This is strange.
It’s like to fully embody what I want to express as my life’s work, I need to actually embody my developmental journey as one within my inner terrain, as though I was actually exploring and expanding my inner world(view).
So I would be relaying real experiences but relaying them like a fictional story, similar to how a myth is a fictional story that relays truths about life.
Where is this coming from?
Wait, does this have something to do with me reading about how Alis Anagnostakis, a coach for vertical development, is exploring fantasy writing?
Perhaps. Maybe that’s what I’m trying to do. But my work seems more transdisciplinary in that I’m wanting to create something within the space between all these things as an integration of them, rather than exploring them as separate domains. In doing so, it feels like it would integrate all of the knowledge and experiences I’ve gained throughout my life in turn, as per the following statement, thus letting my life come full circle.
From playing within imaginary worlds to imagining a world of play.
Wait. That reminds me of a quote at the end of the book The Cluetrain Manifesto which was the catalyst for me exploring a new way of working, as well as the future of work, over two decades ago.
Imagine a world where everyone was constantly learning, a world where what you wondered was more interesting than what you knew, and curiosity counted for more than certain knowledge. Imagine a world where what you gave away was more valuable than what you held back, where joy was not a dirty word, where play was not forbidden after your eleventh birthday. Imagine a world in which the business of business was to imagine worlds people might actually want to live in someday. Imagine a world created by the people, for the people not perishing from the earth forever.
Yeah. Imagine that.
The question though is does one fully immerse oneself within this liminal, imaginative space or does one just touch upon it with the occasional keyword to bridge the gap.
For example, as I’ve expressed before, I love Richard Barrett’s quote below because of the dungeon keyword.
Only when you reach the higher stages of development, when you feel safe in the harbor of your soul, will your ego be willing to surrender the keys to the dungeonwhere your darkest fears and unmet needs are locked.
Richard Barrett, Evolutionary Coaching
As an example of what I mean, in terms of vertical development and expressing the three primary plateaus of the mind as (per Lisa Laskow Lahey and Robert Kegan’s work), below are what I’ve named these three mindsets, as to me they mythically embody what I feel like their experiences are like. And I even created a map in the past to show this (using a mapping service called Inkarnate).
The Walled City = Socialized Mind
The Borderlands = Self-Authoring Mind
The Great Wilderness = Self-Transforming Mind
For example, The Walled City as an embodiment of a Socialized Mind is about fitting in within the roles, beliefs, and expectations of society to survive, thus allowing you to be accepted and feel like you belong to it. So there are lots of guards walking about it covered in masked helms and medieval armour which embodies the highly defensive nature of the environment where people aren’t very vulnerable and open to one another. In addition, everyone there fills conventional societal roles, in the sense that people try to avoid stepping out of place.
But as an example of where I’m at right now, I could express something like the following for my own journey.
I’ve been taking deeper and deeper forays into The Great Wilderness on almost a daily basis over the past month but the complex dense foliage is making it difficult for me to find and carry in the gear I need to setup a base of operations. Or at least so I thought. The past few days, I’ve decided to leave behind a lot of my gear as it’s just seems like unnecessary dead weight now. Because of this, I feel much more agile and able to traverse the tricky but wondrous terrain here. In doing so, I feel like I’m ready to start building a sanctuary here in the wilderness, perhaps even one in the tree tops, so at to become more acclimatized to its environment.
Why am I doing this though, you might be wondering?
Well I’m not alone in thinking about this. For example, I heard Susanne Cook-Greuter say in a video that she wants to do something similar, using I believe the Watership Down setting of rabbits to help people better understand vertical development and thus make it more accessible to more people.
I mean this is the crux of it, as I’ve said before. Explaining vertical development only gets you so far. You have to really experience it to truly understand it. And that’s from someone like myself who has spent at least a decade exploring it but feels like they’ve barely touched the surface of it.
That’s funny though. These thoughts just made me think of when I played Dungeons & Dragons as a young adult. It’s pretty much the same thing. You can explain what a role-playing game is to others but to really understand it, you need to dive in, try to play it, and actually experience it for yourself.
I guess that’s what I’m trying to achieve here. I want to create a playful way for people to bring to the surface their own inner adventure of their lives as a vertical development process, so that there’s a framework that people can more easily share their experience with, particularly if they’re familiar with RPGs or MMORPGs. And in doing so, it effectively creates a peer-based support group for the process which is effectively a “guild” that is a community of practice (and inquiry).
All that said though, I guess that’s the answer to my questions above. For me to truly know which approach to take, I actually have to take action and experience them both. Only then will I know for sure.
This embodies the meaning of the maze within the hero’s journey. You actually have to make choices and go down certain paths to determine if they’re dead-ends or not.
This also reveals the primary difference between how life is a role-playing game and how traditional role-playing games work. In traditional role-playing games, you choose and know your role and class before you start the game. Within life, you actually have to adventure and live your life first to understand your unique role and class. This is similar to young adults trying to figure out their passion and purpose before they’ve lived their life (because society places expectations on them to do so). It just doesn’t work that way though. You have start living your life first to reflectivelyfigure out your passion and purpose afterwards.
That said though, it’s also recognizing that you’ve already been playing within this role-playing game called Life for most of your life, without fully being aware of it.
Imagine that!