Making a True Departure / Shifting to Here-Now

I recognize a distinction between the Present as a current moment in time-space and the Here-Now as a spiritual focus. The NOW experienced in contemplative spiritual practice is a liberating orientation while the notion of Present from a time-space frame of reference is artificial and can be self-limiting. It is a matter of perspective or more accurately it depends upon where you place your attention. If we accept, as I do, that time is an illusion or an artifice of context, then as we shift our focus of attention such as to look ahead with creative visualization or to re-envision a former state of being by reactivating a stored memory, we can focus our consciousness in such a manner as to alter our Present reality. From this angle, the Past is NOW, the Present is NOW, and the Future is also available NOW.

When I was first in college in Buffalo, New York, I had a friend Ann who was an artist specializing in sculpture. Ann created this amazing piece of conceptual art which was comprised of a five foot tall vertical array of multicolored fabric cords with simply a one foot tall plexiglass tube around them. The art was interactive so it invited you to change the position of the tube up or down along the colored cords, slightly compressing the bundle of colors as you would shift the transparent tube. To me this has always been an excellent metaphor for the practice of contemplation or active imagination. We simply shift our consciousness from Here-Now to another Here-Now to OBSERVE; we focus our locus of attention as we choose. We thus can place and activate our consciousness in any dimension of Nowness at will.

pictures are frompixabay.com

Locked within a Time orientation, the Present is a bubble from which we never seem able to escape. The freedom to Act is in the Now. To bring about a true change of life conditions as in realizing a desired future that is a true departure from present conditions requires only a subtle shifting of your attention to a Now of your imagining.

See?

I welcome your comments and viewpoint.

How to Burst your Bubble! (Are you living in a bubble of the Present?)

Time is a funny concept; after all, that is what it is.  Quantum physicists such as Brian Greene have declared time to be a grand illusion.  As a cultural anthropologist familiar with ‘Indian Time’ from living and working in Native communities I know this to be true.  The Hopi concept of “manifesting” from a subjective, non-physical realm of thought—of bringing into manifestation that which is positive, as Benjamin Whorf aimed to describe in the 1940’s—is quite different from the English language coded notion of time as a linear progression of objectified “minutes” or other imaginary time frames  ‘getting later.’

Living in the Present conceived of as a distinct moment of a linear flow of Time keeps you in a bubble.  The Past is always experienced as prior to this moment of active awareness, the Future is ever elusive,  ahead of where you are; both Past and Future are but illusions then, from your sense-based bubble location in Time.

Being in the Now, having your mindful awareness wheresoever you choose to place your focus, embraces experience as an undifferentiated flow of consciousness. Your clear memory is Now; your current sense-perceptions are Now; that which is latent or potentially yet to be and can be realized from Here is also Now; see?

Lodged within the temporal-bubble concept of Time, you may believe you are where you are at today because of decisions and actions from your past and that future conditions are determined by your past and current choices.  From your viewpoint within this Bubble of the Present, your current life conditions may feel inevitable; so it can seem very difficult to change momentum in a major way to pursue goals that feel ever elusive.

Shifting your perspective to that of Being in the NOW can help you Burst the Bubble of your current life predicament.  You can creatively envision any NOW you choose to imagine, and in so doing you can perceive and construct a pathway to manifest that Now of your imagining.

images are from pixabay.com

Imagine your Life Dream fulfilled. Where are you Now (in this desirable future scenario)? Where are you living, how did you get Here? What habits can you change and what choices can you make today and in the near foreseeable future that will alter the course of your Life Path to realize your deepest ambitions? 

Choose one of these activities or new behaviors to implement, Now!

I welcome YOUR Comments and Stories.

THE HOLOGRAPHIC ADVENTURE OF YOUR LIFETIME

Where do you go when you imagine following your Call to Adventure? What image or scene comes to mind when you envision feeling a sense of utter fulfillment?

Your Call to Adventure may come as an IMAGE that beckons and pulls at you like the “thin biting call of Soul.” Ron Neary’s vision of the Devil’s Tower butte in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, for instance, or the memory of Shangri-La that won’t let Robert Conway be happy anywhere else after he has found his fateful oasis of the Soul in Lost Horizon are two great fictional examples.

