How To Create A Spiritual Life Map

What is the tale of your spiritual life? What words would you use to define your relationship with Jesus?

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Those are not simple questions to respond to! When we share our spiritual autobiography, or a portion of it, we usually either talk it out or write it down. It's crucial for all of us to tell a soul friend or guide the key components of our tale of how we've connected with God or drifted away from him over time on a regular basis. It assists us in better integrating our lives and opening ourselves up to the Holy Spirit's work. It also allows us to be more effective in our service to others, whether we're pastors, spiritual directors, counselors, or parents.

It's especially beneficial if we can learn to reflect on our lives in light of the needs, stages, and dynamics of spiritual and psychological growth.

Although some brain studies suggests that story-telling unites the two hemispheres, this technique to analyzing your life story favors the left-brain because it is linguistic, linear, and rational.

Telling Your Story With Your Right Brain

It's also beneficial to narrate our tales in ways that utilize our right brain's emotional, relational, holistic, and creative functions. You can do this by plotting your tale on a life map or graph, or by building a collage out of magazine clippings. If you've never done it before, you'll be shocked with how much emotional healing and spiritual awakening it may bring!

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The chaotic sections become more organized and the painful parts can open to God's grace when you visually map out your spiritual path on paper utilizing a few essential factors. It'll be even more beneficial if you do it with a friend or a small group. We welcome everyone to draw out their spiritual formation journey along our model of developmental stages in our TLC certificate course for pastors and leaders: “CHRISTIAN LIFE.” (As an example, see “QUESTIONS ON DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES IN LIFE IN CHRIST.”)

Kristi and I have mapped our spiritual development stories in four different right-brain methods.

My Life Story Map

Kristi finished her task “I shared “My Life Story Map” with a friend and found it to be very uplifting. She drew a six-year timeline with the first year at the top. She then graphed major events, people, places, vocations, and avocations using various colored markers, categorizing them as highs (successes, blessings, or positive impacts), lows (losses, hurts, or negative influences), or in between. Finally, she recorded the insights she gained from the process at the bottom of her life story map. (This resource is part of a book by the same name.) “Maps from OneLife.”)

Ray Ortlund, Sr. led a year-long Discipleship Group for pastors and leaders in 1994, and I was a part of it. We got together for a weekend retreat. We sang praises to God, focused on Scripture, shared our spiritual journey tales, and sang praises to God. To help us share, we each created a Life Graph similar to the one Kristi created lately, but much simpler. A satisfaction scale of 1 to 10 runs down the left axis. At the bottom, you'll find a list of life stages.

As you can see, it's a hasty and scribbled sketch, but it was still quite useful, both for me and for our community.

A Spiritual Collage

Getting out a stack of magazines and clipping out words and photos to build a collage is a terrific method to prayerfully sift your feelings and ideas at a particular life transition or stress point. You may tell your spiritual story by making a collage for each of the significant moments in your life.

Late in 2008, when we were praying about creating a nonprofit organization for pastors, I created this “Decisions” collage.

A Life Map With Sticky Notes

This life map is similar to the “My Life Story Map” above, however you use different colored sticky notes to record the events and relevant thoughts. Sticky notes have the advantage of being able to be moved about and re-ordered! Because you'll remember your story in a jumbled order, this comes in handy.

Soon after the collage, I prepared this Life Map of my spiritual path as part of a “Discovery Retreat” organized by Tom Ashbrook with CRM's “Imago Christi,” a spiritual development ministry (Church Resource Ministries). Kristi did one as well, as did some of our other guests! Because we assessed our personal stories as spiritual formation journeys with consolations and desolations and progressing through developmental stages, this exercise was especially beneficial. (Adapted from Tom's book on Teresa of Avila's paradigm, Mansion of the Heart.)

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How do you make a life map?

Construct a Life Map

  • Pull out images, words, and phrases that speak to you or elicit sentiments from publications and catalogs.
  • Using a large board, arrange your words and images in a style that feels natural to you.

How do I write a spiritual journey?

Here are some pointers to help you construct the spiritual journey of your main character:

  • Write an incident early in your book that validates your character's Lie in their lives.

How can I build my spiritual life?

Seven Ways to Boost Your Spiritual Well-Being

  • Examine your spiritual foundation. You are merely asking yourself questions about who you are and what you mean when you explore your spiritual essence.

How do I start a spiritual journey with God?

The spiritual journey—and the resulting “spiritual awakening” we seek—always appears to take place in some exotic location or following a spectacular incident.

