The Journey Ahead

The map shows the six stages of the Second Summit journey as one landscape. The path descends from the Ego Summit of the first half of life, through the Dark Forest and across the Dry Desert, then climbs the Path of Vocation to a Second Summit, where inner and outer life come into balance.

The symbols come from my own dreams and active imagination. Each marks an encounter common to the journey, placed where it tends to occur. Your symbols will be your own, and by the end, you will uncover a unique map of your own passage.

1. Reflect & re-orient: articulating the personal myth.
2. Descend: unveil and unmask, shed armor.
3. Traverse the Dark Forest: encounter the shadow self, engage inner entities.
4. Explore the Dry Desert: achieve clarity, integrate, name wounds.
5. Ascend the Path of Vocation: find gifts, locate genius, discern vocation.
6. Summit: balance inner and outer worlds; the symbolic life.

The Journey

From where you are to what’s calling you.

1. Reflect & Re-orient

   Understand how your life took the shape it did, and begin to see the story from the outside.

2. Descend

   Separate the mask you built to succeed from the Self it was built to protect.

3. Traverse

   Discover what’s been hidden, the discomfort and the buried gifts alike, and start to make peace with both.

4. Explore

   Walk your inner landscape and meet the inner characters who hold wisdom and the keys to your true destiny.

5. Ascend

   Discover the gifts your wounds cultivated, and the calling, the Vocational Path, they’ve pointed toward all along.

6. Summit

   Bring the inner and outer life into one working partnership, and start living it.