I remember from high school and early college years that I would often close my eyes and imagine rowing a boat to the middle of a lake, then I would set the oars to rest and settle back to read a good book while floating on the lake, listening to the rhythmic lapping of the water under the calm blue sky. Sometimes in this reverie I would nap and my boat would drift until it came to moor on a deserted island shoreline.

Many years later I will soon enough be retiring to a lakeside community. I intend to explore the lake with a kayak and maybe a rowboat. Was my youthful daydream then a trip in spacetime to a future I could already imagine?

Your Call to Adventure evokes more than a desirable place or a future activity, though this vision might signal the context of your greater Life Dream.

This past week I had a thought while walking university halls to teach yet another class, this time a five day, 40 hour “winterim” with 33 students that turned out to be a delight because of our combined enthusiasm for the material. The thought that came through one morning was:

Is my life a hologram?

The more I consider this profound possibility, the more probable I find it to be. Quantum physicists have been entertaining this notion, too, it turns out. Some venture so far as to suggest our entire reality is but a holographic projection along the event horizon of a black hole!

If my life is a hologram, what this means to me is that every Moment (as only Now is Real and therefore All of life experience is “in the NOW”) is a microsegment of the Whole projection of a lifetime. Remember that in a hologram, the Part is embedded in the Whole such that the Whole is always present in every fraction (or, fractal) of Itself. I “live” (have my physical attention and sense of ‘being’) in the “present” projection of our illusionary three dimensions of timespace, yet from higher dimensions (4th and beyond) I can perceive the Whole of my complete lifetime and perhaps zooming further Beyond with spiritual awareness I can even see the broader context of THIS lifetime in multiple lifetimes, multiple universes, and a limitless expanse of Cosmos.

So then future and past and present are all ONE, and the Whole is so much greater than the sum of its luminously integrated Parts.

all images are from pixabay.com

I realize with this Life is a Hologram perspective, then, that I/you/Soul can EXPLORE the Whole from ANY location within the holographic Whole, at any “time.”

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the Stream;
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is BUT A DREAM.

Try it, I invite you. Close your Eyes and DREAM! I welcome your Comments and Story!

Live Your Dream, Now!

 

The through-line and credo for the Life Maps Process which I share as a life coaching tool and have prepared in book form hopefully being circulated right now or soon by my agent is “Live Your Dream, Now!”

For Your Reflections:

What Live Your Dream, Now! means is that you do NOT have to wait for anyone or anything in order to begin living the life of your Dream! How? You can identify the VALUES you wish to be expressing in your Dream-Come-True future scenario, and start NOW to live by those values.

For example, some of the values I intend to be integrating daily Now in relation to my active post-retirement scenario include:

• Patience
• Greater forbearance of differences (no conflict or need to ‘prove’ anything to anyone, ever)
• Appreciation of life as separate from an institutionalized career (e.g. freedom from Academe, enjoyment of Nature and of basic human experience)

What do you hope to be experiencing as you live into your future Life Dream? How can you begin to practice and enjoy those kinds of experiences already?

• time for daily walks in Nature
• daily contemplations and journaling
• reading more
• writing daily
• offering life mapping services, workshops, seminars
• travel, near and far
• more time to share with family and friends

What is ONE THING you could be doing now or in the foreseeable near future that could help to propel you INTO the realization of your Life Dream?

• Create brochures that offer services
• Merge web sites to make static one more active
• Podcast

Plant the Seeds:

Here’s a creative tool you can use to establish a clear INTENTION and VISION of the positive Life Dream or some aspect of that which you can begin NOW to manifest simply by focussing and anchoring your Mystic attention.

CREATE AN IMAGE BOARD

An image board can be a collage of images or simply a white poster board with some central images placed on it that display the life of your dreams.You can IMAGE your “dream home” or “dream environment,” or  clearly represent any VALUE that you aim to be living NOW so as to bring this value with you into Living Your Dream.

