Is it a set of philosophical or spiritual beliefs and practices? A path you’ve carved out for yourself or one given to you by a teacher?

As the saying goes, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears,” whether that be an actual person or a series of life lessons presented to you.

According to Greek mythology, a hero follows a thread.

As told by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, the legend goes like this: King Minos of Crete had successfully waged war with the Athenians. He then demanded that, at seven-year intervals, seven Athenian boys and seven Athenian girls were to be sent to Crete to be devoured by the Minotaur, a half-man half-bull creature who lived in a labyrinth created by Daedalus, a cunning craftsman. One version has it that Daedalus had constructed the labyrinth so cunningly that he himself could barely escape it after he built it.

Theseus, a king of Athens volunteered to slay the monster. Out of love for Theseus, King Minos’ daughter, Ariadne, consulted Daedalus who told her to give Theseus a ball of string so he could find his way out once he had gone into the labyrinth. She also returned a sword to him.

As soon as Theseus entered the labyrinth, he tied one end of the ball of string to the door post and brandished the sword he had hidden inside his tunic. Theseus followed Daedalus’ instructions given to Ariadne: go forwards, always down and never left or right. Theseus came to the heart of the labyrinth and also upon the sleeping Minotaur whom he killed. He then used Ariadne’s thread to escape the labyrinth and return to safety.

Stephen Spielberg considered Joseph Campbell his teacher and mentor, and he used the hero’s journey as a model for his Star Wars series.

In one of the films, Luke Skywalker fights with Darth Vader, knocking off Vader’s helmet. What he finds is his own likeness: a suggestion that, at the heart of the matter, Luke’s true battle is with himself.

It has been said that our one and only task is to master ourselves, to make peace with that self.

In Campbell’s words: “The flax for the linen of his thread he has gathered from the fields of the human imagination. Centuries of husbandry, decades of diligent culling, the work of numerous hearts and hands, have gone into the hackling, sorting, and spinning of this tightly twisted yarn.

Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path… where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.”

Don’t you love the maps found in large shopping malls or office complexes? The first thing you see is the circle with the X inside it saying “You are here.”

“Oh,” you say, “This is where I am, so now I know which direction to turn to get to where I want to be.”

Without the knowledge of where you are, you can’t know how close or far away you are from your destination. Just so, it’s important to know where you are in the great scheme of things in life. This question presupposes that you know something about the big picture and something about your destination (destiny).

And within these questions: “Who am I?”

My mother always told me, “Just be yourself, and you’ll be fine.” But who is that self? And how do you find out?

Questions, questions. When you’re searching for truth, what you often find first are questions to be explored if not answered definitively. Your answers may change and grow from time to time.

“The unexamined life is not worth living,” said Socrates. And behind that statement?

Well, that assumes you have a life to begin with. That means you have to live life first in order to examine it. If it is true that the unexamined life is not worth living, then it follows that the unlived life is also not worth examining.

Aspiring writers and actors are often told, “First, you have to live.” You have to have something to write about and experiences to draw upon.

Thoughtful and juicy questions may be one of the best ways to explore and examine your life to allow you to fully live and appreciate the life you have here and now, rather than wishing for some other place or some other life. This is what you have. Now is what you have. Here is what you have. Work with what you have.

If you’re in the here and now, just look about you. Be here. Be now. Describe what you see, feel, smell, taste, hear, touch. You’ll soon enough find plenty to think about and write about, plenty to ponder.

Formal writing prompts and jump-start quotations can also be brilliant food for thought. And why do they appeal to you? Because they’ve acted as an entrance into your own inner life. Something within you resonated with what you found in someone else’s experience.

Reading biographies, memoirs, autobiographies, and fiction can help you to explore your own life stories, both old and new. Can help you re-interpret your past stories to use them as building blocks for your new paths.

You learn that you are not alone in all the world. You no longer have to remain “a stranger in a strange land.” You can find at least one other story that is remarkably like your own. You learn that others have faced and surmounted the same challenges that you do. “The way is thoroughly known,” wrote Joseph Campbell. You are not the first to tread this path, to make this journey.

