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Date: 01/01/2014
  • Practices
  • Going Forth
  • Emerging Facilitators
  • Facilitators

Life Map

from chapter 10 of Coming Back to Life by Joanna Macy and Molly Brown; second edition, published 2014. Please acknowledge the source when you use any of these practices.

 

Time: 20-30 minutes

This simple and engrossing process can be counted on to yield a fresh perspective on one’s life, with unexpectedly appreciative insights into its valor and purpose. Integral to its value is the sharing at the end.

 

Method

Instructions from the guide: Taking pen and paper, draw a map of your life’s journey up to now. Let it flow like a stream in a wandering line around the page, from your birth in this lifetime to the present moment. Along the line draw symbols or pictures to convey significant events that enriched or redirected the course of your life and your sense of its purpose. When you get to the present, think of the different trajectories you are considering taking, and draw them in dotted lines out from the point of Now, each perhaps with its own icon or image.

 

After fifteen minutes, invite people to share their maps in small groups.

Contributor/Author: Joanna Macy & Molly Brown