Place your Image Board somewhere you will see it daily. You could place it where you do your daily meditations or contemplations or yoga, or some place that evokes for you a sense of transformation and emergence!

I welcome your insights and stories!

What Does Your Mystic Predict?

Although by general rule I don’t seek out fortune tellers—preferring to draw upon my own inner Mystic Ally, as I invite you also to consult—I do know quite unequivocally that seership or fortune telling can be quite accurate and valid. I know this from my own prophetic dreams but also because of an event that occurred 22 years ago.

In 1993 I completed my PhD at Arizona State University. That February or so, two job announcements came to my attention that appeared relevant to my preparation, one in Colorado Springs, Colorado and the other at the University of Texas at Austin.  I applied to both and I was put on short lists for them both. The first to invite me to interview was in Colorado. I interviewed over a three day period, from a Tuesday through a Thursday, enjoying the interview process and feeling quite good about the potential fit with my background and teaching experience.

That very Saturday, for the first time ever, I went with a friend for a lark to a Renaissance Festival in Phoenix, Arizona.  Not far into the theme park I saw a booth for a Palm Reader named Madame Carolyn. Because my Great-Great Aunt Bessie, whom I had cherished growing up, had read palms and was somewhat of a gypsy, I figured this would be fun. Neither myself nor the friend I was with, please remember, had ever even met this woman before this moment.

The very first words out of Mme. Carolyn’s mouth to me were:

“You’re going to get the job.”

Well, that surely caught my attention after I had just been interviewing that last week. Her next words were even more ‘telling’:

“And you’re going to work in one of the other two places where I do Renaissance Fairs: either Colorado Springs, Colorado, or Austin, Texas.”

Zowie! The next week I received the job offer in Colorado Springs and I began teaching that August and have been there ever since. Every summer too, of course, I continue to visit Mme. Carolyn at the Colorado Renaissance Festival in Larkspur, Colorado (about 20 minutes from my home). Over the years she has foretold equally astounding potentials. I have learned that what she is able to do with me is to see positive potentials. Then it is up to me whether or not to act on those potentials and bring them about.

Forecasting and engaging in your own creative future envisioning can be a very helpful tool. In the Life Mapping Process which I share with people and will provide in my upcoming book, Your Life Path, I provide several “Future Casting” techniques to help you to envision, plan for, and manifest your Life Dream. The motto of this approach to Life Mapping is:

Live Your Dream, Now!

But first you need to tune into what your current Life Dream IS. It may morph and transform as you work with this Dream image, but wherever you are at Now is an excellent point at which to sit at the ‘dock of the bay’, as it were, and cast your line or net into the waters.

images from pixabay.com

Close your eyes and call upon your own Mystic Archetype Ally.  Ask him/her to foretell for you  where you will  be/ what you will be doing five years from now (or more or less depending upon what it is you are hoping to fulfill in this time frame), with your most positive Life Dream potentials achieved.

You can engage with your Inner Mystic in active imagination (contemplation) or by writing a back-and-forth dialogue with your Mystic. You could use an artistic approach to sketch or draw an image of your Life Dream fulfilled. Or you could make a collage of magazine pictures or computer images to represent your Dream.

I invite you to share with us all here your insights and results!

Picture IT Now!

What is Your Life Dream?

IMAGINE yourself Living your Dream, Now!

Creative visualization and Re-visioning past events to help you compose your Future in keeping with all of the Strengths and Lessons you have already developed over your Life Course is your privileged prerogative as a human Being.  The gifts of intuitive imagination and foresight are talents you can exercise in creating the life of your highest values and ideals.

So never sell yourself short or settle for less than all that you are capable of Being! For while the future is certainly always in motion relative to the past and present coditions and attitudes you hold, it is within our capacity to imprint the future, to form a mold of what is desirable for us to attain to in keeping with our core values and ideals.

Picture IT!

So picture IT, Now! I invite you to close your eyes and BE in the future AS IF you have already achieved your Life Dream. Use 1^st person, present tense to place yourself into this future NOW. (A similar exercise can be found in Mary Carroll Moore’s wonderful book, How to Master Change in Your Life.)

