Your Shaping Events

Last week I invited you to express a Life Metaphor image and a Life Course Schema Model and to journal about how these ideas are meaningful for you.  To follow up on this before moving ahead to your next step in LifePath mapping, allow me to provide some background on how these cognitive schemas could reflect a foundational framework of your holistic LifePath journey, or more colloquially your Life Story.

Interview research I conducted while developing this approach revealed several specific types of Life Metaphor images along with four distinct Life Course Schema Models (see my books: Your Life Path, Skyhorse 2018; and The ‘Life Map’ as an Implicit Cognitive Structure Underlying Behavior, Mellen Press 2011). 

The most common seven Life Metaphor types or classes included: Nature images (e.g. a tree with branches, the Ocean with waves); Hardship motifs; Up and Down images (e.g. a Roller Coaster); Journey images; Ascending images (e.g. climbing a ladder); Randomity ideas (e.g. rolling dice); and Minute Quantity motifs (e.g a flash in the pan, a drop in the bucket).  

The four Life Course Schema Models identified from my research (which mainly correspond with  elements of common models in psycho-developmental theories and archetypal psychology) were in descending order of frequency in my research cases: (1) a Gradual-Linear Stage Model, with 5 or more specific stages of development from Childhood to Old Age or Death; (2) a Cyclic Model, recognizing decades, seven year or twelve year cycles; (3) Linear-Major Stage Models, with 2-4 distinct stages; and (4) a Seamless Model (not identified in prior theories; claiming spontaneous development with accidental events and no fixed stages).

I discovered that these two cognitive constructs of LP Metaphors and Life Course Schema Models could almost always be seen to closely reflect basic contours of an individual’s Life Map (which I will guide you to describe for yourself in later posts).  For example, those expressing the Life is Like a Roller Coaster metaphor I could say always mapped extreme ‘ups and downs’ throughout major periods or throughout their entire lives, often self-identifying as having bipolar or manic-depressive tendencies.  Those expressing Cyclic Life Course Schema Models tended to report several phases of ‘starting over’ in a resilient, resourceful way, sometimes even into their elder years.  These people often told me they did not believe in ‘mid-life crises’.  By contrast, those expressing a Gradual-Linear Stage Model (like Erickson’s very popular developmental model in his 1950 Childhood and Society) tended to be goal oriented yet if they had experienced setbacks or obstacles such as a divorce or job loss, they often reported periods of unresolved struggle and/ or depression.

So, you could benefit from reflecting and journaling further about what your Life metaphor and Life Course Schema Models reflect about your life path to now. None of these cognitive constructs are immutable, and life mapping may help you consider where you are at, how you have gotten to this vantage point in your life, and where you are going or how to even redirect your life course (e.g. see my Better Endings book, 2023) to arrive at your highest fulfillment.

******

So let’s proceed to the next step, the next piece of the puzzle:  Step Three—Compiling a sample list of your significant Shaping Events.

Shaping Events are those events, situations and/or relationships in your life “that have influenced the person you have become.”

Just take out a piece of paper or open your dedicated Life Mapping journal and make a list of meaningful Shaping Events from your life. Don’t worry about being complete or “correct” ; you do not need to include every possible significant life event. You could add events later, but  whatever you choose will be sample kinds of events, which is what we are after here.  Some folks start with birth (or before!) and move chronologically to list their Shaping Events, while others start with whatever event, situation or relationship first comes to mind and build their list before and after that.

When you list your events, please number the order in which you are listing them (#1-n), and after briefly stating the event, please make a record of the age you were at, or the years of the time frame covered. Then also, for the sake of actually mapping these events on a graphic I will show you next time, after you have given a brief description of your Shaping Event, reflect and assign a RATING as to how positive AND/OR negative/ challenging this event has been for you retrospectively, using a SCALE of -5 to +5 (including 0 for a neutral rating). 

For any given Shaping event, your RATING of the event might be singular, such as +3, or it could be ‘binary,’ such as +3/-3, indicating for the latter that there have been both positive and negative impacts of the event in your life.

Please also record or journal after you RATE each Shaping Event on your listing, WHY you have given the ranking you have.

images are from pixabay.com

So, that’s it for this week. Your list of Shaping Events might be a long list or relatively short; what matters is what feels right for YOU to give an ample representation of meaningful events, situations and/or relationships that have punctuated—as it were—your Life Story.

NEXT, I will show you how to create a graphic Life Map based on your list of Shaping Events, plus I will guide you to identify your meaningful Life Chapters.

Feel free to Comment with your insights or questions!

LifePath Mapping, Level One

With this post I will start to share LifePath mapping stories and techniques. I invite and welcome for you to engage with these techniques. I will be presenting a sequence of steps as a graduating series of journalling and creative representation activities so you can compose a “Life Story Map” to represent your own Life themes, Life Chapters, a Parallel Myth synopsis of your story, and even a mapping of Archetypal character arcs and the opportunity to identify and engage in a dynamic way with some of your own archetypal parts of Self.

When people first encounter the phrase “life mapping,” some might assume it refers to a linear path like a roadway on a paper map, from point A to point X. However, “That is not it, at all” (in homage to T.S. Elliott’s Prufrock).  Life flows, with its upswings and downturns, its dynamic conflicts of emotion and crossroads, with changes of direction here and there and sometimes back again.  The sort of “mapping” I can guide you to develop to represent the unique dynamics of your own life path is likewise colorful and open-ended, more like a GPS device that includes flexible redirection tools than a map of a fixed path.  What you will be able to reveal and discover about yourself with this thematic and archetypal mapping strategy are propensities and potentials of your unique and thriving pulse of dynamic experience.

So let’s get started with some preliminary “backstory” prompts that will begin to reveal  significant elements of your unique Life Story. I recommend for you to procure and open a new journal dedicated to this LifePath mapping process.

Prompt #1 allows you to reflect upon your Origin Story. Please contemplate and journal about the following prompt.

I AM WHO I AM TODAY, BECAUSE _______

Complete the thought with a paragraph or even a page or more of journaling reflection.  You might list or write about those persons, places, and events or situations  that have greatly influenced the person you are today.

******

As a sample to illustrate the journalling process, below is a brief version of how I would respond to this prompt today:

I am who I am today, because:

…because  somebody quite special to me in my teenage and young adult years believed in me and encouraged me to pursue my dreams and to answer the deepest questions of my Soul’s quest for personal freedom and truth. Diane, my early mentor (first as a fencing teacher) became a lifelong friend.  This led to being on an intercollegiate fencing team, where I along with another good friend learned to focus intently and to hone a skill to a high level of performance. ‘Once a fencer, always a fencer,’ I have realized ever since. Yet also, Diane herself encountered many difficult psychological and later physical challenges in life, including multiple personality syndrome and a related gender dysphoria, exposing me to some of the angst this world can engender in some of its most sensitive and gifted persons.

Later then, finding my spiritual path in 1973 that I have practiced ever since. This has profoundly influenced my every thought, word and deed and has provided an unlimited source of creative tools for exploration and for the development of my deep sense of personal freedom and adventure.

