What is Vision Web?
Vision web is a journaling tool, i.e. something that we do with pen and paper that helps us with an aspect of our life. Personally I have found it to be one of the most powerful tools I’ve ever encountered and applied, and it was part of massive shifts in my life for the better. But, it can be tricky for many to understand and really get into. It’s very easy to dismiss it as there not being much to it at all, but that would be misunderstanding the depth and power of it, the power it has to help us radically shift our reality. I learned it from a teacher I learned a lot from, Jesse Elder, and I went on to make it my own and evolve it into an important tool in my life.
So, like I said, it is something you do in your journal, with pen and paper. It’s not just writing words though like traditional journaling, it looks more like art, and if you allow it, will activate your imagination in a different and powerful way. Here is a picture of one I made recently taken right from my daily journal:
How do I do it?
Ok, let’s get into the tactics of how to construct one. Then we’ll continue with how to use it and my description of how it works, which is very helpful to begin to see the depth of this tool and how to use it as part of creating massive transformation in your life, assuming that’s what you want!
This tool is about slowing down, so to be effective it will take a little time. If you rush through it you probably won’t get too much effect with it. I would say that 10 minutes is probably the minimal time, usually I take between 10 and 20 minutes to create one, and often a lot longer if I am in a particularly receptive energy, when I start to get all sorts of creative ideas flooding into me, and take the time to really feel into the imaginative space.
The basic construct is a series of circles, arranged in a circle. Refer to the example above to see this. I use these particular seven circles, based off how I learned it, but once you have it down you can totally customize this to match how you see your own life. You can change the number of circles, and change what each one represents. But for the purposes of explaining how to do it I will present how I do it. I would suggest that you try it this way a few times, because these areas are pretty universal, but after you get some experience with it, definitely experiment with it and change it to reflect what’s important to you. But, I would suggest not removing an area just because it’s not important to you right now – a major part of the benefit of this tool involves opening our eyes to see what’s missing from our lives, and opening doors that were previously closed to create new experiences in those areas.
Ok, starting from the top and moving clockwise in the picture above, the first one is Spirituality. The order of the circles is not relevant, unless you want to make it so! But another big part of this tool is exposing what is currently important in our lives, what is less important, and the idea of bringing balance and support to all aspects of our lives. We can often be very unbalanced, for example we expend 90% of our energy on work, and have nothing left to give when we return home to loved ones. This tool can help surface this, and help us come up with brand new ways of how to shift this, by extending our creative vision of how work life can support home life, and home life can support work life. So, the order of the circles is not important, but something I notice very much for me is that when I sit down to draw this, there are certain areas that immediately come to mind, I draw them out, and then I am left struggling with the last one or two, trying to remember – what is the 6th circle? What is the 7th one? And inevitability that last one is the one that I am paying least attention to, that I in fact often try and avoid because I feel some shame or fear around it. So, pay attention as you draw this yourself to see what areas are easy to remember and which ones are more difficult.
Ok, let’s get back to drawing the circles.
Step 0 – draw the circles
I begin by drawing seven empty circles, arranged in a circle.
Step 1 – draw your life areas, one by one
Then, in the first one at the top, draw whichever symbol first comes to mind out of the seven. In the example above it is spirituality. The symbol I’ve drawn there is a personal one that I created, you can read about what it means here. But you should use whatever symbol is personally meaning to you for the whole area of spirituality – that might be a cross, a star and crescent, a David’s star, a person meditating, a person in a yoga pose, or any number of symbols from your own personal religious or spiritual paths.
Take your time in drawing the symbol. Really slow down. And as you draw it, bring this area of your life powerfully to mind. Take the time as you draw to think about that actual area in your life. In this case we are drawing Spirituality – think deeply, what does that mean to you right now, today, in this moment. Does this feel strong and helpful in your life right now? Does it make you happy or does it not feel so good?
At this point sometimes I move on to the next life area, but sometimes when I am in a more receptive mode, I now write down for this area what is coming to me. Did I just receive a download about spirituality? I write it down next to it and focus on it for a little while. What great idea came up when I focused on it? When I’m in a receptive mode, often ideas flow fast and furious as I focus on each area. This is why it can be a really good idea to get yourself into receptive mode beforehand, e.g. by doing a focus wheel or prime light meditation or other tool to raise your frequency. Then the vision web can take you farther.
Then, when you feel complete with reflecting on what Spirituality means to you today, move onto the next life area. In the picture above, that is a dollar symbol. This area is how you make your money – your work, your career, your job, your business, your practice etc. Repeat the same process as we described for Spirituality above.