• Where are you in the futurescape Life Dream of your imagining?

 

• Who is there with or around you?

 

• What is your daily life like?

 

• How are you putting into practice your highest ideal values?

 

• What are your Goals from this futurescape perspective?

 

Hold your Life Dream always in your “Heart of hearts.”  Picture it in any way you choose. You could make a collage of images representing your Dream, create or find a talisman like a stuffed animal or a photo to represent your Dream.

When I was living in Buffalo, New York before launching myself off to Arizona to pursue my life dream at the time of becoming a cultural anthropologist Out West (which I am now and have been for 39 years), I placed photos of Sedona, Arizona from an art magazine called Sedona Life on my office walls where I was teaching at a university in Buffalo while finishing my Masters degree there. I looked at these pictures every day and often dreamt of Arizona at night. One morning I woke with a jingle in the forefront of my awareness, which lyrics were:

“I’m leaving,

But there are a few doors left to close

Before I get over there.”

That little ditty jingle was pervasive in my consciousness the entire next year as I prepared to head out for my Big Trip West. I did have relationship matters to resolve, lessons yet to learn right where I was, and family to embrace before I could leave. But the images in my heart and mind held true, and by the next year and a half I was indeed living the life of my dreams. These were not candy coated dreams; they involved hardship and sacrifice as a student in graduate school for the next 14 years!  I cried when I first felt the impact of having left all I had known and loved behind. But I met new friends and now I cannot imagine not having taken this Great Adventure.

I prepare similarly now for retirement in just over two years ‘time’ with another great Departure then in store to fulfill my current Life Dream that will take me back to the region I actually left nearly 40 years ago. But that is not necessary to share with you here; it remains vital in my Heart of Hearts.

What is your current Life Dream?

PICTURE IT, NOW!

“I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.”

W.B. Yeats, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”

 

 

For A Kinder, Gentler World

As I conclude this month of pairing the Lover archetype Ally with the postulate to Live Your Dream, Now! I find within some personal reflections and insights from this segment of the journey.

For myself I  realize how sensitive—not fragile but acutely aware of my own and others’ feelings—my Lover persona can be. It is tender and vulnerable and you know what? I like that about me…er, about that aspect of my integrated Self. I protect this tender, heart dwelling Lover nature, and I value her presence and her willingness to ‘hang in there’ with me, even though often she must submerge into the unconscious reservoir to refresh and renew her own nature.

For those not familiar with the understanding of archetypal energies and specifically about unconscious persona archetype energies that influence and can contribute either in Strength or Shadow manner to our conscious constructions and expressions of Self (á la Jung or Hillman or other popular authors or herein), let me reassure you that becoming aware of and connecting willfully with your sometimes ‘buried’ archetypal personae does not make you “multiple” or schizophrenic. In fact, as all these authors would note, it is in aligning with and working to strengthen, illuminate and ally with our archetypal personae—which all of us have at least latently in human consciousness or what Jung called Psyche—the resulting individuation and integration forges a much more balanced, aware, and dynamic Self that is closer to expressing our full Soul potentials in this world.

But back to the Lover seeking to Live my Dream, Now! This month she has shown me through her tender sensibilities how hard this world can sometimes be. Not always, of course (fortunately!). But in our urbane world often people are not led primarily by their own loving natures so much as by the Mind or by the Rule (Elder Leader energies).  My sensitive Lover persona runs for cover when I bump up against someone’s anger or cold indifference, though I realize it is simply the way of the world I live in to throw such energies about, some times. I too have to sometimes muster my own Elder Leader traits to meet such interactions ‘head on’. I try to do so in a balanced way, as far as possible to bring a greater balance to my environment. Sometimes it is necessary to be firm.

So I realize it is in part my Lover persona who seeks a Kinder, Gentler World. That is one reason I am intending to retire to a small rural town soon enough. I look forward to walks along the lake and in the nearby parks and moving gently through lake water in a rowboat or small motorboat or canoe or kayak. I envision walking with my Soul companion Sophie (my Shorkie), and cuddling with her and with my furry cat friends. Well, of course I do that already! To the extent we daydream we create the life of our dreams here and now; we do not have to wait to Live Your Dream, Now!, which is the very point after all, n’est-ce pas?

