Mapping Values

Mapping values, we engage in discerning what we stand for. A process of reflecting on our heartfelt values supports us in becoming what we want to be. Making and renewing commitments to what we care about is an ongoing, important key to unlocking capacities for living on purpose. As we unwind embodied trauma, and learn and co-create new ways of being, we can stop navigating the world with unconscious appeasements and entitlements, and rules that are imposed from outside us. Our actions, words, emotions, physical presence, our level of lovingness, and what we do alone and together can increasingly match what we want to embody, and what we dream of.

Mapping Vulnerabilities

We all have ways of being that seem troublesome, to ourselves or others. We might tend to be anxious, passive, or hypervigilant. We might work too hard, or dream too small. We might habitually appease, or engage in conflict without sensitivity. Values we hold dear come with built-in vulnerabilities. For example, a soul that values loyalty in important relationships comes with a vulnerability - overcommitment can keep us too long in relationships that are harmful. A soul that values generosity can be vulnerable to resentful overgiving, and giving in ways that are unwanted. With reflection on our vulnerabilities, we can honour their gifts as well as their costs. We can discern our habitual safety shapes. We can learn to hold each other's vulnerabilities as sacred, and help each other have more choice.

 

The practice of Soul Mapping emerged from studies with Wendy Baxter on Values-based Organizing and Kai Cheng Thom on Loving Justice. It builds on understandings shared in Science for Sexual Happiness.