Walking your path. The lifelong journey of becoming who you are. Transforming your life journey in Psychotherapy and Mentoring.

"Traveller there is no path. The path is made by walking."

We might hear this excerpt from a poem by Antonio Machado in relation to feeling stuck, alone, or lost. These lines suggest that if there is a path ahead which seems clear and well-trodden (i.e. ‘easy’) then perhaps it is not your own path that you are walking.

Even if we experience a deep certainty about the way, we might recognise challenging terrain ahead and fear to tread it. Alluding to the necessity for active participation in the act of transforming your life, we can note that the path is not made only by thinking or dreaming. 

Questions To Live By

As a way forward, we might learn to be cautious of prematurely seeking answers, and place more emphasis instead upon finding and nurturing our most inspiring questions to live by — which often make themselves known to us through images, visions, dreams, ideas, passions, and sometimes puzzles — that seem to come from the very core of our being.

Questions of this kind may feel part gift, and part burden to carry. What we are being tasked with is understanding how the kind of 'answer' required of us involves meeting these questions and visions with our most wholehearted attempts at giving them expression. A communicative and relational response that deepens and expands upon the mystery, bringing the question itself to life.

In this way we can move into new and creative ways of travelling our respective paths, living more fully with both ourselves and others as we go. The deepest questions we are presented with in life are there to be lived rather than solved.

To borrow from a poem (Sometimes) by David Whyte;

"Questions that can make or unmake a life. 

Questions that have waited patiently for you.

Questions that have no right to go away." 

Working together at transforming your life journey in Psychotherapy or Mentoring can be an effective way to discover and express your deepest questions to live by. We aim to take seriously, without self-absorption, the meaning of your life journey.

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Andrew Phillips is a Visual Artist, Psychotherapist, and Creative Mentor.

Thank you for reading this article. You are welcome to contact me with your questions and enquiries. Please use the form or email address found at the foot of each page on my website.

• Find out about Psychotherapy sessions online by video in the UK, and arrange an initial consultation. I am an HCPC registered Art Psychotherapist, offering an approach informed by Depth Psychology.

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