Also my education and career.  I remember how when was a teen I saw a Disney TV movie about a woman who was an anthropologist working with Native Americans. This led me ultimately to develop that same career path myself, resulting in a fulfilling career as a professor, researcher and writer. The friends I have gained through these adventures including lifelong Zuni friends I will always care about are bedrock in the foundations of my being.

But also I should include how some of my personal human relationships have not been so straightforwardly successful. I tried for many years to find and sustain a lasting loving partnership but never did except with my beloved pet Soul companions. Yet this has led me to value deeply my family and deep friendships I have forged through the years.

So, who am I today? … Grateful for my career and family and friends including my home family with my dog Sophie and cat Emily now. Grateful also for daily spiritual contemplation and dreaming awareness. Empathetic to the emotional suffering of others. And yet, a bit too reserved socially still, with a tendency to “bolt” (flight vs. fight) or walk away from even potentially conflictual encounters or relations.

******

images are from pixabay.com

I invite you to try your hand and heart at this prompt, as an opening ‘departure’ phase of the rites of passage adventure these LifePath mapping tools can guide you to experience. Feel free to comment or send questions!

Your Backstory

A novelist crafting a work of fiction may create a “story board” to develop their dramatic plotline and to explore the transformational character arcs of the primary protagonists and antagonists. A good primer on this technique can be found in Kenneth Atchity’s The Writer’s Time (2^nd Ed., W.W. Norton & Co.).

In a transformational story line, all of the central characters will undergo significant character development over time in relation to their goals, their strengths and weaknesses, and their capacity to confront and resolve major challenges. So, the author might develop a detailed “backstory” for each of the key characters to help clarify their motivations and potentials. A backstory may expand far beyond the time frame or plotline of the immediate story being framed. In fact, this is how many a prequel might later be written, exposing more of the cast of characters’ backstories than were revealed in an initial tale.

J.K. Rowling, for example, imagined and developed backstories for the original founders of the four Hogwarts schools, as well as for headmaster Dumbledore and his family, and for Tom Riddle/ Voldemort, although we do not learn much about these backstories until in the later installments or in the much later developed prequel movies.

So, in considering your own ever unfolding life story, your MyStory, what backstory elements have been ‘shaping events’ for the path you have trekked to advance your own transformational potentials?  More simply put: Who/ where are you now in your life, how did you get Here, where do you appear to be headed, and how might you arrive at your deepest goals or aspirations?

There is no narrative protagonist more important for your own understanding and growth than you!  Socrates’ famous injunction to “Know Thyself!” is a tool for your own transformational character arc, and everyone in your family or field of influence and community might benefit from your willingness to take the journey you are embarked upon to its greater fulfillment.

So, below I provide some basic journaling prompts or contemplation seeds that you may use to explore and compose your own backstory:
1. I am who I am today because: __________________________________
Answer this prompt as an essay recalling the persons, places, situations and key events that have had a strong ”shaping” influence on your sense of identity and purpose over time.

2. As the key protagonist in your life story, what have been some of your goals, motivations, resources, strengths and weaknesses, and strategies for resolution of your challenges?  That is, describe some of your character traits that situate you in your story to now.

3. What has been or might evolve to be your character arc of transformation? That is, what character development are you aiming to bring about in your life moving forward, and how?

images are from pixabay.com

I hope you will enjoy taking some well deserved ‘time out’ for journaling and reflection on your own backstory elements, and that this creative exercise may help you to re-member your keenest goals around which to apply your deepest character strengths and motivations.

Next, I will offer journaling prompts around the related notion of your narrative “through line.” This can help to clarify the central message that your MyStory is telling.

Who Are You, Now?

Reflecting on the previous post, Finding Out Who You Are, last week I found myself going back to and enhancing a technique I have often shared with students, based on the idea of  ‘the onion skin self. ’  Francis Hsu, a psychological anthropologist, has used a similar approach to examine variation in cross-cultural concepts of personhood.

First: Reflect and list 7 personal traits that answer, for you now, the question, Who Am I? List these seven identifiers as they naturally come to you.

Second:  Look over your list of personal identity traits and NUMBER them 1-7, according to which of these traits or characteristics you identify with most deeply (highest = 1), especially right now, from your current life perspective.

Third: Rewrite your list of self-identifiers, placing your #1 rated trait at the top of your new list and writing the traits down from that through #7. (When I did this for myself, I started with 10 traits, but then only enumerated 1-7, lopping off the 8-10 traits.)

Fourth: Review your rank ordered list. Are there thematic (or else, distinctive) KINDS of traits that these traits represent in your life? For example, are one or more of these traits based on Family or Relationship, Career, Spirit/ Religion, Talents, etc.?  NAME these KINDS of identifiers to the right of each item on your rank-ordered list (see below for my example), so you will label each of your seven traits according to its KIND or type.

Fifth: REFLECT about the question prompt Who Am I, Now? Why or how are these seven traits ranked for you as they are from your current point of view?  You may journal, or contemplate about, or talk with a loved one about, or create art around what this listing reveals to you about your CURRENT, core sense of personal identity.

I was surprised when I did this exercise for myself last week. Some KINDS of identifiers that a decade ago or so I would have listed and ranked as of high priority were either not on my list at all or were in the #8-#10 items sloughed from the current set of seven.  While in the past I would have identified myself highly according to my profession or public facing roles, below is my current profile:

ECKist (spiritual affiliation) – {Spiritual identity}

Dog/ Cat lover – {Loving relationship}

Sister – {Loving relationship}

Friend – {Loving relationship}

Teacher – {Service role}

Co-Worker – {Service role}

Writer – {Avocation/ talent; Service role}

I find that in my early-retirement stage (still teaching part-time but having relocated to be nearer to my family five years ago), my values have shifted, so relationships are of even greater importance to me now in terms of my sense of core self. To me this represents a welcome, still emerging ‘better ending’!

What does your current ‘onion skin’ self-portrait say about you?

images are from pixabay.com

I can envision my #1 trait as at the CORE of an image of concentric circles, with the other six traits radiating outward as bands from nearer to further from the core.

To add another layer to this technique, try imaging yourself at an earlier stage or marker point in your life, and do the exercise again from that earlier perspective. Then you can compare who you were then to who you are, Now.

Discover Your MyStory Life Themes

Allow me to invite you to a very simple and effective way to identify your Life Themes, those recurring situations and KINDS of events that form the “stuff” of much of your life experience within your Life Story:

• Reflect and write a LIST significant events that have “shaped you as the person you have become.” This does not have to be an exhaustive list, and the events or situations on your list do not have to have been earth shattering, just significant.

• After you have composed your list of significant “shaping” events or situations, read back through this list several times, and SORT these events into KINDS of events or situations. (For example: Family, Travel, Work, Education, Spirituality, etcetera).

• Reflect on the TYPES of events you have identified, and assign your own personally meaningful NAMES to these Kinds of Events. (E.G.: Disappointments, Relationship Matters; also can still include standard sorts of names like Family, Relationships, Romance, Work, etcetera).