May You Dream Your Dream and Live It Daily!

I welcome your insights, always.

Where Are You Going?

Socrates is known for the following zinger:

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Why did he say this, do you think? It is so easy to become settled into crusted routines and habits in our lives. Years pass, decades even, until one day we wake up and ask ourselves, where has the time gone? This is especially true with regard to fulfilling our life’s purpose.  I have shared before the motivational “wake-up call” I received one morning 13 years ago. Plastered before me like a placard posted squarely  in my inner vision between sleeping and waking were these bold words:

YOU HAVE THE RESPONSIBILITY

TO REALIZE YOUR DREAMS,

NOT JUST FOR GETTING BY.

Believe me, I know how hard it can be to persist, daily, toward the realization of your dreams. For ever since I received this inner beckoning, I have not turned back. This inner vision led me to revise my career in the direction of developing the approach of life mapping which my book-in-progress, Life Paths: Live Your Dream, Now! will, eventually, provide for the general public. I realize now that this visionary admonition to pursue one’s dreams was intended not just for me but for everyone, including you.

So, WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

This week I am presenting you with journaling or contemplation prompts to consider: Where Are You At? (Sunday); Where Are You Going? (today through Thursday); and How Will You Get There? (Friday).  These are not random questions. Together they comprise a call to action with respect to your life dreams. They allow you to examine your current position within the overall life you choose to live. 

Have you read or seen a movie version of Lost Horizon? When I was growing up, maybe around 12 years old, I read and re-read that amazing novel by James Hilton several times, about Hugh Conway finding his mission in life at the fabled Himalayan temple of Shangri-La. The Universe/ Spirit delivers Hugh and his brother and a small group of fellow air crash passengers to this hidden Temple where an aged master awaits Conway to bestow upon him the mantle of responsibility to maintain the vision and purpose of Shangri-La as a place of peace and knowledge that will be of immeasurable value to the future of humanity in the case of a worldwide calamity. After having to escort his brother and other non-believers back to the mundane world of European urbanity, Conway returns on his quest to find Shangri-La on his own, and eventually, he does. Here is a Soul who knows “where he is going,” at least in the sense of his life’s calling and mission. He becomes so passionate about fulfilling this Quest that nothing can possibly prevent him from achieving his purpose; he is a man utterly transformed by the awareness of his own potential and responsibility to life itself.

Can you relate to Hugh Conway’s Quest in some way in your own life? What is your Shangri-La? Let me ask again, then:

WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

I invite you to contemplate inwardly and to journal or otherwise engage with this question and the response that it elicits from Within. As always, I invite and welcome all of your insights and stories.

AS IF

 

Since May, we have explored the following sequence of weekly topics here at Life Paths for Better Endings:

• Your Origin Story
• Your Vision Quest
• Your Life Metaphor
• Your Life Course Schema
• Your Significant Life Events
• Your Life Themes
• Your Turning Points
• Your Life Chapters
• Your Life Story Genre
• Your Story as Myth
• Your Narrative Statement
• Universal Archetypes
• Your Ensemble Cast of “Archemes”
• Your Guardians of the Threshold
• Dreaming
• Active Imagination
• What Are Your Dragons?
• Your Quest
• Your Life Challenges
• Your Archetype Strengths
• Hold Fast to Your Dream
• Your Action Plan
• Your Life Dream Totem

The final, culminating topic of this six-month process—our theme for this week—is Live Your Dream, Now!

First, you can find and develop linkages from your present life experience to connect with your future goal. This allows you to gradually live into your Dream by continuing those practices and attitudes that already serve your sense of life purpose or Mission while gradually making changes in the direction of fully manifesting your goals.

Second, I introduced the idea of As Above, So Below. You can use prayer, meditation or active contemplation to creatively envision and explore inwardly that which in time you aim to manifest outwardly.

