetes, facing his mother’s death, and facing retirement were, to Will, those “launch pad” events along his “Golden Spiral” lifetime that propelled him each time up to the next higher rung of the Spiral.

 

Both Scott and Will have encountered challenging situations in their lives, though Scott’s life of “Hard Knocks” does appear to have been more characterized by Downs, while Will’s has been more consistently a positive experience. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? To what extent do our Life Metaphors–interpretive lenses through which we frame and interpret life events–serve as self-fulfilling prophecies that, indeed, not only reflect but also perpetuate their own image? Someone says, “Life is a Roller Coaster” and lo, that person’s life does continue to drag the person through a challenging, bipolar sequence of challenging Ups and Downs. Yes, but there’s another side to that picture. If our Life Metaphors serve as mindsets or cognitive models that can either enhance or limit our interpretation of life events, then it stands to reason that finding a way to CHANGE a self-limiting Life Metaphor might also facilitate (or reflect) a more positive trend in a person’s life pattern!

Check in Friday for more on how changing your outlook on your life’s possibilities can change your life metaphor which, in turn, can help reorient you to fulfilling your Life Dream!

Life Metaphors We Live By

          So is life, for you, a Road to Glory or a demolition course?  Is it a slow, inevitable march into oblivion or a recurring series of cycles of growth that lift you by trials and gradual achievement toward increasingly lofty goals? Then also, in terms of what you are setting out to achieve with a Life Mapping adventure, will you be able to switch horses midstream, if you wish to, transmuting lead into gold? Yes! You can! (L. Watts, Life Paths, Chapter 2)

When you close your eyes and envision a human life, what is it is like; what image do you see? This is a Life Metaphor.

Life metaphors are schematic cognitive models, habitual ideas you have developed. You might ask yourself, where do they come from and why do you hold this image currently rather than another?

Some Life Metaphors are culturally shared and defined: Life is a Journey, for instance. This model reflects the epic, mythic hero cycle stories found universally in all cultures such as Joseph Campbell describes in The Hero with 1000 Faces. These stories represent the hero’s adventure as a going, reaching fulfillment, and then and a return to serve humanity, as in the mythic adventures of Prometheus or Theseus, or of Dorothy in The Wizard the Oz or even Harry Potter.

There is the metaphor of Life as a Mountain, with peaks and valleys: Sisyphus, for example, is compelled to roll a stone up the mountain and then it falls back down and he starts over again, endlessly.

Or perhaps a Life is like a Hot Air Balloon ride? I saw one land once in a peach orchard while I was working on a farm. It was from Canada. The pilot got out and he seemed to me to have come from another world altogether.

There are many other life metaphors that reflect and can also influence our understanding of life. Life metaphors can even shape our interpretations of and responses to life events.  Is life a Roller Coaster ride, and if so, when or for whom?

I have always loved the Life Metaphor of Life as a Carousel, which is why I use the interesting “Carousel” header image with this blog, by the fantastic artist Ann Wipf, showing the horses leaping off from their platform. A carousel goes round and round and up and down, in time with the musical sound and flashing lights of the platform arcade. Traditional carousels may have a brass ring that the riders reach out for and try to catch as they go around. This reminds me of the golden snitch in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter stories; I have a poster on my den wall that shows Harry going for the snitch and it reads: “The game of Quidditch isn’t over until the Golden Snitch is caught.” Such metaphors as these can serve to propel us forward through the trials and tests of life as we aim to attain our life dreams.

SO THIS WEEK I INVITE YOU TO IMAGINE: what is Life like to you, now? Close your eyes to envision Life or a lifetime; what image do you see? Explore the implications, the metaphoric entailments, thoroughly. How is a lifetime like the image you perceive, and why?

On Tuesday we will look more closely at the variety and basis of Life Metaphors. I invite you to share your stories and insights this week!

Growing Up

Dear Readers and Visitors: You may find the  Comments in the right panel (“What people are saying”) and I absolutely welcome your input! Joshua shares about his own Vision Quest which led him to discover his purpose as a Teacher. Gail reveals how she and her husband are trying new things in a Nurturing manner. I hope you can all relate to how we express deep aspects of our Soul-Self (Jung called it Psyche or Soul) as we develop our various life potentials. What are some of your archetypal cast of characters that show up in what you love and are drawn to do and be? -L

PS: Since these posts will be up for a few days each,I will use prefaces like this to integrate your comments and insights! So check back between posts and always feel free to add to the running conversation!

When I was in High School, around 9^th grade, I wanted to be a gym teacher, because I loved running the obstacle course that my school’s gym teacher created for us. Then in 10^th grade, I wanted to be an English teacher and a Stage Director, because I loved the English classes and the reading material of my favorite teacher, Mr. Scelsa, and I served as his assistant for directing two memorable student plays.

