The Journey Ahead
The Middle Passage: a journey from Ego Summit to Second Summit.
Why a map?
I created Second Summit to make the initial stretch of that process, the midlife passage, legible. The Second Summit journey is divided into six stages, each building on the stage before, with landmarks along the way that show where you are. Myth, psychology and the world’s initiation traditions have each charted parts of this ground. Second Summit draws those maps into a single landscape, and gives you a guide who has walked it and knows the way.
The map shows the six stages of the Second Summit journey as one landscape. The path descends from the Ego Summit of the first half of life, through the Dark Forest and across the Dry Desert, then climbs the Path of Vocation to a Second Summit, where inner and outer life come into balance.
The symbols come from my own dreams and active imagination. Each marks an encounter common to the journey, placed where it tends to occur. Your symbols will be your own, and by the end, you will uncover a unique map of your own passage.
The Journey
From where you are to what’s calling you.
Reflect & Re-orient
Understand how your life took the shape it did, and begin to see the story from the outside.
Descend
Separate the mask you built to succeed from the Self it was built to protect.
Traverse
Discover what’s been hidden, the discomfort and the buried gifts alike, and start to make peace with both.
Explore
Walk your inner landscape and meet the inner characters who hold wisdom and the keys to your true destiny.
Ascend
Discover the gifts your wounds cultivated, and the calling, the Vocational Path, they’ve pointed toward all along.
Summit
Bring the inner and outer life into one working partnership, and start living it.