A third way to Live Your Dream, Now! is by applying the “As If” principle. You are free to Act already, currently, AS IF you ARE Living Your Life Dream, Now! This is a practice you can utilize as a way of integrating the high values of your Life Dream into your everyday present reality. What attitudes will you want to be expressing as you express your fully self-actualized roles with your Life Dream achieved? Acting AS IF you are already living your Dream means that you do not have to wait for any material changes in order to express the Self (persona) you aim to be expressing in your most Self-realized nature! See?

The AS IF principle means that you already ARE everything you ever will be, inwardly as Soul. To unfold into your highest expression of Self you need only to BE THIS NOW! Assume the perspective of the fully Self-Realized Being that you ARE and live from this perspective and attitude! Are there certain values and qualities of perception or attitude you might associate with your highest Self? Respect, Patience, Generosity, Flexibitlity, Expertise in your life’s vocation, etcetera? Since these qualities already exist within you NOW, Act AS IF you have already fully developed these and let your life adjust itself around your Self-realized expression.

These three aspects or practices that let you Live Your Dream, Now! together activate the three phases of the Law of Manifestation that Denise shared about here just a few weeks ago: Seeing;  Knowing; and Being.

I invite you insights from your own life experience!

Live Your Dream, Now!

This week is the final week of a six month process at Better Endings. Over the past six months this site has presented a series of topics to help you to establish a Vision for your future Life Path; a Life Dream that you CAN manifest fully. This Life Dream is not intended as “just a dream” nor as a product of “magical thinking.” Your Life Dream is to be LIVED, not merely imagined. It represents not the Impossible, but the POSSIBLE and even the PROBABLE, so long as you nurture and cultivate this Reality that is Parallel to the life you are currently enacting.

Between the present life you are living and the Now you are living so far imaginatively with your Life Dream, there are connections that should not be overlooked.  What are they? In other words, I believe you would not even be able to conceive of a Life Dream except that there are key elements of your present life that will give rise to the Reality of your Life Dream Achieved, so long as you nurture and develop these.

Over the past few weeks my own Life Dream has become clearer for me; now I desire to create a Life Dreams Institute (whereas before, I envisioned a Life Paths Institute; now I see a much greater potential emerging.) Elements present in my life now that can allow me to manifest this Dream include this blog and the book manuscript and Life Mapping Handbook it represents, along with retirement savings which I have been talking with professionals about, and the realization of where I want to relocate to in order to establish such a ‘retreat’ locale. Of course there is MUCH yet to transpire, much to nurture and to accommodate as I proceed step by step in the pursuit of my life goals. Much can change in the process, too; it is always wisest to be FLEXIBLE in relation to your Life Dream. The Universe/ Spirit will show you more over time and will lead you to the highest expression of your Dream, if you let It.

What is required of you and of me is faith and persistence; trust and a willingness to stay true to your Dream.

Today then, I invite you to contemplate your current life IN RELATION TO your fully realized Life Dream. What are you doing now or what could you be doing, now or in the near future, that can help to pave the way to the gradual realization of your Life Dream Achieved? Perhaps there is ONE THING you can set into motion which will orient your Life Path toward fulfilling your goals. What IS IT? Engage in an Active Imagination/meditation/contemplation so you can visualize your Next Step, your One Thing you can do to keep you moving in the right direction.

PLease don’t interpret me to ever be saying that I would see your or my own life Now as being deficient in any way! Where we are Now is the fulfillment of where we have oriented ourselves up TO now, isn’t it? To me that is an empowering perspective.  We are the Creators of the life we are living (hopefully in tandem with our divine given talents and potentials).

Live your Dream, NOW! Means that your Life Dream will never magically pop into existence. It requires your creative envisioning and your active participation and contemplation to gradually apply the Law of Manifestation so to bring it INTO existence, in the ever-expanding and transformative NOW. (I am linking to some earlier blog ideas if you’d like to retrace some of the steps we have taken through this process.)

I invite your Comments and Stories.

What is your Next Step, Now?

 

Are You a Threshold Dweller?