Perhaps you believe you need to travel to Peru to drink ayahuasca or leave your spouse to get the spiritual awakening you seek?

From the comfort of your own home, you may connect with your spirituality and awaken to the lessons that are meant for you over and over again throughout your life.

What is a spiritual journey called?

= everything, and Theos = God) “God is All” and “All is God” are the literal translations. It is the belief that everything is a manifestation of an all-encompassing immanent God, or that the universe, nature, and God are one and the same. More elaborate definitions tend to highlight the idea that the theological principle of ‘God' represents or personifies natural law, existence, and/or the universe (the sum total of all that has been and will be).

  • Parapsychology is the study of evidence regarding phenomena in which a person appears to affect or obtain information about something in ways that are not currently explainable by mainstream, conventional science. The majority of proponents of these occurrences believe they are the result of inexplicable mental powers.
  • The physical world, as opposed to a spiritual or supernatural essence, is the component of the universe made up of matter.
  • Pilgrimage: A long journey or search of significant moral value, primarily used in religion and spirituality.
  • It can also be a pilgrimage to a sacred site or shrine that is significant to a person's faith and beliefs.
  • Pilgrimages are attended by people of all faiths.
  • A pilgrim is someone who undertakes such a journey.
  • A plane of existence (also known as a dimension, vibrating plane, or an inner, invisible, spiritual, supraphysical world or egg) is a theoretical region of space and/or consciousness beyond the known physical universe, or the region containing the universe itself, in metaphysics and esoteric cosmology.
  • Many esoteric teachings (such as theosophy and rosicrucianism) advocate for the existence of a vast network of subtle planes, worlds, or dimensions that, radiating from a central point, interpenetrate the physical planet on which we live, the solar systems, and all of the universe's physical structures. This interpenetration of planes culminates in the universe as a physical structured, dynamic, and evolutive expression emanated – through a series of stages, becoming progressively more material and embodied – from The Supreme Being: which allows the irruption of auto-Singularities from Its unintelligible Chaos, as the Big Bang did.
  • Prayer is an attempt to interact with God, or a god or deities, or another sort of spiritual entity, or otherwise, to offer praise, make a request, or simply express one's thoughts and emotions.
  • Prophecy is the prediction of future occurrences in a broad sense. Pro- “before” + the root of phanai “say,” i. e. “speaking before” or “foretelling,” although prophecy frequently indicates the involvement of supernatural phenomena, whether it be communication with a god, the interpreting of magical signs, or astrology. It's also a catch-all term for the manifestation of divine intent.

What is a life map example?

Examples of life mapping are good exercises that can assist a person in locating the things and ideas that they value in their lives. An individual might create a timeline to record the significant events or activities in their lives.

#1. Take control of your destiny

You take control of your fate by creating your own goal map. You are your own programmer: you plan, decide, and execute. It's YOUR life, and you should be in control. Rather than passively dragging along, write your own story and shape your own existence.

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#2. Articulate what you really want

What is it that you truly desire in life? Work hard to advance your career or spend more time with your family? Do you know how to play the piano? Do you read every day? You must understand what makes you tick and set goals that are in line with your values and principles. The first rule is to follow your heart!

When you start delving into the specifics of what you want to accomplish in your life, you'll quickly notice that some of your goals are a little hazy. Goals that are too broad are impossible to achieve.

One of the key advantages of a goal map is that it forces you to clarify what genuinely important to you. You'll know which course to take once you have this clarity. You can begin walking down that path and keep track of your progress as you go.

#3. Prioritize and achieve more

As previously stated, all of our objectives necessitate the same resources: our time, energy, and money. Because our resources are limited, we must make decisions. A goal map will assist you in making these decisions.

It's like planning your life journey with a GPS. Instead of going back and forth and running out of gas, perhaps you might first tour this region and then this other country. If you ask for too many contradictory things, you'll get none. A goal map will provide you a bird's-eye view of your life, allowing you to spot potential conflicts and bottlenecks.

What is a spiritual journal?

Devotional journals have ranged from a child jotting down her daily thoughts about God in a notebook to sophisticated systematic undertakings containing structured Bible texts, disciplinary exercises, and other activities. It's simply “a written record of personal reactions to spiritual topics,” according to Dan Phillips. The most important aspect of keeping a journal is that it allows you to spiritually share yourself with God and yourself. You're pouring your heart out to God, but you're also part of the audience, as you revisit it to see how you've grown spiritually — or shrunk. (It's not simply journaling; it's also keeping a journal.)