.   Emotions can be dark and difficult places to navigate.  Personal experience provides the color and structure of our Innerlandscape. No two are alike.  Moving out of your comfort zone, forces you to incorporate new ways of seeing. It is for you, the courageous seeker, to pick up the tools, carve out the space, learn the language, and explore the map of your Innerlandscape. Become the artist of your life. Being fully present with your experience, your emotions and your breath is helpful, but I have found the intellect is essential to my ability to organize and cope in the daily world.   To this end, I have created this map, the four practices and the self questions to understand the cause, history and the possible resolution of dissatisfaction and unhappiness.   This map shows how complicated behaviors and thoughts cause us suffering which might be understood and resolved. Self Questions and the Four Practices guide you deeper into both unknown and familiar territory of body, mind, emotion and spirit. 

 To visualize this map, imagine a compass, the universal symbol of the circle with the cross through it with rays pointing to the four directions of movement and growth. The symbol of the circle represents wholeness, containment and continuity. To encircle is to protect and honor.  The cross with the four points indicates direction and focus, it is a guiding force.  For many people, it may feel appropriate to put a square around this configuration to provide additional structure, form and grounding.  Much of this understanding I owe to the study of the Native American Medicine Wheel, but the symbol of the circle with the four directions is seen across cultures as a guide to inner and outer exploration. The Medicine Wheel is a teaching honored throughout many Native American tribes as a path of understanding.  Each of seven directions, north, east, south and west, above, below, and within, are accorded special significance and teachings.  

In an interestingly similar diagram, early pioneers in psychology used this diagram for personality traits.

The four pointed star with a spiral in the center as symbol of guidance for Innerlandscape work. The process of self exploration may be imagined as a spiral always changing, never-ending.  The spiral is represented throughout our universe from the double helix of our DNA to the swirling Milky Way. For the process of self growth, we follow the spiral into the center of our being. We will approach the map and the four directions using the four practices: words, movement, art and silence.  We will clear the mind of words, then, free the body with movement; we will settle into our art to engage our spirit. As the final practice for each direction, take time in silence and meditation to assimilate the issues of each direction and integrate them into the whole.  Please try to complete all four exercises before moving onto the next direction.  

  If you find that it is easier for you to start with art or movement, please feel free to change the order.  I encourage you to find the manner it works best for you.  I am a person, who has many thoughts. I find by allowing their expression, I can move to deeper levels.  Others of us will need to move, dance or draw before the rest of us awakens and participates. Neurolinguistic Programming, NLP, refers to these systems of communication and processing as kinesthetic, visual and auditory.  You can hear them through the choice of words or metaphor.  Each of us uses all of the systems to process and communicate, but we often have one that is our favorite.  Visual references create a picture and may include references to colors and form, light and shadow.  Phrases may include see it is like this; imagine this; picture that; the way I see it.   Kinesthetic references create a mood, feeling or sensation and may include warmth, cold, hard soft, feelings, sensations, movement. Phrases may include It feels like; it is caught in my throat; it got me right in the stomach; my sense of this… Auditory references refer to sound, noise, rhythm or melody.  Phrases may include, it sounds like this; that doesn’t ring true; the way I hear it.  As a clinician, healer, teacher, parent or friend, it is always important to listen closely to our client, student, friend or child to hear the system from which they are communicating in order to make a deeper connection.  The same is true when you are listening to yourself.  Which system do you favor?   .

 The work of C.G Jung deeply influenced my understanding and respect for symbolic communication within the psyche.  Understanding your own symbols, can provide a gateway to deeper meaning that may elude you in your daily routine.   I repeatedly noticed in all of my studies  that when you supposed to be getting a message, it is repeated in several areas of your life.  Simple hint:  Wherever you have the strongest emotions is the best place to start.   These symbols often appear at night in dreamtime, but they can also occur through causal conversation, advertising, books or other media.  They are colors, numbers, images, thoughts or phrases that seem to follow you around begging for your attention.   They may be people or things you haven’t thought about in years and, then, all of a sudden, they appear everywhere you look.   In your story is there one theme that is consistently repeated? Are there colors, numbers, animals, shapes or symbols that appear in your daily life or dreamtime?

 Draw a circle with the intersecting cross.  The circle will be the container for all of the material in each direction of the cross.  Fill in each of the directions with thoughts or images. You are at the center of the symbol and there are lessons available to you in each direction.  If you would like to focus on one issue, you may choose to write that issue in the circle and use the rest of this guide and its questions to concentrate on the nature of that issue. 

Innerlandscape Medicine Wheel 

For a blank Medicine Wheel chart to print click here

Although growth movement and change are cyclic and continuous, if you prefer , you can do this record keeping in a linear manner

PRESENTING ISSUES AS SEEN THROUGH

WORKING WITH SYMBOLS AND IMAGES

There are a number of appendices at the end of this guide to help you understand the symbols you  may encounter.  Click here to review the Appendices. There are no right and wrong interpretations.  Be sure to ask before offering your knowledge to another.  The psyche requires respect and gentleness a misinterpretation made inadvertently can cause a rift in the bond of trust.   The goal is happiness and balance .  If a your imagery is all fire and energy consider meditative  images of earth for grounding and manifestation or water for cooling. Conversely, a feeling of being too grounded or "stuck in the mud"  may be helped by a lift (air) or spark (fire).  If this doesn't make sense, at first ,be patient.  Symbol and metaphor are all around.  As you listen with increased awareness, it becomes more natural and easier. 

 CONTINUE TO CHAPTER VI