Now that I understand Archetypes, I realize these high school ambitions were about wanting to express my inner Teacher as a primary aspect of Self, with Artist, Idealist, and Communicator character traits also desiring expression. One day in my senior year Mr. Scelsa talked with me between classes. He told me that if I would be gratified with the prospect of a student remembering 30 years later some line of poetry or some insight I had shared as their teacher, without even remembering where that thought had come from, then it would be appropriate for me to pursue becoming a Teacher. I have never forgotten that, and Teacher has been my primary Archetypal mode of manifestation of Self.

 

The new approach to working with your archetypal traits that I will be introducing in Life Paths is based in part on what Jung would call “Situational Archetypes”. Some of the archetypal aspects of Self we all experience are associated with the ROLES we enact in our lives, and it is this subset of your dynamic archetypal influences that I will be acquainting you with as we go forward with this blogging process over the next six months and in Life Paths (my upcoming book and self-help Handbook kit). So, Teacher is one of my Primary Archetype Allies, and I have grown into its expression over the past 35 years. Understanding this helps me to appreciate the dynamics of being a Teacher so that over time and experience I have grown into being a role model—as Mr. Scelsa was for me—for some of my own students. But Teacher is only one of my Primary Archetypes; there are others, some of which I have yet to fully manifest and aim to develop further in the next Chapters of my life.

Can you relate? What is the PRIMARY mode of Self-expression you manifest in your life? When you answer this week’s Life Mapping prompt of WHEN I GROW UP I WANT TO BE…, what sorts of ROLES are you wanting to more fully express as you aim to “Live Your Dream, Now”?

Last Saturday on the heartfelt FINDINGMYINNERCOURAGE blog, author Dawn posted the following insights and picture about “Energy Flows”. It is a propos to our Life Paths topic this week of Planting a Vision Seed of Who you wish to Become:

Energy Flows

31SaturdayMay 2014

Posted by findingmyinnercourage in BLOGS

 

 

 “Energy flows where intention goes.” – James Redfield

Have you ever thought about where your energy goes? Or where you’re putting most of your energy into? By focusing on all of what we wish to accomplish, all of our energy is directed towards enabling us to achieve our vision. Good intentions and attitudes will influence the positive to surpass the negative. The only thing it takes . . . happy thoughts!

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Don’t you just love Synchronicity? I do!

Please feel free to share YOUR stories and insights.

PLANTING SEEDS

Sunday’s post introduced the Life Path Mapping weekly activity of “Seeking a Vision”.  The journaling or contemplation post, WHEN I GROW UP I WANT TO BE…, invites you simply to plant a seed about the values you desire or aim to realize in your life from the perspective of how you wish to unfold your Personhood. Of course, this is only metaphorically a form of Vision Quest…which as an authentic practice would involve a ritual ceremonial context and an arduous physical as well as psychological and spiritual ordeal. But it is vital to look inwardly to envision that which you are aiming to unfold in your Life Path in order to Plant a Seed that sets the goal that you wish to nurture and manifest.

Ellen Langer, a PhD Harvard psychologist and author of a book titled Mindfulness, was interviewed this week on National Public Radio. She is interested in how the way we TALK about possibilities influences our attitudes and behavior. She distinguishes between whether we ask “CAN I?” when we approach a goal, versus “HOW CAN I?”  to accomplish that same goal. Planting a Vision Seed sets up something we CAN unfold to; then our mind and spirit are free to discern and to facilitate the Means.  Although we might have the faith of a mustard-seed that all that is in our highest nature and interest WILL manifest, when we consciously shine the Light of Attention upon a worthy goal, this allows us to mindfully and flexibly steer our process in the direction of nurturing that seed and realizing the Growth we are aiming to unfold.

I also invite you to reflect on how you would have answered the prompt: When I Grow Up I Want to Be… both when you were young and then Now, and then to reflect on how and why those answers might differ as well as how they are similar. When I ask this in Life Path coaching, people often tell me they are necessarily more “realistic” and more “practical” today than they were as a child, or that their increased responsibilities preclude earlier idealistic ambitions. What I find though is that what they wanted to be as a child has archetypal aspects to it which might still be part of their adult desires, if less obviously idealistic. For example, “I want to be a Superhero” might be a child’s reply. That could be expressing the desire to develop the potentialities of a Warrior or Healer or Communicator archetype (I will introduce a special set of 12 primordial archetype images later in this process).  So, if you now still do wish to be a soldier or Guardian of some sort, or a doctor/healer or a writer/communicator, you may yet be intending to realize these same important aspects of your unconscious interests and potentials. I will say these archetypal impulses define aspects of who you ALREADY ARE, so it makes sense and is very realistic that you can develop and more fully materialize these essential components of your intrinsic Self.

So, WHAT/ WHO DO YOU WISH TO BECOME; WHY; and later you will be invited to focus on HOW CAN you germinate and fully manifest your natural potentialities? Do feel welcome to share if you like!