• These personally meaningful, recurring types of events and situations are (at least some of) your dominant LIFE THEMES.

Make a list of your LIFE THEMES in your MyStory journal, or you can save them in a file on your computer.  Over the next year or so at this blog site we will be exploring several common Life Themes and I invite you to journal or write your personal memoirs about events and situations that have been significant in your life in relation to the Theme (or similar theme for you) being explored.

The MyStory principle we are exploring is our tendency as humans (i.e. Homo Narrativus) to frame our Life Theme shaping experiences AS STORY, as narratives, with meaningful narrative structure, plot, characters, messages, spiritual principles, and lessons to impart to others based on our own life experience.  Consider those thematic events about which you have tended to tell the ‘same story’ over and over again, refining the story to ferret out deeper meanings and messages, both for you and for those with whom you might choose to share your most meaningful MyStory tales. This is part and parcel of your Legacy that you may pass along to your loved ones or to posterity.

images are from pixabay.com

As Joseph Campbell has emphasized, your life (your MyStory) is mythic, even Epic, because it is imbued with meaning and lessons for your own growth. As you grow from reflecting on your pivotal life experiences, you are ever more able to help others find meaning in their own Life Themes, as well.

Now too, a SECOND level of identifying Life Themes, which I would recommend you could apply after the tried and true method above, is to work backward from those stories you tend to retell and embellish, asking what sort of THEME does that story reflect in your MyStory that may just not have made it into your list from the above method.  For instance, while Pets have been a HUGE Life Theme in my life, in the process of listing biographical shaping events, it is possible I could overlook these while focussing more on obvious themes for me like Family, Education, Relationships (which might include with my pets), and Spirituality. But when I think of very important shaping events, losing my dog Elly, for example, is a huge event I would want to make sure to include in my MyStory corpus of stories.

So for this week, I invite you to explore and discover your own MyStory Life Themes!

Better Endings for YOUR Life Story

Several years ago I stumbled onto a journaling practice of composing “better endings,” at first for films whose conclusions I had never liked, then for literature and historical events (e.g. what might have happened if the Titanic had never sunk?).   Then I realized I could apply this same principle of creative license to my own Life Story adventures, as could anyone.  I began a blog called Better Endings (betterendingsnow.com) to explore this principle of creative re-visioning and discovered it is a rich tool we can use to review and reflect upon any life situation or ambition—past, current or to come—to envision ‘better endings’ scenarios, and to bring those about in our lives.

As a cultural/psychological anthropologist and linguist, I understand how we humans live our lives as episodic and even as epic narratives; we each gradually build our own Life Story that bends and turns in many directions and we construe our own mythic Life Story in terms of Life Themes, Life Chapters, Lessons, Quests, and Purpose or Mission.  I like to say that we humans are Homo Narrativus: we experience and tell about our life events as structured narratives, full of meaning, lessons, and import. 

For several years I taught a university humanities course—co-taught with a Classical historian, at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs—called Myth, Reason, and Your Life Story. The History professor provided lectures on the history of mythology for 8 weeks, while for the other 8 weeks (students shifted mid-semester to receive both segments), I engaged the class in a Life Mapping process. The Life Path Mapping process (see my resulting book Your Life Path; Skyhorse, 2018) guided the students–in conjunction with lectures on rites of passage, Joseph Campbell’s Hero Cycle, Jungian and more recent archetypal psychology integration techniques, research findings from my own intensive life mapping interview research, and a history of theories of the life course—through a journaling and creative life mapping process that let them review and reflect upon their lives: past, present and to come. 

images are from pixabay.com

Better Endings: A Guidebook for Creative Re-Visioning (Central Park South Publishing, May 2022) is the next step in the life mapping process I developed in those humanities classes.  This book offers the opportunity to “refresh” your life course midstream!  I have included journaling pages in this book that allow you to play with the principle of Better Endings ‘re-visioning’: first (for Part One) with film endings, literature and historical events; and then (for Part Two) with critical events and situations of your own Life Story—past, current and to come! 

The fun, interesting journaling prompts in Better Endings can help you—as they have for me—to arrive at meaningful closure for some of your life situations and to become un-stuck (!) from considering your current and future possibilities.

“Live Your Dream, Now!” was the through line for my 2018 book, Your Life Path. This new book, Better Endings, (now available in softcover, hardcover and eBook formats from all major book retailers) lets you take the next step in your own Life Story to create the life of your dreams. Better endings…are new beginnings!

With New Eyes, or Look Again! The Value of Creative Re-Visioning

[First this week, THANK YOU to all of you who have been following and especially for those registering your ‘Likes’ for recent posts.-Linda]

Writing and particularly for me, journal writing, has been a lifelong refuge and treasure.  I kept as many as four journals going at a time through my college years, and I have kept a dream journal as well as a writing journal active for over 50 years.  Early on, I addressed my journal Itself as a Friend (Dear Friend would start my entries).  It is this long practice of journaling that has sustained my lifelong interest in writing and has led to several academic journal articles and to date, four published books (the first two academic and the last two, mainstream).  

My just released Better Endings: A Guidebook for Creative Re-Visioning (Central Park South Publishing) includes journaling pages so that you, too, as the reader can engage with the magical art of journaling that can open new doors of self-discovery, insight, and future envisioning.  The journaling prompts, included blank journaling pages,  and chapter topics presented in Better Endings truly can guide you to explore and reflect upon key values and events of your own Life Story: past, current and to come.

I have personally ‘beta tested’ every theme and journaling excursion offered with the Better Endings chapters.  Part One introduces topics that let you have fun practicing creative re-visioning with movies, fiction, and historical events.  You will get to write your own ‘better endings’ for movies or stories whose endings you have always disliked and to reflect upon what it is about these stories that lead you personally to want to rewrite these conclusions.  This is not at all about improving upon the screenplay or writing but about developing your own sense of ‘creative license’ to re-envision (or re-view) any story to explore its open possibilities.  If you can practice re-visioning a fictional story or an historical event, so too can you look at your own life story events (past, current and to come) with this same creative license, allowing you to imagine and mindfully explore your own open possibilities! After all, you are the composer, editor and key actor in your own Life Story.  In fact, that is what Part Two is all about.

Part Two gives you, the reader/ journal writer of Better Endings, the freedom to reclaim your own creative license; to re-vision and flexibly reflect upon the ‘shaping events’ or Turning Points of your own Life Path. Topics include:  What If?, Second Chances,  Silver Linings, Loss and Recovery, Big Moves, and Your Best is Yet to Come.

The value of creative re-visioning and journaling your reflections is that it opens your intuitive awareness. It can help you arrive at a sense of more meaningful closure and purpose with regard to your significant life events, situations or relationships, so you may approach new choices with greater understanding and clarity of intention.

Better endings are not necessarily happier ones, but they can lead to New Beginnings!

images are from pixapbay.com

If you would like to explore these themes in your own life, pick up a copy of Better Endings: A Guidebook for Creative Re-Visioning.  (You can click on the embedded links here or on the right panel cover image to be routed to Amazon, or you could order through Barnes & Noble or any other major retailer site.) It is available as an eBook (but if you choose this, please do create your own Better Endings Journal and do the journaling), or as a softbound or hardcover version. I welcome all reviews, comments, and questions!