One of the greatest benefits from identifying the Life Chapters of your Life Story by naming the phases that have occurred BETWEEN your pivotal Turning Points is that this brings you naturally to a position of being a Dweller at the Threshold, in Joseph Campbell’s terms (as in The Hero with 1000 Faces).  We each live always in the Present Moment, most often as if the Present is a bubble, like the bubble in a leveling tool, relatively sealed off from yet positionally linked to Past influences and Future potentials. Life Mapping can open your awareness to how the “Past” (i.e., your meaningful Life Chapters with their inherent Life Lessons) has carried you to both this Present Moment and to the potential “Future” that your Life Path is trending toward. Your mindful awareness places you at the precipice of embarking upon or unfolding more consciously into a future Moment of your own choice and envisioning; see?

If we are to constructively affect the course our life is taking—and I personally believe this is not only our right but our responsibility—we may step forward from this Threshold of awareness that links Past-PRESENT-Future into a more integrated Whole.

Being a Dweller at the Threshold, you have the opportunity to pause and to reflect; to scan the Past while envisioning the future course you desire to undertake in your continuing Adventure.  There will be another, big step to take after this, called Crossing the Threshold (stay tuned for later tools and for the Life Paths book to engage in the full process). But at this fertile, vital junction of  reviewing your life course to Now, you are able to discern meaningful trends and potentials you have already established in your unique Life Story.

I have observed in over a decade of helping people compose and reflect upon their Life Maps a very common trend. However difficult a person’s life may have been, a high percentage of people (not all) reconstruct their CURRENT Life Chapter as either at a state of Balance or as a Resolution stage after successfully negotiating earlier hardships and challenges. How about you? If you have named your Life Chapters based on the methods shared on Tuesday, what title have you given to the CURRENT Life Chapter you are in? I welcome your sharing about your own Life Chapter titles or experience.

Next week we will expand this discussion to the topic of “Life Story Genres”.  This might help you to contextualize the dramatic quality of your personal life experience.  It is a natural cognitive function of the human mind to reconstruct our life experiences in Story form. Neuroscientists believe this helps us establish a sense of coherence and “flow” to our stream of life events and it helps us to construe our sense of identity as a continuous, integrated Self. So, please stay tuned to Sunday for an introduction of our next topic of discovering your Life Story Genre.

******   ******

I’d like to add two remarks today. First, I’d like to express my gratitude to GraphicStock, the website at which I have found most of the images I use in this blog. For an annual fee I have discovered a rich well of images to represent the ideas being presented here.

Also, as it is Thursday and I’m mounting the Friday blog, as usual I am a day ahead in posting. (When I receive a story about applying these tools or find a very appropriate piece to re-blog, I will also post a separate Thursday blog, as happened last week.) My work schedule makes it easier for me to post in the afternoon or evening the day before a post is scheduled, so thanks to you, dear readers, for your patience. – Linda

The Future from Here-Now

Tomorrow depends on today and on the ripples from the past that we allow to affect us in this present Moment, which many spiritual approaches would say is all there IS: Now-Be-Here. John Thomas Dodds expressed a satisfaction with the Present that illuminates the Allness of this awareness quite nicely when he replied to yesterday’s query about What is Your Bliss? finding that his Bliss is exactly what he is already experiencing, Here-Now:

        It’s simple: being exactly where I am right at this very moment, typing these words with love and beauty surrounding me in joy.

        Being where I’ve always wanted to be, with who I always wanted to be with, oh yes, of course, four cats playing in the garden.

That all that IS is complete in the Now can also be seen as a Paradox. Everything exists Now, yet through our memories and our future projection faculties, yesterday is Here and Now when we focus our spotlight of attention upon an elapsed moment, as is a Future potential Here and Now when we view it from the viewpoint of this eternal Present. This means simply that past-present-future is a seamless Whole and all three are inseparably interconnected. The more aware we are of conditions and influences from the Past and in the Present, the better able we are to manifest a future reality state, as it were,  based on consciously chosen values and experiences. You need not simply roll along on the waves to accept “whatever comes”.  You have the capacity to choose and to plan as needed to create the life conditions you desire to express. That is why the motto or ‘tagline’ for the approach to Life Mapping I’ve been developing and sharing with life coaching is: “Live Your Dream, Now!”

