Archetype Leaves

Choose Your People

Who are your favorite people? These are the people who cause you to naturally overflow with a sense of appreciation and positive intention just by calling them to mind. Build a list of people who evoke natural appreciation and compassion. Be careful to sense the minutiae of how you feel when you think about them. Be the curator of this collection which can include real people, fictional characters, and figures that reside in your own imagination. They will form the basis for an appreciation meditation in which you think about these people while breathing rhythmically and focusing your awareness into the area of your heart.

Charting Expansion and Identifying What Fuels You

The next part, which probably involves writing, is to chart a path of expansive growth you think that each person on your list would go through. Explore what qualities and skills they wish to attain and in what sequential order, where each expansion paves the way for the next. Each stage can be numbered sequentially or be given a title representing the nature of their identity at that point, like giving them a new name. At each stage something is gained and something is lost, specify what is gained and what is lost. Try to describe details about what changes the person undergoes at each stage.

 The other side of it is to give specifications about what is required for each person to reach the next stage. What are the experiences that charge and energize them? It does not have to be experiences that on the surface appear connected to them attaining the next growth. It just has to be any experience that is novel and energizing to them in that specific stage. In the next stage, the experiences/activities that they draw energy from will be different or modified to reflect how they have changed. Specify how much momentum they will need to build up, and how frequently they will have to do these things before they advance. Secondly, you will again do the same thing, only this time instead of looking at experiences and activities, you are look solely at relationships. What relationships, what kinds of people, are energizing to them at this stage? Thirdly, examine ideas and beliefs that give them momentum. What ideas and beliefs will they be utilizing in each stage that fuel them?

  If you know these people personally, you can build these lists with them. Otherwise you just use your imagination. Once this is laid out you can incorporate it into your appreciate mediation. Meditate on the idea of them going through these stages and having the experiences that charge them energetically. Explore in your imagination the idea of them being charged to the point of overflowing until they advance effortlessly to the next stage.