Better Endings are New Beginnings

My apologies for a two-week aperture. My new book, Better Endings: A Guidebook for Creative Re-Visioning (click link for url) is now available for pre-order at a discounted rate at all major retailers (Amazon, Barnes & Noble) and it will soon be available as an ebook at Kindle, Nook and several other sites. I have been on a daily learning curve, aiming to announce this book in as many ways as possible; if you are an author you know what I mean! While the publishers have announced the book to retailers and independent bookstores through Ingram at a good trade book discount rate, still it is up to me to let people know about the book, and that is a heady, onerous and daunting opportunity. The official release date is May 6 for retailers. There will be a book launch at my local Lewiston, NY Library on May 13, thankfully. I have set up a Goodreads Author Page and print book giveaway (6 free books chosen randomly, so you can find it there if you like), from April 26-May 8. Otherwise “pounding the pavement”: sending out postcards to selected bookstores, visiting local stores, submitting info to Barnes & Noble store placement, and basically learning something new every day about possible ways to get the word out.

This blog site has been the rich source of the concept that developed into Better Endings: A Guidebook for Creative Re-Visioning. Over the past 9 years or so we have explored herein the multifaceted jewel that is our own inherent creative license to envision and to flexibly re-vision a Story: everything from composing actual ‘better endings’ to movies, fiction, or historical events whose conclusions might leave you personally dissatisfied or yearning for a twist of fate, to journaling about ‘shaping events’ or Turning Points in our own life stories: Past, current or to come.

I have come to realize how fundamentally empowering it can be to creatively re-vision a situation from the past, any current situation, or a future aspiration or prospect. Doing so has guided me through three Big Moves just over the past four years, and has brought many new opportunities and vistas into clearer view. Re-visioning a past event helps me see it with new (more mature) eyes, and prospecting a desirable future through ‘alternate futurescape’ journaling has helped me zero in on what values I aim to establish in my home setting and in all my relations. Better Endings lead to New Beginnings! Sometimes this can mean simply bringing closure to a long contemplated worry from the past, or setting out in a new direction based on realizing the path you choose to follow!

Better Endings: A Guidebook for Creative Re-Visioning is the fruit of these many years of applying the creative principle of creative re-visioning not only in this blog but in my life. Central Park South Publishing has helped me to produce honestly a very well designed book. I am especially grateful that this book provides ample journaling space for readers to explore this faculty of creative re-visioning for yourselves.

Below is the Table of Contents. With each chapter, I introduce the chapter’s theme, share a sample ‘better endings’ story and some personal reflections about the topic, and then turn the theme over to you as the reader, to reflect on and to journal about with respect to your own life experience. The final of four lined journaling pages ask you to add your Reflections after you have personally explored your own ‘better endings’ perspective.

images are from pixabay.com

I guess you can tell, I really like how Better Endings: A Guidebook for Creative Re-Visioning has emerged as a book of true potential benefit for those who wish to reflect on life’s lessons and golden opportunities for transformational growth and fulfillment.

If you get the book, please do the journaling! That is the heart of its gift. Feel free to reach out to share with me about your experience with the themes in the book; I would gladly post your own ‘better endings’ stories here to share with others. And if you would, please do leave a review somewhere, at Amazon, B&N, Goodreads or on your own blog if you like. I understand reviews can be most helpful for letting more people know about a book.

Thank You for visiting and especially to those of you who have been Following this blog site; the fact that people actually do read what we write and share in a blog is what keeps them going and growing!

May You Find Your Better Endings!

Surfing Silver Linings

With the last post I explored the topic of what we might find to be grateful for despite or even as a ‘side effect’ of the global pandemic.  This is not to disrespect or diminish the loss of life, peace of mind, and livelihoods that many have had to endure.  Yet as we continue our passage through this long-term pandemic era, being humans it is natural for us as survivors to aim for transcendence and gradual reemergence from the cocoon of sheltering, masking, vaccinating, and social distancing.  In this journey from darkness into relative light we might rightfully “look for the silver linings” of the heavy clouds that have—and for many, still do—covered the globe.  As our theme in this blog overall is the proactive principle of Better Endings, focussing on discerning the Light is appropriate.

An image I have been getting this week is that of Surfing Silver Linings.  The old spiritual adage “As Above, So Below” informs this metaphor.  I see a surfer riding on the upper billowing whiteness of a cumulus cloud, sending fairy-dust like particles through the dense gray of the lower cloud that filter through to the ground below like snowflakes, seeding a more positive energy.

After contemplating this image of ‘surfing silver linings,’ I drew a tile and opened The Book of Runes to the following (Teiwaz rune):

Teiwaz (#15, Warrior Energy)

“Embodied in this Rune is the energy of discrimination, the swordlike quality that enables us to cut away the old, the dead, the extraneous.  With this Rune comes the certain knowledge that the universe always has the first move. Patience is the virtue of this Rune, and it recalls for us the words of St. Augustine that ‘The reward of patience is patience.’  The molding of character is the issue when this Rune appears in your spread.

“Here, you are asked to look within, to delve down to the foundation of your life itself. Only in so doing can you hope to deal with the deepest needs of your nature and to tap into your most profound resources.”  ( – Ralph Blum, The Book of Runes, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1982, pgs. 95-96)

images are from pixabay.com

When you are ready to rise above the negativity of challenges borne by this pandemic, perhaps it may be helpful to contemplate your intrinsic ‘spiritual warrior ‘ energy, to reseed your own better endings. 

Better Endings Story Seed:
Surfing Silver Linings

Can you relate to this image of Surfing Silver Linings in relation to the global pandemic? Whether you can or if you find this metaphor inappropriate for your own current life conditions, I encourage you to journal about or talk with a loved one about how you might resurface or rise above the challenges you are facing.

Lessons from the Pandemic: Gratitude?

Most of us humans on Earth are fairly strained by now from having to endure a longer global pandemic than many of us would have expected to have to abide.  One year, maybe, even 18 months or so of masking, getting vaccinated and social distancing we might believe should have ‘done the trick’ by now; but no, the universe has yet more in store for us in what is becoming the Covid Era. So, in the spirit of applying the principle of Better Endings (BTW the book is under contract now, undergoing a final edit!), can we focus on what we may actually be grateful for, or how enduring a pandemic could actually help those of us who survive this ordeal to progress in our lives, anyhow?

I invite you to write (journal about or discuss with others) a list of life lessons or positive ‘side effects’ you can take forward from your encounter with your own Covid-era conditions. I will try my hand (or heart) at this, too:

What I can be grateful for during the Covid Era:

• More time at home with my beloved pets, Sophie and Emily;
• Fewer colds due to masking and much more regular use of vitamins and supplements, especially zinc, C, D3, My Community mushroom supplements, multivitamins,  and CoQ10;
• More time for focussing on writing (two book manuscripts now in process of approaching publication and several more ‘in the hopper’);
• Deep dreaming, journaling and contemplations in the quiet space of home;
• More reading time (book discussions with my good friend Jan about the holographic universe (e.g.), and a local book club now available via Zoom);
• Zoom events (although, while not having to mask is nice and being able to connect with folks remotely from anywhere in the world is wonderful, I do miss face to face eye contact—gotta say!)
• Long telephone conversations with family and friends;
• Good times spent at my home and theirs with close friends, all of us boosted!
  
