This is an image that has been in my mind for about 10 years. It’s loosely based on the hero’s journey. A professor at Naropa presented to us in my undergrad program. As I’ve worked with clients for the last ten years, it’s affirmed a sense I already had encountering my own problems and growth. These four cycles apply to any domain of human life. The edges of our journey. These cycles are multi-faceted and don’t necessarily apply to one sense of time. One could go through all of them in a matter of minutes, or see the four cycles over the arch of your entire life. Knowing the laws of how we are all designed, the architecture of what we need to go through to integrate all parts of our psyche (or soul), has been immeasurably useful for me personally and also for the people I have had the pleasure of explaining this to. When I’m stuck, it’s helpful to know I should look for a way to fight (to enter in to the next phase). When I hear the call or need for new growth, I prepare myself for the fear, and other feelings that need to come up while I take the journey. I’ll also calm myself down when feeling attached to any sense of heaven, or paradise I’m missing. These cycles are all supposed to come and go, wanting or not wanting to be in any of them is a refusal of how I believe we are truly designed. We’re all constantly going around the circle all the time, like it or not. They say getting off this cycle of “karma”, truly, not as a delusion of grandeur, is enlightenment. Something I believe is in potential, but hardly common or likely for most of us. Millions of successful turnings around this wheel need to occur before we can even begin to consider that. I hope in your lifetime you can make a few.