Exploring with images
A few weeks back I was complaining to Naomi Dunford from IttyBiz that I had reached a stage in my life where I was just middle aged frumpy, with no online persona or presence. Dull, boring. Wondering how I was ever going to add video or get any of the spark I know how to create offline through facilitating experiences. (In case you are wondering, she suggested audio so you don’t have to look at me).
Shortly afterward I was having coffee with a colleague. She was telling me about thinking about me as she read the chapter about the explorer brand in the book, The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes
Now that I think about it, most of my prior businesses have had an explorer aspect to them. My first retail store was Quests End, a later one was Four Winds (bookstore specializing in healing, inspiration, and celebration). I created Soft Sculpture Environments (underwater scenes). My artwork often has themes of roots, doorways, passages.
It’s hard to imagine fully expressing the power of images through strictly audio. I figured I better start creating images to go with what I might want to talk about. That is how this new series of images and framing metaphor was born. This is the first image, the overview. I see it as describing the many paths we can take to explore the world. There are so many paths, it can be overwhelming if you don’t pick things to focus on.
I’m working on a small deck of images to be used in conjunction with a series of workbooks. I’m starting with these three areas; exploring me, my life, and my business. I can’t tell you all the details yet, since the images come first for me. I have been painting and capturing the visuals. I’m just starting to work on the words.
The Explorer Metaphor
I’ve been asking friends to help me explore the metaphor of exploration. I’m just fascinated by what they’re telling me. There has been a lot of talk about preparation. At first this surprised me, but as I thought about it, I realized it’s as big a part as the adventure itself. I’ve started to organize the various aspects of being an explorer into categories. I see a correlation to the three focus areas.
Exploring Me
- Qualities of explorers
- What motivates us to quest?
- Who do we hang out with?
Exploring My Life What it takes to prepare for a journey.
- How are we traveling?
- Who is going with us?
- What are we bringing with us?
- What do we want to bring back?
- What knowledge is required?
Exploring my Business How do we share what we have learned with the world?
- What gifts have we returned with that can be shared with others?
- How can we make the world a better place?
- How have we been changed?
- How can we guide others?
What else do you think about around Exploration and Explorers?
I’m gathering all sorts of ideas about explorers. Got any to share?
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I’ve thought of my self as an explorer as well, and probably for as long as I can remember. I think a lot about journeys, and as a geographer I’ve certainly been especially attracted to the image of the female explorer and the various biographies I’ve read of them or of people who have tried to retrace their steps.
But in spite of my profession and my belief that it’s a good thing, I’m not one to prepare very much for an exploration. I remember one long weekend vacation where we just got in the car and drove west, with no destination in mind, no reservations, no plans, especially. That is my ultimate escape, I guess. OK, so we ended up in Pittsburgh, but it’s a place I had never seen before and I found much to recommend the place.
Betsy
“so central to who I am and what I do that I couldn’t even see it.”
…oooh! Love this. I guess that’s the point of internal *exploration*…to find these things that are unique to each of us but seem so basic that we don’t think of them as unique at all. Something to do with not being able to truly observe ourselves since we’re inside ourselves. Whoa.
Thanks Christine! And I love, love the metaphor of exploration of course
@Betsy Hansel:
The preparation thing surprised me at first also, since I like you, really enjoy spontaneous adventures. When I thought more about it though, I really do prepare in certain ways. Researching things for example. If I am interested in a topic, I’m on google in a flash looking at what information is out there.
Any particular favorite biographies of women explorers? I’d love to read some.
@Eileen:
You mean like soul sleuthing? Yea, so who we are it takes a while to see. Maybe we’ll have a detective agency in our exploration adventure?
Christine,
When I think of exploration, I think of Kyeli’s post about being an edgewalker.
“I realized how badly I want to forge my own way, to walk my own walk, to sing my own heartsong. I realized how amazingly afraid I am, and cherished my fear and my self. Honoring the fear makes it easier to work with myself instead of against myself (or in spite of myself). And I realized I was ready.
I forgave myself for being afraid. For wanting to take the easy path. For not being as “advanced” as many of my peers and friends. Forgiveness made forward motion possible; the act of accepting myself as I am now, and loving myself fully, gave me the courage to further act.
And I deliberately chose the Edgewalker path. I took myself off the easily marked, beaten path and joyously started blazing my own trail. And you know what? It makes all the difference.”
Edgewalking is kind of… extreme exploration. It’s exploring territory that is in the “Here Be Dragons” area of the map. It’s not always that extreme, but I felt called to share this with you, Christine, so I hope you find something useful in it. (:
oh this is so magical…
i am adoring hearing your unravellings…
and moving closer into your clarity space.
that is h u g e!
@Pace:
Been thinking about this idea of self-forgiveness as a precursor to edge walking. Thinking about how my edge walking has always been the way I live, but not always the way I live out loud. How there have been phases, and how sometimes I have been out on the streets while others resting in my cave strategizing. Yet, it’s all part of the explorer lifestyle. The journey has multiple parts and various phases. I for one, can’t sustain any one piece for extended time. Sustainability has to do with variety and recognition of how I can best serve today, which is much more extreme at times than others.
So yes, I do find lots useful here. The Dragons and Monsters are certainly a key to the learning.
Anticipation and excitement, trepidation and fear, courage and bravado… false starts and full bore… leaving and returning.
