The goal of all this is understanding, clarity and coherence -- and ultimately to make deep meaning of my life, my paths, my experiences and the hurt and pain and subsequence growth and healing. 

As I've started to look inward and do my deep work, I want all of this to mean something. I want it to mean something to me. That there is Something Bigger at work here. That it's all connected. 

The prompt of pain ... internal pain ... started all of this.

And it compelled me to search, investigate, examine -- for discovery. Then it became awareness and the start of understanding. And then to ultimately find healing and more so meaning and purpose.

What the hell is all this for? 

It all compelled me and drove me to seek answers. 

The first draft of this is Steps to Meaning here.

Here is my Growth Cycle:   

  1. Discovery – Prompted by a spark—whether it’s sudden like a lightning bolt, slow like an earthquake, or a positive moment—I am driven to explore and uncover new insights.
  2. Awareness – Simply becoming aware of something initiates growth and healing. This first step brings light to what needs attention or investigation.
  3. Understanding – I dive deeper to fully comprehend, seeking to understand all facets, perspectives, and dimensions of the insight or experience.
  4. Drafts – Once understood, I work to embed this new awareness into my life and actions, aligning it with how I live. And it’s often filled with the Growth Two-Step - two steps forward, one step back. 
  5. Integration & Growth – The result of this process is personal growth, which I continue to practice and refine through ongoing integration and consistent application.

Knowing that, here are the steps I'm using to examine and distill lessons and integration for clarity in my life: 

1. Reflection & Examination

Specifically, relationships, experiences and projections. 

  • Real and Personal: These are the moments from your life—like the influence of your grandfather—that serve as direct experiences to reflect on, make meaning from, and shape who you are.
  • Impersonal and Story Projected: These are the external symbols (such as shows, characters, and movies) that act as mirrors or archetypes. They help you project parts of yourself and understand facets of your inner world. Both types of reflection serve as the foundation for self-discovery, distilling wisdom, and gaining understanding.

Some of the reflections I want to do:

  • Prime Relationships 
    • Grandfathers
      • Papa L
      • Papa C
    • Father
    • Mom
    • Son
    • Daughter
  • Big Experiences (Work, Home, Relationships)
    • Work/Business
      • My Business - The Roller Coaster of Entrepreneurship / Stumbling Successfully 
      • The Office - how I felt as a leader
      • Leadership & Team 
      • Seminary 
    • Psychadelic Journeys 
  • Metaphors and Analogies to Awareness & Meaning 
    • The Office
    • Top Gun 
    • Fortnite / FortLife Therapy

2. Drafts

This is where my first nuggets of wisdom, unfinished thoughts, ideas, perspectives, values and beliefs live. It's the sandbox for your concepts.

Here, you take raw material—whether spiritual, philosophical, or emotional—and work to refine and crystallize it into something coherent. The drafts may also encompass mantras, practices, or metaphors you're developing and slowly integrating into your personal framework.

TOPICS:

  • Fear - my core driver 
  • Doing my emotional work 
  • The Something Bigger
  • Change, transformation, evolution
  • Getting Paid to Learn 
  • The greatest teachers of my life - my kids
  • Acceptance & Letting Go 
  • Belonging 
    • Teams & my brands
    • Belonging and Contribution 
  • Identity
  • Spirituality
    • As meaning and purpose w/o a name
    • Elements like prayer, confession, singing 
    • Self god - higher self and self love 
  • Meaning 
    • Why meaning is important to me
    • Like being on a team and not knowing the plan or the why - understanding it all 
  • Purpose
  • The Synthesis, The Blend - science, faith, psychology, shamanism, astrology (Pluto in Libra)
  • Self Love - what the hell is it, how do I climb that mountain 
  • FortLife - seeing my reflection in the game - taking all the meaning from it
  • Both And - the duality, the dichotonomy, finding the balance of the both and
  • Going Together / Collaboration 
  • Faith & Trust - developing it from the ground up
  • Yet
  • Maybe
  • Learning & Growth Two-Step - two steps forward, the one step back
  • Why Work Gave Me What I Needed for a Long Time & How - Social, Emotional, Meaning/Contribution, Financial

TOOLS:

These are the practical tools that guide you on your path. Technologies like astrology, psychology (archetypes), or even plant medicine help expand your awareness and understanding of yourself. This section highlights the ways in which you gather knowledge to gain better insights into your journey and development.

  • Astrology - it's the most profound tool I've found ... its depth, true by experience, a guide that poses the questions to ask and dive deep - there's so much here that I want to embody fully so I can use myself and also share with others. And to connect most of this to my birth chart. It gives me labels for things. A way to understand it and share it. 
  • Psychology - modern, depth, archetypal
  • Empathy Filter - my own tool of saying and hearing voices from one generation to the next - particularly parents - me to my parents - balanced and calibrated by what I would want my kids to say to me
  • Symbolic Idealized Synthesized Projection - Archetypes - putting on the VR headset
  • The Lifeline - but using it with astrology to see what the planets were doing 
  • Experience Share + Resonance 

3. Integration, Creation & Expression

I want to experiment with my own brand of art and expression, using mixed media - from slides and images to audio. 

I think that's ultimately why I'm here. I know I need to do this work. And I need to find a way to express the things inside of me. To be able to understand them clearly for msyelf and then eventually, selectively, share them with others.