 

For Tuesday’s Better Endings prompts list this week, then, around the topic of manifesting Your Life Dream, I offer the following topics:

• Where I am headed as things stand today?
• What do I want in my future that is not present in my life today?
• What shall I carry forward?
• Where to from Here?
• My Life Dream is:
• A Sea Change (then, now or future)
• Stuck patterns; what can I do?
• How might I integrate my future values here and now?
• Inner conflicts about my future prospects (This can be in the form of an Archetypal Dialogue.)
• The plus factor; what I would add/change/modify if I could (and, how)
• At a crossroads/ Multiple paths forward (reflect)
• At the Threshold (What do I see from Here-Now as I look ahead?);  what is around the bend?)
• Threshold Guardians (What factors or self-limiting thoughts appear to block my going forward?)
• Crossing the Threshold
• “Going Home”

I invite you to choose one or more of the above prompts (or use your own) to write about, contemplate/meditate upon, talk about, and or to share about with us here, expressing your insights or stories.

Your Work/Career LifeMap–What’s Your Next Step ?

What does your history of work and career-related experience reveal about you in terms of your basic interests, passions, values, and your goals or aspirations? Can you trace patterns of development in how you have arrived at your current occupational and avocational situation? Where do you hope to be headed from here, and how will you get there?

To explore how life mapping as a general practice can be helpful in providing personal insights about work and career related life patterns and trends, I have mapped my own. To do this yourself, you may simply list all of the jobs or responsibilities and your career related experiences from very early in your life, til now. If you did the same thing repeatedly, list every time you did that; for example if your waitressed several times, repeat “waitress” in your list to reflect that pattern. When I did this I found I could identify an obvious  series of “stages” with regard to types of jobs and career related activities I have engaged in over time. So, I found it natural to “block” groups of work-related activities together according to developmental time frames. My work-related life-mapping to that point is shown below as an example:

Household chores  student   mow lawn   wax cars {learning responsibility, potentials, gender bender}

Ice chipping at Fair    crab/salmon cannery   Farmhand (suckering grape vines; trimming and picking peach trees)   summer drama coach assistant    usher/toll booth ticket seller at performing arts center {outdoors, physical labor; arts related}

/ college: student  reader   writer  journaling/ poetry   fencer /  {development of unique skills and              interests/outlook}

bar cleaner/solo    Mr. Softee icecream truck driver   {independent activities, nontraditional}

tutor    instructor    researcher    library researcher   author  teaching asst  fieldworker/researcher    faculty associate/ instructor   professor (assistant to associate)   spiritual services provider (talks, classes, workshops, writing PR)   author    personal development process developer    state spiritual services director    academic  committee member/chair   dept chair    personal development coach    author  {academics, spiritual services,  and then public oriented/ “applied research” author}

I created word clouds for each stage next to help me identify and reflect upon repeating themes in each grouping. Here is just the last one of those:

This process has helped me recognize a progression that, in my case, is leading toward a definite shift to a new stage and a major new direction. If I were being a bit more techy here—maybe you can do this with your word-cloud software—I would color-code specific kinds of words to track their development over time; for me, anything related to writing I would code BLUE, for instance, to trace the emergence and gradual transformation of that specific interest and activity. The shift my work/career lifemap reveals to me is that where writing has always been an avocation and later a professional tool, it has increasingly become a primary career focus, so much so that this mapping has given me a definite confirmation and support for an intention I have been nurturing but have been reluctant to act on for the sake of financial stability. My career mapping reinforces for me  that my next step (in 2.5-3 yrs) is ‘retirement’ from my academic position in order to engage full-time with writing and related public service aspirations.

Does your life-mapping of work and career-related activity reveal a pattern of growth and development in your life? Based on your mapping, what would be a natural next step, for you? How can you move yourself into a position to pursue that aspiration fully?

The main goal of a life mapping process is to empower you to Live Your Dream, Now! Reviewing where you have been in relation to where you are now can help provide a strong motivation to focus your attention on where it is you are going from here, and how you can get Here!

I welcome all of your Comments, your personal insights, and Stories