What about when we don’t come back, for good or ill? This exploration metaphor is so powerful!
That sustainability is a bit like climbing the peak and resting while you acclimate before doing the next stretch? Or crossing the desert from one water hole to the next? Or island hopping?
Fabulous journey!
@reptitude Yes, easy to get lost in! So many choices, delights on the way.
Exploring! It’s a big part of my life, too! I think exploring is most fulfilling and (eventually) productive when it’s done with total detachment from objectives. In order to do it that way, I think we have to first totally let go of whatever we were “working” on – kind of a grief process – and reach a place of inner peace. So this image comes to mind: a skinny, tanned, 50′s guy, leathery skin, in tan shorts and shirt, a walking stick in his hand and an Aussie hat on his head, walking leisurely through the outback. And the key – the peace – is the expression on his face. He’s just groovin’ on it all.
@Bob Lieberman:
Yes, that letting go to just be! So why is it so hard? Or more accurately, why is it so hard for me to allow it for myself more often!
That’s the question, isn’t it? I like the answer I’ve learned from Buddhist teaching: that we mistakenly identify our selves with our “monkey” minds, which we let run away with us. Picture a monkey stealing a banana.
Monkey-mind runs all the time. So long as we find our identity in it, we’re its prisoner. Mindfulness practices, among them meditation, help us find the calm self underneath all that thinking noise.
You might be interested in a psychedelic experience I had in my twenties that illustrates the predicament perfectly. I had been reading Aldous Huxley, and I was experimenting with mescaline. When the drug peaked, I became super-conscious of my thoughts and how they cascaded from one to the next, continuously and urgently. I felt it would be fun to see if I could slow them down and stop them. So I started watching them go by, trying not to get caught up in each one. They started to come slower, and at some point I realized I was holding just one. If I could let it go, I would have peace. But I feared letting go of that “last” thought because then I might die.
Drugs made this more vivid, but I think that’s where we all are. It’s the predicament you asked about. It’s hard to let go because we’re afraid we’ll be annihilated. Kind of woo-woo but I think it’s true. Mindfulness practice gives us the experience of thought-free peace that dispels the illusion that we are our mind.
In my story, that distressing thought about my death was so frightening to me that my mind was off and running again for a few minutes with a fireworks display of new thoughts. I settled down and tried several more times to stop the last thought but didn’t succeed. I’ve since learned that meditation is about *letting* thoughts stop not *making* them stop. It takes a lot of relaxed, non-judgmental practice, and it all makes a lot more sense to me now.
If you’re interested in being inspired and learning more about mindfulness, I would recommend any books by Thich Nhat Hanh. He’s a Zen master whose speaks a lot and does radio interviews. His work is profound and yet very approachable, like that of Deepak Chopra or the Dalai Lama.
Kia ora e Christine!
To my mind, explorers are people who are footloose with a mission. They are not often content. But then, that’s what makes them explorers. Neither do they experience fun all the time, but they know how to enjoy it.
Two complimentary proverbs spring to mind about explorers:
One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
- André Gide
Ten years’ searching in the deep forest.
Today great laughter at the edge of the lake.
- Soen Nakagawa
Catchya later
from Middle-earth
@Ken Allen
Oh yes, sitting in the unknowing and being OK with it. Thanks for that insight.
Kia ora e Christine
I’m not so sure about being OK with sitting in the unknown – that’s not my vision of explorers.
Rather they are not OK with just sitting, whether it’s the unknown or the known.
It’s the restlessness in sitting that takes the explorer into the unknown which, of course, becomes known and they move on.
Catchya
@Bob Lieberman:
You’ve captured the essence of mindfulness practice and what makes it lifelong and a practice!
I will be forever grateful to Thich Nhat Hanh for transforming my relationship with doing the dishes. Life is better when the simple day to day tasks become part of the the spiritual practice rather than something to dread.
Inherent in exploration, for me, is movement, taking physicl action — so sitting around contemplating is more like ummm inploration or discovery of where you already are?
If you are actively doing/moving ahead there is less time for reflection/hesitation and less need for explanation. All you really need to do exploring is external focus — could be specific eg “what’s at the top of that hill?” or could be a more generic curiosity of “what happens next?” — plus a means of moving onward.
This may be totally not what you had in mind. Oh well.
@Ken @Barbara
This is fascinating. Parallel conversations here and offline about mindfulness and reflection as inner exploration and this external adventure type that involves movement.
My husband also pointed to one of his heroes Stephen Hawking who is able to explorer the far reaches of thought and theoretical boundaries without the ability to fully move his physical body and has limited mobility in physical space. Very much still an explorer, no?
Kia ora Christine
Hawking is one of my heroes. His books for the lay are fascinating and latterly very well written.
Bruce Hammonds prompted me to explore ‘the explorer’ in the learner. What struck me about exploring, whether terrestrially or theoretically, was the need for curiosity to execute that activity.
Funny that Barbara should mention ‘generic curiosity’. As you say Christine, parallel conversations. But maybe not so funny after all. My argument is that curiosity and learning are complementary – that explorers seek to learn about new things, new places and new ideas. But for them to do this requires more than just the ability to learn.
Catchya later
Hawking has an outer focus for his work, in a sense he is physically pushing thought forward where it hasn’t been before. His is not inner examination, it is outward discovery.
Do dead ends count as exploration?