And those who have gone before you have left maps. They have pointed out the rocks, crevasses, mountains, dangerous swamps and quicksand. They can inspire you to a new level of living. By showing you what peace and happiness they have attained. They can teach you if you will read, listen, and be open to learning.

Be teachable.

Practice beginner’s mind at whatever stage you find yourself, and you may find that one or more “maps” buried in your library, bookstore, or Internet sites will both show you the big picture and say to you, “You are here.”

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Great List of Personal Development Blogs:

From Gretchen Rubin’s post on her wonderful Happiness Project blog, I learned of a list of the top blogs in the personal development field. These are 65 of the most-read of blogs that offer regular, practical, and usable information. Check it out at:

http://www.pluginid.com/personal-development/

Sometimes a new life story develops gradually, growing and gaining strength beneath the surface. “Roads not taken” often do that. For one reason or another you consciously take a path and leave others untaken, then over the course of months or years, that path reappears, often in a different form giving us undreamed of possibilities.

Sometimes a new life story “happens itself upon us” in an instant. A chance meeting, a letter, a phone call, a change in a relationship, an illness, a promotion, and suddenly everything is different. Everything up for re-evaluation. New decisions to make. New paths to explore. The unknown to wrestle.

At such times, a journal can be your best friend. Write to know what you think and feel. “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” wrote E. M. Forster. Just explore your now. What is it like? What seems like a reasonable next step?

One way to use a journal for new life stories is to explore “what ifs?” in imagination. What would it be like if…” How will I cope with…? If you write several scenarios, you will have covered all the known bases. Sometimes this kind of writing is like blazing paths before us, making possible what has been improbable or impossible. Writers often do this in writing new paths. It is as if they are consciously or unconsciously laying out a new road to travel in their novels, then their personal life often follows along the trail blazed by the fiction.

How to know when a new life story is beginning? Ask your deepest and highest self by asking in your journal. Talk to friends and people you trust. Be open to the goodness the universe has to offer, no matter in what form it arrives.

As Robert Browning wrote, “Greet the unseen with a cheer.”

The weeds (mostly grass) are taller than many of the things I’ve planted and are in the process of reseeding themselves. Most everything looks puny or a little blighted. The potato plants simply shriveled up before blooming, the zucchini blossoms stay on the stem but don’t bear fruit, the basil looks a tad pale, and the cilantro has bolted, gone to seed, and turned a crispy brown. It looks pretty awful, I must say.

On the other hand, the coleus and other pots of annuals are doing well, and this morning’s perusal of the kitchen garden netted a double handful of bursting-with-sweetness cherry tomatoes (I gobbled them right off the vine), three little cucumbers, four fingerling potatoes, and all the sage, mint, and thyme I could hope for. So not so bad. The cucumbers will go in tonight’s salad, and I’ll boil the potatoes with sage and thyme.

Considering the small amount of time and energy I’ve put into the project, I’m still getting an inordinate amount of delight as I pull fists full of grass. I know that no chemicals have been used, so I won’t even have to peel the cukes.

Oh, I almost forgot: the best part is that I finally found a little patch of lamb’s quarters (Chenopodium album) to transplant, and I have my eye on a few other isolated plants that I’ll put with the rest. The unenlightened call them weeds, but I was raised on their spinach-like vitamins and minerals.

Taste of home, taste of spring and summer, taste of childhood, cutting greens on the way back from the asparagus bed.

Olive oil, garlic, sweet onions, herbs, four little potatoes, “a mess of greens,” and now I know what else is on the menu for later tonight.

As with most everything else in life, I suppose it’s all in how you look at it. We always have choices. I declare it all a roaring success, and that’s that.

A summer morning cool, heavy, washed with dew and birdsong and with the promise of untold delights ready to unfold. Who knows what a day might bring?