  

images are from pixabay.com

Better Endings Story Seed:

Lessons from the Pandemic

Can you ride with this theme? What can you be grateful for despite or due to your own pandemic conditions? Journal about how you are enduring the Covid Era in your Better Endings Journal (any loose-leaf journal; or share in discussion with a loved one). Feel free to comment at this site, too!

Making A List … Next Steps for Daily Better Endings

I’d like to bring this discussion back to the Principle of Better Endings as a tool you can apply to your everyday life.  One practice I find useful that helps me to manifest ‘daily better endings’ is making a list of issues I am confronting and attending to each item on the list by identifying action steps I could take and then circling or identifying among these one Next Step I can and am ready to take.  Then, of course, it helps to take that next step or set in motion activities that will result in actualizing that potential.

Making a list of current issues you face and then identifying and acting on one step you are able and ready to take Now can help psychologically as well as practically.  I find that if too many issues or tasks pile up, I may end up spinning my wheels: tossing and turning instead of sleeping well or dreaming effectively; and falling further behind while new issues continue to accrue.  Just writing a list itself helps me to release my jumbled thoughts around an issue. Spelling out dimensions of the situation or identifying action steps that could help resolve the matters at hand allows me to move on mentally, as I can return to the list to check in on my progress later.  

images are from pixabay.com

The process of writing down and actively contemplating a situation allows the unconscious mind to get an overview of the issues involved.  I find after I identify the situation and put focus on it in this way, I might dream of an effective approach or wake up with a clear understanding of what I need to do.

Better Endings Story Seed:

Making a List

Make a list of those circumstances or conditions in your life that you feel a need to address or that you hope to advance to ‘better endings’ scenarios.  List these situations separately, and identify three or more action steps you can take that would help to advance each situation. For each situation, circle or highlight ONE NEXT STEP that you feel ready and able to take now or in the near foreseeable future to realize your greater potential.  Act on these steps to set in motion a ‘better endings’ forward momentum in your life.

To Mine Your Story, Find A Parallel Myth

What sorts of character arcs and storylines do you find most compelling? Can you identify with a particular story; does it mirror aspects of your own life goals and challenges?  I like to say, myth is the stuff our lives our made of, because myth is made up from the stuff of our lives!

Our lives have the meaning that we give to them, and much of the meaning we bring to our life experiences derives from stories we have related to from childhood.  “The Wizard of Oz,” for example, tells the tale of a young person seeking to find her own strength so she can save her beloved pet dog from being taken away after having disturbed a mean neighbor’s garden. This story propels the main character, Dorothy, into her own unconscious archetypal depths to find the courage, heart, and wisdom she will need to face the wicked neighbor with a more mature, integrated sense of Self.

Many of us have faced ogres or so-called witches in our worlds, needing to dig deeply into our unconscious reservoirs of archetypal personas to assemble and marshal the character traits we may need to confront the forces of negativity and emerge whole from either a physical and/or from a moral and spiritual perspective.

In my book Your Life Path (2018), I present a Parallel Myth technique that can help you identify a story that resonates closely with the Life Chapters, themes, and character arcs of your own Life Story. (You can see a template for this technique without buying the book by downloading for free the My Life Path Mapping Toolkit from the right margins of this blog.)  So one way to find a parallel myth to understand the meaningful stuff of your own life story is to discover your Life Chapters and compare these with some story you identify with. A simpler approach would be: think of or write a short list of stories you have always loved because somehow you feel you can identify either with the plot of the story or with a character in that tale. Let’s take that approach here.

So, make a list of stories from novels, short stories, or movies that you have long felt you can identify with. Write a brief account for each of these as to how or why you might identify. I will give an example of some of my own most meaningful stories just to demonstrate the process:

1. The Wizard of Oz:  In my youth I would often “run away” because I felt berated or tormented by my father’s harsh temper. I would hide in a closet or actually leave for a while (or sneak out) to gain a sense of independence or freedom.
2. Contact: I share Eleanor Arrowway’s drive to pursue uncommon truths via both scientific and spiritual pathways.
3. Harry Potter: In my childhood I often felt myself to be the ‘runt’ of the family (short, awkward, plain), but as I discovered spiritual truths and a sense of spiritual camaraderie from my early twenties on, I have gradually gained tools, and friends (including in my family), that have helped me recognize my own strengths to be of service to others.

Do you have your list? Write it out. What are some parallel mythic themes, characters, and messages from these stories that are mirrored in your own Life Story?

images are from pixabay.com

Next then, what messages might you take forward from your parallel myth(s) that can help you achieve the Better Endings you seek in your own storied life? Review your listed parallel myths and pay attention to the positive potentials of these stories’ resolutions. E.G.:

• The Wizard of Oz: Dorothy unifies her sense of self by combining her archetypal qualities of courage, heart, and wisdom so she can stay ‘home’ and face the dark forces that had beset her there. Somehow I figure at the end of the movie that Toto is going to be okay, because Dorothy is strong enough in her own more mature Self to face the neighbor from a sense of responsibility and courage. (My message: Find the courage to stand my own ground when faced with negativity or obstacles.)
• Contact: Ellie discovers a parallelism between science and religion (mirrored in her own relationship with Father Joss) when her ‘through-the-wormhole’ solo space adventure reveals new dimensions to reality. (My message: Continue to plunge the depths of science and spirituality, sharing as possible, but mainly to deepen my own understanding and awareness of incontrovertible realities beyond the ‘pale’ of common knowledge.)
• Harry Potter: Teaming up with his own archetypally well matched ensemble cast of friends, Harry solves some of the mysteries of his lower self to gain courage and self-awareness that can defeat any negativity that may confront him or his world. (My message: Stay true to who you are and stand up for your highest values despite any efforts to alienate or undermine your and your friends’ finest qualities.)

What messages do you derive from comparing some of your favorite parallel myths and your own Life Story (to now)? What do the positive endings or potentials of these stories offer forth to you about achieving Better Endings in your own mythic-story?

Training Wheels

I believe in inner guidance and have relied on it quite a bit in my life. Whether through dreams, clear nudges, or sometimes in direct contemplation or lucid visions, answers to questions I am pondering often provide clear direction for my growth and development.  Reliance on inner guidance is not an abdication of personal responsibility and agency; it is simply a matter of developing and utilizing our innate human potential for connecting with our own higher viewpoint or spiritual awareness that is available to anyone at any time. 

Last week I was walking with my dog Sophie for our daily exercise around the neighborhood. I heard the voice of a man calling out:

“Stay to the side of the road! Watch for cars!”

