“Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.”
e.e. cummings
This feels like a good way to begin anything, whether new work, a new life phase, or a new venture of any kind, including coming home to who we truly are. To start from a place of beautiful questioning can bring us more into a place of being and imagining for a while. This can be helpful in guiding us to a place that feels right, doing what we feel we are meant to be doing.
Poetry and literature are powerful tools for exploring the big questions such as: What brings me alive? What am I meant to bring to the world? Reading carefully chosen poems, and creating spoken or written responses to them while being guided by a facilitator, can move us into the deeper layers of our mind and heart. Poetry’s language tends to speak to our unconscious and move us to a place more in touch with our needs and urgings at a soul level. (Learn more on Methods page.)
“Poetry can organize as life cannot,” wrote Aristotle. And it can enlighten us at the same time.
This kind of guided, thoughtful writing, along with the writings of Carl Jung on soul types and tools like the Myers-Briggs (MBTI), can take your newly gained self-knowledge and point you in tangible life directions, whether you are changing careers, just entering the workforce out of college, or exploring a new life phase not related to work or career.
On the following pages you can learn more about the MBTI, other methods, and practitioner Susan Jefts' Bio.
(Website designed by Susan Jefts; all photography by Susan, except on Workshop page)
When it's over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened, and full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world. (Mary Oliver)
Many philosophers say that we come into the world with an imprint in our soul of what we are meant to bring to the world. Many people have a sense from an early age of what this might be, while others learn it as adults. But the signs are there if we start to pay attention to what gives us energy, what brings us joy, what activities make time pass quickly and with ease.
When used with intention, a well chosen poem or passage can be very effective in guiding people through life transitions and decision making, as its language reaches us in places that ordinary language can't. Learn more.