First go get the newspaper from the mailbox near the road, then check all the little gardens. They’re all looking a little better, and the soil is gradually coming to a lovely, friable state

The weather is so crisp this morning that I have two thoughts: First move laptop and papers to the deck, then think about possibly, perhaps, just maybe cooking something like a fruit pie or roasted zucchini, yellow squash, and onions with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and fresh herbs from the little herb garden.

Both my mother and grandmother taught me to cook, each in her own way.

My mother taught me the same way she was taught in home economics class. Make sure your counter-top is clean and clutter-free. Lay out your measuring cups and spoons. Start reading the recipe from top to bottom, then take out the ingredients one-by-one and line them up in order of use.

After adding and properly measuring, of course, put each ingredient back in its place and swipe the counter with a sponge between ingredients to wipe up the slightest trace of flour or oil. By the time you’re finished mixing, your kitchen will be as orderly as when you began, and you can start to wash the numerous bowls and spoons in the sink. Pop your creation in the oven. You didn’t forget to preheat the oven to the precise temperature, did you? Now time to turn your attention to the next project.

I doubt my grandmother ever measured anything in her life or followed a recipe. Her method involved a jumble of jars, cans, bottles, bags of sugar, and a dusting of flour everywhere. Those were the days of sifting the flour and distributing it all over the counter-top.

Stir with a big wooden spoon in a wooden bowl to “about this consistency.” Now add a handful or two of flour, about “that much” warm water if the dough is too dry. Wash, dry, and flour your hands and knead “like this”—turning the dough a quarter turn with each forward push of the heels of your hands.

Along with the metal flour sifter, for pie crust, a pastry cutter was essential to reduce pats of butter to lumps “about the size of small peas” coated with flour. Then add ice water, and out comes the wooden rolling pin to roll out pie crust between sheets of waxed paper on a wooden slab. Dot the fruit with little pats of butter, dribs and drabs of flour and sugar. Pull the pie out of the oven when it’s done, “just like this.”

If you’re not sure about the readiness of a cake, the broom straw test will tell you the truth. If the color is not too brown and the broom straw comes out clean, your cake is just right.

Not so much science as art.

I may or may not get to the cooking part today, but I enjoy living simultaneously in the richness of both past and present, and remembering those exciting days of learning something for the first time.

When I got out of work a little early, stopped by a garden center to pick up bee balm, Russian sage (such a heavenly scent), rudibeckia (in memory of my friend Becky), black sweet potato vines, artemesia, diantha, blue salvia, and hen and chickens. Most of these plants were distressed and half-priced, so I brought them home to heal.

My garden assistant planted them around the little mailbox garden by the road. He also worked 40 pounds of cow manure and compost into the soil of the kitchen garden.

July already, and still no big garden. As I look out at the field of mostly white clover that is the front yard, I begin to come to terms with the thought that the garden of my dreams is not yet to be. Why disturb the feng shui for now? I don’t deal well with heat and humidity. Perhaps a fall garden, perhaps a spring garden next spring, perhaps not at all.

One thing I do know for now is that I want to “master” the art and science of gardening in the two four by eight feet raised beds: the kitchen garden and the herb garden that has become mostly a sage garden.

The sage can be transplanted and new herbs planted. I do love to pick fresh herbs for cooking.

Today I’ll order earthworms (although I’ve dug up quite a few already) and study more about high Brix gardening. Feed the soil, feed the soil.

I love gardening for the concrete feel of dirt beneath my fingernails, watching things grow and bloom. Then there’s the metaphorical aspect.

Feed the soul, give it rain, rest, and the compost of adversity.Treat it with respect and reverence. Give the same to others’ souls, and live in harmony so far as possible with all beings.

So as the rain continues its inexorable course, I feed my soul by working and playing in the new Moleskine journal and making notes about this new life story and the seeds of the next. Next steps, and only a few at a time.

To gardens, rain, and sunshine everywhere. Let us welcome what comes. As Browning wrote, “Greet the unseen with a cheer.”