The third area above is the masculine and feminine symbols intertwined. This represents your intimate relationships. I’m gay, so at first I rejected the male/female aspect of this symbol, but I relaxed into this and view it as the masculine and feminine energies that we all have to varying degrees, and that are part of the friction and passion involved in intimate relationships. You can see in the one above I actually drew two masculine symbols plus a feminine one joining them. You can use whatever symbol you wish that reflects your husband / wife / boyfriend / girlfriend / triad / polycule / etc. If you don’t currently have an intimate partner, that’s totally fine of course, but you can use this area to help open up possibilities of dating, having sex, affection etc. as you focus on it. This is a big one for me, not currently having an intimate partner physically present with me. For me this can bring up some shame and avoidance, and that’s fine, just feel into this area and see what comes up for you.
The fourth area is Community. The symbol is a campfire, with all the dots around it representing your tribe – your friends, your family, your groups, your loved ones in all sorts of ways.
The fifth area is Energy and Adventure. The symbol is twofold – it is a globe, but it’s also a “power” symbol, like you see for the on/off switch on devices. This area represents travel, daring, exploring, new experiences.
The sixth area is Creativity. The symbol is a light bulb, representing ideas coming to us. This includes art, writing, all our hobbies, our dreams, what does our heart want.
And the seventh area is Body. The symbol represents a human body. This includes exercise, nutrition, moving our body through space, etc.
So, as you go around the circle, drawing the symbols, reflect on each and see what comes up. When you’ve done that for all seven areas, that completes the first phase. Then look at all seven (or however many you have) areas. Which ones are more present for you in life at the moment, which ones are less present. Are there some that aren’t present – thoughts on why, are you avoiding something there or is just that others are more dominant.
Here’s a picture of what it looks like at the end of this, although you might have written in some ideas or thoughts next to each area.
Step 2 – draw supportive relationships
Now we move into the part where we are seeing how each area of life can support all the others, rather than take away from it. The idea is to start creating your life not as a set of distinct areas that take away from each other, e.g. work takes away from family, or time to go to the gym etc., but to shift the narrative in the opposite direction so that you start to create your life such that every area supports every other area, and you can live in more integrity, and use momentum in one area to create and support momentum in other areas.
Begin by taking any one of the areas, for example Creativity. Focus on creativity and now connect it to another area, for example finances. Draw a line between the two circles that represent creativity and finances. As you draw the line, don’t just draw it and move on. Really slow way down, and start thinking about what that connection means. How can creativity support your finances? And, how can finances support your creativity? Sometimes I draw two different lines to make this explicit, that there are two directions there. I fill in the line very heavily, make it thick and extensive. As I make the line heavier, this boosts my brains connections for imagining how creativity can support finances, and vice versa. At that point if ideas start flowing about how they can support each other, then I write them down close to those areas, close to the lines, or elsewhere on the page if I need more room.
Sometimes I go to join two areas, and I experience a kind of blankness, a not-knowing. This is actually totally one of the best things that can happen! Not knowing is the ground in which creativity can occur. If we already know everything, there’s nothing to be created. Whereas in the fertile field of not-knowing the seed of ideas can take root. So when I encounter this blankness I let my brain start to work out “Wow, I don’t know how creativity can support my finances, let me start to figure that out”. You don’t have to rack your brains to try and find something, see if you can just open up to being receptive and see what flows into you. If you give your mind the task of seeing what it can create in that space, it will continue on with that, and just see – something will pop out. It might be right away, it might be the next day, or it might be months later. But I’ve found this is a deeply valuable way to use the creative process applied directly to our own lives. To creating what we want – balance, harmony, integrity, expansion, support and growth in all these areas of life we’re looking at.
Then take the next area to pair with Creativity – creativity and community for example. Repeat the process with that for the next six areas all related to creativity. At the end of that, the creativity circle will be joined to each of the other areas, and you will have spent some beautiful time deep in imagination about how all other areas of your life can support your creativity, and vice versa, how creativity can support all the other areas of your life.
Then, continue on to the next item, whatever it is, for example community, and start drawing a line between them, relating community to the next five items (you’ve already covered creativity and community). And on and on with each item to each other one, until you have thought about each pair of areas and how they can support and help each other.
This post is already super long, so I’ll leave the next two questions – what is it for and how does it work – to another post. This will get into some pretty woowoo and metaphysical stuff, but will explain how to really deepen into this practice, and in my direct experience some pretty magical stuff starts to happen. I encourage you to try it out, take your time, and see what happens.
I’ll leave you with some pictures of a beautiful sunshiny day when I did my vision web journalling in my favorite place, outdoors. I carved this vision web right into the sand of a huge beach. It was such a powerful and fun experience to do this.
Wishing you peace, love, magic, joy and PLAY!
Coyote