When I looked to where the voice was coming from, I saw a small boy, maybe five or six, riding on a little bicycle out from his driveway, followed by a man with a slightly greyed beard whom I presumed was the boy’s father or perhaps his grandfather. Then I saw the boy’s bicycle was equipped with training wheels. His mentor was coaching from behind the young boy, helping him learn to ride a bike.

I watched the man and boy as they rode up the road, side by side up to an intersection where they turned off into the same performing arts parking lot that Sophie and I were heading to for our daily walk.

A bit later while Sophie and I were still moving about at the arts center, I saw the boy come racing out on his training bike from the box office area; I mean, really fast for a little boy learning to feel comfortable on a bike.

“Very good! Now, put on your brake! Be careful!”

The boy did as instructed and applied his brakes gently but firmly; he came to a definite but not too hard of a stop. Then father and son continued back toward their home again, with the father following in the rear, allowing the boy to be in the lead yet knowing he could rely on his mentor’s guidance as needed.

Watching the boy learning to ride a bike reminded me of how my Dad taught me to swim. We had a backyard pool. He had the hose filling it for the season, but he brought me into the pool when it was maybe three or four feet deep. First, he just held me up and gently let me go, telling me to use my arms to stay afloat. Next, Dad pulled a few feet away from where I was holding onto one side of the pool, and he asked me to swim to him. Then, he pulled further away and further, each time asking me to swim to him. If I was too afraid to try, he would move closer that round. Finally, he was at the opposite side of the pool and I was able to cross the great waters to reach him!

This is how inner guidance generally works with me. It lets me do all I can on my own, but when I need help, I know I can always call on what I perceive as my inner Guides for support, protection and guidance.

images are from pixabay.com

As I have been reflecting on this gift of inner guidance after watching the boy learn to ride a bike, I realize how a good part of working with inner guidance involves developing self-reflexive awareness. We learn to look at ourselves as a mentor, guide or Master might look at us; so we maintain a higher viewpoint and can self-correct as well as receive direct inner guidance as needed. This can help us build self discipline and somewhat of a more objective viewpoint about our own attitudes or actions.

Please note that I have added a new feature to the blog in the right column. You are invited to engage with the journaling prompts in the Better Endings SEED STORY prompts. Enjoy!

Pink Flamingoes (Set a Sign to Follow Your Heart)

Some four to five years ago as I was just beginning to consider the prospects of retirement and relocation, I decided to set a private sign that I would see if I was meant to relocate.  I chose pink flamingoes as my token sign because this image was not very common where I was living then in Colorado.  I have used this approach one other time and it was very effective then, so I made my inner postulate to see pink flamingos as an affirmation it was time to leave and hopefully with some indication then of where I should move to after my retirement.

I did start seeing pink flamingos more frequently than I had noticed them before, and sometimes at odd times. Not that this sign was a major impetus for retiring relatively early, but it did help buttress my resolve.  This sign seemed also to show up in ads and such in a way that suggested a certain direction of movement: back East rather than, let’s say, to Florida (though that was not out of the question for me and is where pink flamingos might be more expected). 

I retired except for part-time online teaching in 2018 and relocated to New York state, near to where one of my sisters lives and at the time near where my mother was in a nursing home. This was home turf for me since I had moved Out West from Buffalo, NY over forty years earlier. I first moved to one town I had researched online, Ithaca, for about 9 months. It was nice and I was happy to be able to continue teaching there part-time, but I soon realized it was not my final retirement destination. I started seeing pink flamingoes again when I thought about moving elsewhere, and that next move was to a lakeside community in Canandaigua, still in the Finger Lakes, translated from Iroquois as “the chosen place.”

My second move was also good, and I enjoyed lakeside living for a year and a half in a small, nestled community of largely retired folks like myself. But when the pandemic struck, I started feeling restless again, and isolated in my remote little patio home, and I realized that this was still not my deeply sought destination.  I started visiting and thinking about my original, high school hometown two hours away, a quaint but active community centered around a performing arts center and nestled near a river and a lake, just across the border from Canada.  I sold my lake house, packed up and moved with my pets again, to rent the house where we are living now.

I am Back Home (at least in the physical world sense), and it is exactly where I want to be.

A few weeks ago, I went for breakfast at a great little diner up the road a bit from my new home. Although the diner is in the countryside and not very near to any body of water, I realized the theme in all the pictures on the wall was pink flamingoes! This time the sign felt like a confirmation: that this is where I was meant to be moving to, all along. Since then, I have been seeing pink flamingoes quite a lot in my little hometown: at stores, in peoples’ yards, and lately, filling the screen when I turn on my desktop computer.

I haven’t always thought that this practice of setting up a personal sign and paying attention when you see it works. I have had other friends who have used it effectively for themselves through the years, and now the two times I have used the approach, it has worked very well for me too.

images are gratefully from pixabay.com

But why?  The practice of choosing a private sign is I think a way of working with your own inner guidance or with your higher/ superconscious awareness.  It sets up a suggestion that lets your unconscious mind and your spiritual consciousness work together in tandem; it can align you with your deeper Self, with your own inner compass, helping guide you to find your own North Star.

What Are You Ready to Accept?

“Before you can do what you want,

You must know what you do.”

A therapist shared this quote with me many years ago, from a psychologist I am unable to find online today to attribute the statement to. Such wisdom here. As I contemplate the principle of Acceptance this month in pursuit of a larger quest for understanding how to manifest and sustain true happiness, I have realized so far that one of the things I do that limits happiness is to accept things as they are, for the most part, but without clearly expressing what I am READY to accept; that is, how much more abundance I am ready to allow in order to open my heart and consciousness with a greater capacity. At the same time, I am also realizing this month how we may also need to be clear about what we are NOT willing or able to accept, either in ourselves or our outer world of relations and life conditions.

What am I / are you READY to accept? I invite you to compose a list of positive affirmations (one or more actually) of the form:

I am READY TO ACCEPT ____________.

For example, I will share a small portion from my own list.

I am READY TO ACCEPT:

• Full responsibility for my own choices.
• A greater appreciation of Beauty, daily.
• The freedom to establish and define boundaries.
• The ability to communicate honestly.
• The capacity to realize my creative and spiritual goals.
• The time needed for stepping up.
• Abundance from all endeavors.
• Greater joy and gratitude in the Moment.
• Daily progress toward Fulfillment: health, wealth, wisdom, happiness
• humility, purity, vision

images are from pixabay.com

So, what are YOU ready to accept or receive?

Stephen Hawking from the Other Side (or, What’s Love Got to Do With It?)

This year we are exploring and pursuing our dreams here at Better Endings. Each month I invite you to put forth a deep personal question that relates to your high spiritual quest, let’s say, for it pertains to your greatest sense of mission or life purpose, in this life or beyond.

After posing your question (week 1) I encourage you to pay attention to and record your nightly dreams (week 2), then to contemplate your waking dreams and emerging insights about your question (week 3), so by the end of the month (week 4) you can compose/ write a Better Endings story or scenario about how best to incorporate what you have learned into your future Life Path.

