Learning from a Living Image

In my last two posts on Self-Trust (here for Part I and here for Part II) you prob­a­bly noticed a strong empha­sis on images and metaphors. In Part I the image of the riv­er and fer­ry­man are dom­i­nant, lead­ing in Part II to an explo­ration of the image of the tem­ple. I have used these images to sup­port a shift in focus from the con­quest of fear to engage­ment with per­son­al mys­tery, with the fun­da­men­tal goal of lib­er­at­ing per­son­al poten­tials, espe­cial­ly the poten­tial to lead “in exposed places.” 

If you are not famil­iar with the use of images in this way, it is easy to have a reac­tion — either to feel invit­ed into a very dif­fer­ent world, or to be put off by the “illog­i­cal” nature of the process. As a coach, I have fre­quent­ly found such images to be espe­cial­ly pow­er­ful in the efforts of clients to know them­selves and gain some form of lib­er­a­tion from blocks and inner bar­ri­ers, espe­cial­ly when con­ver­sa­tion alone has not seemed to do the trick. For exam­ple, I once worked with an Exec­u­tive Direc­tor lev­el client who expressed con­sid­er­able anger with the peo­ple who report­ed to her. Our work togeth­er seemed to go nowhere until I asked her to draw a pic­ture of her life. She drew col­or­ful fields, one inside the next with high fences between them all. As we stud­ied and explored this draw­ing some impor­tant aspects of her past came to light, includ­ing a pri­vate and secret promise she had made to a deceased child, a promise that she had nev­er shared with any­one. Once that came into the open, many oth­er impor­tant con­nec­tions appeared, includ­ing a par­tic­u­lar­ly crit­i­cal key to her agi­ta­tion with the peo­ple who report­ed to her. Under­stand­ing the image led direct­ly to relief and changes in her own pat­terns of lead­er­ship behavior. 

If you are a skep­ti­cal about such process­es, I don’t blame you. But I also have seen some very remark­able things hap­pen when peo­ple allow images to come for­ward. A client once told me — after the fact — that he had intend­ed to under­mine my request for a pic­ture of his sit­u­a­tion. He set out to sab­o­tage the process by just “scrib­bling out any­thing” on a piece of paper. When he was done, how­ev­er, he broke into tears because despite his con­scious effort to derail the exer­cise he found that he had drawn a sym­bol­ic pic­ture of his fam­i­ly mem­bers and their rela­tion­ships — a series of cir­cles and “vines” that revealed the painful dis­tances among them all. In yet anoth­er case, the client saw how an oth­er­wise beau­ti­ful­ly well-ordered draw­ing had been “marred” by a blotch of dark-col­ored form­less scratch­es in one part of her work. The blotch, she quick­ly real­ized, was her own dis­ap­point­ment with her­self and her job sit­u­a­tion and how that was mar­ring her life. This, in turn, gave her insight about the back pain she had been expe­ri­enc­ing and also her own col­lu­sion in the prob­lems she want­ed to solve. These inter­pre­ta­tions of draw­ings were not the result of going to some sort of dream cat­a­logue to find out what this or that sym­bol meant. Water or hors­es or images of fly­ing or pure­ly abstract forms don’t always mean the same thing. They mean only what they do only in the con­text of a par­tic­u­lar indi­vid­ual and his or her sit­u­a­tion. It is the per­son who unlocks their significance. 

Such images can show up through a vari­ety of meth­ods. They may emerge from med­i­ta­tion — dis­ci­plined or freeform, from writ­ing fairy tales, from art forms such as col­lage, poet­ry, sculp­ture, or dance. Some­times the image has an imme­di­ate­ly appar­ent mean­ing, such as the fields and fences of the the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, but just as often they rep­re­sent less obvi­ous, more ambigu­ous mes­sages that are equal­ly pow­er­ful. The fact that they do not explain them­selves eas­i­ly caus­es us to think about them, won­der about their inte­ri­or mean­ing over time. If you want to learn more about such process­es, I sug­gest tak­ing a look at the sec­tions on active imag­i­na­tion in Robert A. John­son’s clas­sic study, Inner Work: Using Dreams & Active Imag­i­na­tion for Per­son­al Growth. For even greater under­stand­ing of the roots of the notion that “psy­che is image,” access Jun­gian psy­chol­o­gy and mod­ern deriv­a­tives, espe­cial­ly this well thought out col­lec­tion of excerpts from the work of psy­chol­o­gist, James Hill­man.

