Orienting by Desire: Using the Tools
Look over your most recent iteration of your Visions and find one that most clearly displays a quality of Narrating. Once you have identified it, use the following questions to enrich your Visions.
Storying: What is the story behind your Vision? What does your story say about you and your feelings associated with this Vision? Are there harmful stories you have accepted about something associated with this Vision that needs to be rewritten by you? Are there harmful stories about yourself that have, up until now, prevented you from taking necessary actions toward your Vision? Rewrite your Vision with this new sense of how it contains a Narrative about yourself and the world of which you are the author.
Animating: Are there any abstractions in your Vision frozen in time? How does your Vision change if you actively re-animate this abstraction? Are there elements of your Vision that seem too uncontrollable that could use abstraction to help you better interact with it? Rewrite your Vision with an eye toward what needs to be re-animated and what needs to be de-animated as a part of your Vision Narrative.
Scaling: How specific are you in your Vision? Could you explain your Vision to someone in 30 seconds so they could decide whether you are on the right track and if they are interested in “buying into” your Vision? Could you photograph the fulfillment of your Vision, and if not, how could you scale down to a level where you could? Are there overly specific areas in your Vision that are limiting the potential for the Vision’s core intention to occur, and how can you scale up to retain the essential features while creating room for variance?
You may find that once you have exercised these skills upon a single Vision, you will want to apply them to your other Visions.
As an added exercise, should you be so inclined, consider actively writing a long-form Narrative of your Vision. You can choose a critical meta-narrative approach, adding aspects of animation and scaling to fine-tune your Vision and give yourself a compelling way of organizing your aspirations and experiences.
Realize also that Narrating does not necessarily mean “writing” as Narrative can be found in visual art, sequential arts, film, etc. If you have the skills to do so, or simply the Desire, consider engaging in creating Narratives of your Vision in those ways.
Setemheb 