'She had been forced into prudence in her youth. She learned romance as she grew older - the natural sequence of an unnatural beginning'.
Archaeology is humanity's humble attempt to understand the meaning of life by looking at how civilizations and cultures lived before us. The term 'Archaeology' has come to denote the investigation of the remains of the human past, from the very first artifact all the way to yesterday's garbage.
You are embarking on an archaeological dig to excavate your Authentic Self. Our journey has brought us to the sacred site of your soul. The world of archaeology evokes adventure and romance. Going back and excavating our past won't always be easy. It will be fun. It will be fascinating. It will be thrilling. But it won't always be easy.
Excavating is not glamorous work on an archaeological dig. It demands painstaking effort under often harsh conditions. Tons of dirt must be removed carefully from the site if the search to uncover treasures from the past is to be successful. The thrill of discovery wouldn't be half so sweet if time didn't have to be invested in slowly digging through the dirt. No matter how impatient everyone on the dig is, the excavation process cannot be rushed. And when we hit a bedrock of discouragement, the undeniable romance of the treasure hunt will always save the day.
There are other reasons for us to begin to think of ourselves as archaeologists. The qualities that lead excavators to their spectacular finds are the same qualities that we must reach for our own breathless discoveries. An archaeologist's instinct means one knows where to find what one is searching for. What we'll be searching for are the moments that have made a difference in the trajectory of your life. To do that we'll need to dig deep: through the assumptions and expectations that have shaped you; through the successes and failures that have defined you; through the loves and hates, gains and losses, pains that have bound you; through the ruins that set you free. We'll exhume all the perfectly reasonable choices that derailed your dreams and brush off the clinging soil hiding the half-truths that have haunted you for all these years.
Pay dirt.
Sometimes when we awaken from the bad dream of disowning ourselves, we think that the sojourn to self-discovery is a new one. But it is an ancient quest. When you close your eyes, your Authentic Self picks up your story where you left off during the day, and it's always been this way.
Just as paintings can be impressionistic or abstract or can appear to be so real they jump off the canvas, so can our dreams. Dreams can also be like a 'collage', an artistic composition made up of various materials such as paper, fabric, and wood. Eventually, dreams are our spiritual illustrated discovery journals. In keeping a discovery journal, you'll be creating an authentic book of love that reveals your passions on every page. 'There is a lot of me, and all so luscious'. The journal - this astonishing insight tool - can be transformed into an archaeologist's site report as you document discoveries while excavating your past life, loves, losses, and longings. If you've never kept an illustrated discovery journal before, you're in for a delightul surprise. You can journal any quite time you feel you are better able to unwind. These exercises are your Field Work - mental and physical archaeological assignments meant to help you apply and absorb life. When journaling, follow your instincts. Then again, you might not have a clue as to what everything in you means; it's a Mystery. The French painter Georges Braque confessed, 'There are certain mysteries, certain secrets in my own work which even I don't understand, nor do I try to do so'.
You'll be happy to know that, unlike any other area of your existence, you cannot do the illustrated discovery journal incorrectly. Our discovery journals are vehicles for us to begin playing with our Authentic Selves. Write whatever you want. This is not intellectual exercise. The idea is to craft with paper what the poet W.H. Auden calls a map of your planet. It is a meditative insight tool as well as a playmate, which means you want to bring your full concentration to your collage. Your soul is writing for and about you. This is the most important work in a person's life. As far as I'm concerned, that's discovering who we are and why we are here at this point in life.
A lovely concept in the excavation process is searching for 'small things forgotten'. Because so much of our life is spent in a variety of commonplace activities, the search for small things forgotten is central to the work of historical archaeologists.. It is the archaeologist's task to decode the monuments messages and apply them to our understanding of the human experience. In our journaling journey we decode the messages of all the things in the past that we have forgotten. Our authenticity is found hidden in the small details. We think that it's the big moments that define our lives.. but really, these big moments are just punctuation marks of our personal saga. The narrative is written every day in the small, the simple, and the common. In the unconsidered. The overlooked. The discarded. The reclaimed. The things we shall take with us when we travel to ourselves will nearly all be small things.
Direct your eye right inward, and you'll find a thousand regions in your mind yet undiscovered. Travel them and be expert in home-cosmography. The excavation process could take several 'seasons'.
You can embark on a soul trip and be back before anyone even notices you're missing. They might be curious about that gleam in your eye and the flush on your cheeks, but I'll never tell if you won't.
It is entirely up to us to choose to transform through courage, risk, leaps in the dark, and what-the-hell moments. Most new discoveries are suddenly-seen things that were always there.
'The pages are still blank', the Russian writer Vladimir Naboskov tells us, 'but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible'.
'Something More, Excavating your Authentic Self'
Sarah Ban Breathnach
Salam,
Cherine
المقالة جميلة جداً يا شرين. سوف أقرأ مقالاتك كل صباح إن شاء الله.
ردحذفنرمين