Now back to rivers and tem­ples. It is an inter­est­ing exer­cise — and you might want to try it — to draw some sym­bols for your­self in the con­text of shift­ing your own per­spec­tives. You can do this by first imag­in­ing the obsta­cle that you are fac­ing, a place that you expe­ri­ence hes­i­ta­tion, anx­i­ety or fear and that you sense lim­its your poten­tials. Once you have done this, then take that same ener­gy and “con­vert” it to an image of a tem­ple, where the tem­ple rep­re­sents the fear trans­formed to awe. I want to empha­size right away that draw­ing in this con­text requires no artis­tic skill what­so­ev­er. In fact, if you do have artis­tic skill, the exer­cise may be a lit­tle less use­ful for you. This isn’t about an ele­gant pic­ture; it is about the expe­ri­ence of see­ing some­thing that is inside you, that is part of your inner world. 

Let me share a per­son­al exam­ple. If I were to draw an image of my fear it would look pret­ty much like an abyss or bot­tom­less pit. A big dark mass. (I used to think and feel exact­ly this way about my finances — and it’s still easy to feel that dark empti­ness doing my tax­es!) When I con­vert that ener­gy to awe. I get some­thing like what you see below, which I con­struct­ed using Pow­er­point and Pho­to­shop, tools that work for me just as well as pen­cils, pens or paint­brush­es. (Click on the image to make it larg­er, if you like).

Look­ing at this image, what I see is that the ener­gy is still “hot” — there’s fire in this tem­ple — but there is also a god there, too. Sur­round­ing the tem­ple is the nat­ur­al world and a path that nat­u­ral­ly leads up float­ing steps to the inte­ri­or. When I see the god I expe­ri­ence the con­ver­sion of that fear­ful ener­gy to some­thing that reframes it as an awe­some mys­tery. I have objec­ti­fied it into a set of sym­bols, unique­ly mine, offer­ing a sense of tran­scen­dence. On the steps of this tem­ple is where I do my tax­es, write my books, con­front awk­ward sit­u­a­tions and mis­takes, and step out into the exposed space. It’s on those steps that I expe­ri­ence self-trust. As long as I am there I am not falling into any pits. The god is present and lit­er­al­ly “has my back.” There are moments, even, when I would say the god actu­al­ly speaks through me, a kind of radi­ant pres­ence, but this is def­i­nite­ly not some­thing I can make hap­pen. It’s simul­ta­ne­ous­ly hum­bling and strength­en­ing. What I sense at such moments is only that there is flow.

To be sure this is a very lit­er­al ren­di­tion of the trans­for­ma­tion of ener­gy. The image actu­al­ly does­n’t do any­thing beyond remind­ing me of inner coor­di­nates. It is a sym­bol, after all, not the thing itself. The image sim­ply helps get me lit­tle clos­er to a source of strength (trans­late that as self-trust) by point­ing to a sacred dimen­sion in the heart of the fear. That’s the key. The tem­ple image I have cre­at­ed is a pow­er­ful metaphor for an aspect of me that I can call upon when fear creeps in.

Why don’t you try this, and if you like, send me your thoughts about the expe­ri­ence of cre­at­ing such an image, along with a jpg of your draw­ings? It will be fas­ci­nat­ing to post and com­pare a few images here. To do this give your­self some qui­et time. Use what­ev­er medi­um suits you: paper, pen, paint­brush, com­put­er graph­ics, etc. Try to focus on a sit­u­a­tion or chal­lenge that ignites anx­i­ety in you, that you can actu­al­ly feel just think­ing about it. Try to get to the very heart of that anx­i­ety. Allow what­ev­er image of that anx­i­ety to emerge. (A friend drew him­self as a lit­tle boy with a tow­er­ing robed and hood­ed fig­ure point­ing down at him). Then remind your­self that this image is not to be over­come but to be trans­formed. Allow instead an image of some kind of tem­ple, how­ev­er you define that term, to come to mind. See if you can get an approx­i­ma­tion of that down on paper (or cyber­pa­per) in some way, and send it along to me as a jpg. How did it feel to do this? What does the image mean to you? Let me know.

If you need inspi­ra­tion because you are not used to using images in this way, try googling images for fear and for tem­ples on the net. For exam­ple, as I was writ­ing this post I came across this stun­ning pho­to­graph of a tem­ple entrance by Craig Fer­gu­son.

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