I am excited this week from a dream I had yesterday morning (4/9) and to reflect on how it pertains to my own monthly personal question (but, please use your own): What’s Love Got to Do With It? (or, Does/ How Can Love Matter?)

In my dream I am at a campus of—truly—Higher Learning (n.b., always use present tense in recalling your dream). First I am visiting a sports field where teams dressed in white and azure blue are playing a game akin to soccer except they use thought impulses to propel or to counter the ‘ball’ along the field a to goal area. A middle-aged appearing man approaches the field to observe the game with us from the right. I think to myself, ‘Is that Stephen Hawking?’—from his shock of hair though it is reddish here, and from his lithe step…until I realize this man is not in a wheelchair, which throws me at first.

Then I wheel/ drive a wheeled chair vehicle to carry a friend (woman, semitic appearing) to a special meal event. (This part was so important in my dreaming that it had an instant replay so I would be sure to recall it on waking.) The guest of honor at this honorary meal was indeed Stephen Hawking! This time he appeared more like I would envision him though he was seated upright and without any wheelchair or speech problems.

The people who had organized and were hosting this special event are two of the greatest spiritual leaders I have been fortunate to know: Luisa and Gordon (last names not used here for their privacy), who are superb leaders with a spiritual group I have been associated with in Colorado. Several other guests at the table include a couple of other folks from that group and some special, once famous bright thinkers who have ‘passed on.’

Hawking shares a new insight he has gained since translating his form into the higher planes with the death of his physical form. Luisa observes that the principle he is describing could help ‘the Poor’ (though she qualifies that she is not yet sure if she would support such use for the sake of wanting people to strengthen rather than being dependent on quick solutions). Hawking agrees. He says that ‘students’ can, ‘even now’ (i.e. in the Physical, I surmise) use this principle to create abundance to meet their immediate needs, by manifesting through some sort of feedback loop effect, “reflecting (thought? spirit?) back on itself.” This statement is so astounding and exciting to me in the ‘dream’ that I wake up immediately on hearing this (btw, a good way to remember an important lucid dream message is to train yourself to wake up right then).

So, “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” Everything. My bigger question about Love this month is ‘(How) Can Love Matter?’ which itself more deeply asks: Is there (after all) a meaning and purpose or positive results from living this (i.e. a particular) lifetime? As Love Is All, the basic fabric of the Universe and all things and Spirit Itself that fills such universe (my view), What/How Can Love Matter (“in the End”)?

In this dream of Stephen Hawking continuing to grow and share his uniquely gifted insight from Beyond in an after this lifetime context, well then, Wow!

Love/ Life/ It CAN and often DOES Matter, Very Much!

A lifetime of experience is not wasted and provides spacetime for developing or honing awareness and, hopefully, wisdom. We are unfolding this individualized awareness and character not just in a single lifetime (my belief includes the assumption of reincarnation to the point of eventually transcending even that); and not only in our current bodies that carry us along for a life cycle, but beyond that as well.

images are from pixabay.com

It comes down to what we can do with the love we have expressed and the awareness gained in a lifetime of focused experience. The old adage, “you can’t take it with you” does not abide here. True enough, we do not take or physical body nor our material acquisitions with us as we translate from this lifetime into the next/ other dimensions. But we do retain our individualized consciousness as a facet of our higher Soul awareness, a spark of divine wisdom, a molecule in the creative fountainhead, from the Ocean of love/life force Itself (my limited view, of course).

So, goodbye to Despair! This has been my deeper concern over the past few monthly themes. (This) lifetime can/ does/ shall matter, for Love is All, the source and basis of all transcendent awareness. This reminds me of a useful insight:

“Soul is a happy entity.

IT cannot be any other way.”

(Paul Twitchell)

I welcome YOUR Story and Comments

As Strange as Fiction / Let Each Breath Count!

This morning (from Thursday) while en route to work, I had a sort of deja vu or, more accurately, an other dimensional flash of awareness. I saw my life as Story, with me as an actor engaged in acting out the script my Higher Self, let’s say, has composed for this leg of the journey. t reminds me of how we live our lives as Story; perhaps at least humans (similarly as all sentient beings, I assume) should be classified as Homo Narrativus.

My new book, Your Life Path (see right panel; available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble), is all about helping YOU to review your Life Story as mythic, in terms of chapters, themes, ensemble character arcs, and plotline.  The (free) Life Path Mapping Toolkit (downloadable also from the right panel) provides life mapping and journalling activities.

My epiphany on Thursday reminded me that life is (at least) as strange as fiction–as fiction is based upon our lives, primarily.  So regarding my present scene, set, character actions, conditions and relations as part of the narrative flow can help me to accept and follow the narrative arc set out before me. Or, as Homo Narrativus is both an Author as well as Character, I could choose to revise or redirect the plotline at any Moment.  Here is the launchpad for creating “better endings.”

One of my favorite film storylines is Stranger than Fiction. In this dramatic comic fantasy, a tax auditor played by Will Ferrell looks in the mirror while shaving one morning and wakes to the realization that he is actually a character in some (other) author’s novel. The Author, played by Emma Thompson, has not yet completed her story about the Auditor; she is stuck in a writer’s block mode. Should she, as is usual for her stories, kill off the main character (the Auditor) at the end for having lived an unrealized, unfulfilling life; or, not? Meanwhile the Auditor must figure out who he is in the story and what genre of story he is in, be it tragic or comic. He seeks the help of an English Professor, played by Dustin Hoffman, to help him figure that part out.

See this film  Stranger than Fiction for the rest; I do not want to be a spoiler here. It is well worth seeing and mulling over for yourself.

So for this final week of the month, here is a Better Endings scenario for my own monthly contemplation seed, ‘What Difference Does It Make?’ (I invite you to write or think about your own Better Ending outlook for a personal question or concern you find yourself contemplating this month.)

images are from pixabay.com

Let Each Breath Count

I will title my Better Endings story this month, “Let Each Breath Count.”  Who knows, for any of us, how much longer our current lifetime storyline is to continue? What I do have some measure of control over is, how shall I love and breathe through every moment.

Through fencing (see previous post) , I learned from a coach to “remember to exhale!” (‘Et la!’ one can think while exhaling and landing an attack.)  Exhaling while lunging with a fencing foil attack actually lengthens your stride enough so that your ‘point’ is more likely to reach the receding target.

My Better Endings mantra to carry forward from this month is “Let Each Breath Count!” Every moment is a potential punctuation mark or Turning Point in my life journey; an unconscious or better, a mindful act of choice. Generally I set out intentionally, so following through on immediate daily plans is the correct choice. But when I reach a roadblock or a pregnant pause of some sort, it is helpful to review and possibly redirect my action. I may benefit from revising my goals or recognizing an unexpected opportunity to advance (or retreat) in a new direction.

So as I set out on the next act with relocating and moving into the next phase of my post-retirement chapter, I aim to remember how my life story intersects with others’. I aim to be flexible and responsive. I do not want to go forth just in a “Present” tense bubble that carries my past habits forward unexamined. I claim the freedom and the obligation to navigate intentionally my Life Path boat, as it were, so that Living My Dream, Now means that my personal dream remains flexible, expansive, and adaptive to the concerns and opportunities of every moment, for everyone involved, with every breath.

