Dear Reader,
Six years ago, I started this blog, Intuitive Cartography, as a way of discussing what I felt were some of the most important issues of our time. Who are we? What does it mean to be human? What are we capable of? What does the inner journey help us discover, and is that journey worth taking???
Today, more than ever, these same issues ring true for me as being vital, crucial, for us to explore together.
What we discover on the inner journey, I believe, has a greater opportunity to impact our outer existence than any other course of action available to us. Further, I believe that what we discover within is meaningless unless we bring it back to the surface, share it with the world and apply it in our daily lives.
I have been re-reading some of my early posts, and just for fun I am reposting one I published six years ago today. It is actually the second post I published. The first one, titled Intuitive Cartography, you can read here.
The anniversary post below provides a simple framework for looking within.
Read on, and let the journey begin anew!
Originally posted on March 7, 2009
“Dear Reader,
What is most important to you in life? What makes you happy, and what do you long for? These questions, and our attempts to answer them, move us forward on our paths. Such questions – the great questions – help us explore who we are and how we make and find meaning.
In times of profound change, we find ourselves grappling with shifting perceptions of what is real, and important, and true, on both an individual and a universal level. It is easy to feel dissatisfied with what we see around us. Or frustrated. Or confused. How we answer these questions provides us with a way forward, a way to consider and make the choices we face every day.
As question even our most fundamental perceptions of the world and how we do things, one simple but powerful framework for inquiry is this simple structure: body, heart, mind and spirit. I find, on my own path and in my work with clients as an intuitive and a teacher of heart centered living, that we often gravitate to one or a few of these areas. We tend to lack experience, or awareness, or confidence, in one or more of the remaining areas. We rarely create balance among them, but isn’t balance ultimately the goal of a fulfilling, integrated life?
How we define the very nature of each area is constantly changing. In truth, they can’t be separated; we are discovering new ways every day in which heart and mind, body and spirit are deeply connected. To facilitate our own insight and growth, we can at least talk about them separately. These four aspects of our being are the foundational columns of my work.
Lets take a quick look:
Body – Your physical being, repository of emotional content, sender, receiver and container of energy, partial home for your mind and your spirit.
Heart – A coordinator for many of your most important physical functions, energetic and electromagnetic powerhouse of your being, major communicator with your brain, partial base for your mind, center for your emotions and the doorway to your spirit.
Mind – Regulator of your intellect and ego, powerful coordinator of memory, emotion, imagination, intuition and rational thought.
Spirit – Your essential, unchanging nature, your spark of divinity, your sense of something bigger than your conscious awareness of self.
Pretty simple, right?! Well yes and no. But this thumbnail overview is a start – and a way of navigating those big questions at the beginning of my post.
By the way – how would you answer those questions? What is most important to you in life right now? What delights you? And in which of the areas above – body, heart, mind and spirit – do you feel most at ease, most at home as who you really are?
Over the next several months I will look closely at each of these areas, at how our perceptions and understanding of each is shifting, and how new ways of seeing and experiencing might help us live more joyful, rich, and balanced lives. I encourage you to respond, to ask questions of your own, and – as much as you are willing – to help create this dialogue about a new way of being in the world.
I honor your loving heart,
John”
When I was very young my dad was my hero, the man who I wanted to be most like. As the years passed we grew farther apart, then closer, then farther and finally closer. I was with him in Quebec for the last few years of his life.
What I thought I most clearly about him in the very early years was that he knew everything. That’s what I wanted for myself. I have probably come as far from achieving that goal as he did but because of that goal the path of my life was drawn.
Hopefully two thirds of the way down the road (or less) I find your thoughts, as expressed in your blogs shed a little light which both shines upon and reveals shadows.
Keep writing. I’ll keep reading.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment Brian! And for sharing about your dad. All kinds of things can help us create the path of our lives and regardless of whether we are reacting against our parents way, or emulating it, or following a different catalyst altogether, perhaps the most important thing is that we start, take the steps and keep going. It sounds like you have done that. I will look forward to your comments in the future!