With this rededication, May the Blessings Be!

I welcome YOUR Story or Comments!

 

 

Reading the Tea Leaves (Pay Attention to Your Signs)

“Not everything has meaning!”
(my college fencing coach Roxanne, en route to a competition in NYC)

Later, to myself: “No, but anything can!”

I am a huge believer in using outer signs for listening to and following inner guidance. I have found through long experience that so long as I reflect deeply and act in a balanced way in response to ‘waking dreams’ that catch my attention while I am mulling over some question or pursuing some meaningful goal, good things follow.

Responding to outer signs can help to keep the flow of communication open between Spirit or the Universe, Inner Guides or whatever you prefer to acknowledge, and your own higher awareness. The more you can progress in tandem with your inner nudges or guidance, the easier it becomes over time to wend your way through challenging situations and key decisions; and, life is more fun!

So what are your ‘tea leaves’ telling you this month about some meaningful question you are pondering? Pay attention to the slightest waking dreams or outer signs: random seeming thoughts or insights you may have; statements that stand out to you from a passerby or on tv or in your reading; roadside messages on signs that you pass, or even bumper stickers that catch your eye… Any of these or several taken together could offer you a breakthrough insight on your problem or query.

Some people like to set up an image or a specific object that they will see if their potential decision is correct.

If you want to try this, you can set up a sign of affirmation for your question that would not be common or likely for you to see, and you can set a time frame as well for encountering your sign. When I was working on my final book proposal for Your Life Path (see right panel), I set up the sign of a blue butterfly if I was going to be able to find a publisher. Right around the time my wonderful literary agent began circulating the book proposal, I started seeing blue butterflies everywhere. This encouraged me with every step of the proposal and publishing process. Now I have several items in my home with blue butterflies on them to remind me that this book process has initiated a longterm project, with much yet to come for me to fully realize its potentials in terms of writing and service.

images are from pixabay.com

What are you asking to better understand or what decision are you weighing? Pay attention to YOUR outer signs; they are all around!

What Then? (Week Two: the Dreaming)

For Week Two of our monthly Better Endings process this year, I ask you to reflect on your dreams or inner guidance with respect to a monthly personal question or quest.

I have been dreaming a lot this past two weeks since posing the question, “What Then?” In one dream a friend standing behind me introduces me to a couple of potential new friends in a new location. As I am in transition already, moving gradually to my new home in a new town for me, this seems quite likely! I took note of the appearance of the two potential new friends so I might recognize them when or if this comes about outwardly.

Another dream shows me (from my dream journal): “approaching a space, like a hole on a white membrane, that if I were to enter, it ‘would go on forever… like a wormhole’.” It felt like a purification portal of some sort–I woke up wondering what it would mean to enter into that space and sensed it would be “transformative” and that it indicates a passage to embracing or becoming/ joining with “all that IS.”

images are from pixabay.com

These two dreams taken together both are positive indicators that the new direction I have already embarked upon is a forward motion, advancing into new potentials. A step into an apparent void, perhaps, yet clearly full of positive potentials. The wormhole-like image felt as though to enter would be like a death or a near-death experience. Yet it was placed before me as what is next, something I must enter into, a natural passage of spiritual development even though it is a mysterious movement into a void or the Unknown.

Ready, Set, I Accept!

What are YOUR dreams telling you this week or month about some deep personal question you are contemplating? I encourage you to keep a dream journal and to review it at least once a week. I had forgotten the “wormhole” dream until reviewing my dream journal. (Interesting, though, how I used a wormhole picture in last week’s blog post when I first established my monthly quest for understanding.)

Dream On!

What Then?

“They went from world to world,

and each time they lost the world they left, 

lost it in time dilation, their friends

getting old and dying while they were in NAFAL flight.

If there were a way to live in their own time,

and yet move among the worlds,

they wanted to try it. …

(Ursula LeGuin, “The Shubies’ Story”)

I envisioned. Wrote, edited,published, prepared for the Big Move, left… to live my dream, Now! Arrived at one place, then searched for the next. Found it. A refuge for me and my pet family. Moving, again.

But, why all this? Or as W. B. Yeats once asked:

“What Then?”

His chosen comrades thought at school
He must grow a famous man;
He thought the same and lived by rule,
All his twenties crammed with toil;
‘What then?’ sang Plato’s ghost.  ‘What then?’

Everything he wrote was read,
After certain years he won
Sufficient money for his need,
Friends that have been friends indeed;
‘What then?’ sang Plato’s ghost.  ‘ What then?’

All his happier dreams came true –
A small old house, wife, daughter, son,
Grounds where plum and cabbage grew,
poets and Wits about him drew;
‘What then.?’ sang Plato’s ghost.  ‘What then?’

The work is done,’ grown old he thought,
‘According to my boyish plan;
Let the fools rage, I swerved in naught,
Something to perfection brought’;
But louder sang that ghost, ‘What then?’

I once posed a similar or perhaps it was the same question to a Philosopher, my college mentor, Dr Antoinette Patterson in Buffalo, NY.  I was glum that day.

“So, what?”

I asked Toni in her office, there for an independent study session on a topic we had agreed to, the ‘philosophy of Silence’. 

“Take out a pencil and a piece of paper, and write down

two words and a question mark:

So   What ?   Your assignment by next week

is to answer that question.”

Bemused by my mentor’s response to what I thought was a futile question, I went off to seek for answers.  I read an essay by Emerson called “The Transparent Eyeball” and many poems and essays about silence, thinking somehow that must connect. Who was I beyond my embodied personality; what was Life beyond the day to day back and forth of conversations and classes?

When I went back to Toni’s office for our session that next Wednesday, she was waiting for me. After I shared about what I had been reading and journaling about, having not really answered the question at all, she took me to a far corner of her office where she had set up a card table with a large, empty sheet of sketch paper she had laid across it. She had me write “WH-” words on every corner of the page:

What? 

Why?                                            Where?

When?

Dr. P. then used a pencil to draw connections between these WH- words, allowing the  lines of connection to intersect at the center of the page where she drew a blank circle and wrote in that space one word:

W  H  A  N

There before us on the page was our answer to the proverbial question.

So What?

Whan.

In that moment in that office on that one day, nothing seemed clearer than that one discovery: the answer to every question about meaning or purpose, about Why/ Where/ When/ What resolves to a singular unity: WHAN!

As we discussed what is WHAN, I realized it meant not to worry about Why? or what Matters. Life IS, therefore life is meaningful of Itself alone; and no amount of thinking or wishing or proving or disproving would ever have any effect upon that which simply IS. Whan! and so Life flows forth and I must with it, wherever It may lead.

images are from pixabay.com

So this is my monthly Better Endings life question to answer for myself this February:

What Then?

I sense this is the natural follow-up question to the discovery of Whan!

I welcome YOUR Story and Comments. I encourage you to form a personal monthly question to explore with your dreams and contemplation this month.