VisionCircles and the Spiritual Foundation of Life
Victor Frankl, psychiatrist, philosopher, concentration camp survivor, and author of the always popular Man’s Search for Meaning, wrote in his book, The Will to Meaning, that personality is the expression of the human spirit. His experiences plus his scientific and philosophical investigations convinced him that we discover the powerful realities of love and freedom in the spiritual activities of self-reflection. From his point of view no matter how bad life seems to be, we are always free to choose our attitude toward life.
Vision Circles, a self-education program for strengthening our mindful activities and for creating a practical, personal creed, is built on the conviction that the spiritual activities of self-reflection, intuition, choice, and creativity make up the core of being human. Spiritual does not mean religious, nor does it mean psychological or emotional. The word, spiritual, refers to what we know from our deep seated feelings and from our critical common sense, namely:
- that we can think for ourselves
- that we intuitively know the rules of thinking
- that we are intuitively in touch with the ideals of truth, beauty, love and their derivatives
- that we are free in our thinking
- that we are the originators of our creative actions
- that we can create a continuously growing personal creed to guide our lives
- that our psychology, that is, our emotions, behaviors and thoughts are organized for better or worse by our beliefs about ourselves and the world.
Philosophy is the umbrella word for all these activities. The activity of philosophy means to dialogue with ourselves and others. The aims of the dialogue are: 1. to pursue a complete humanistic and scientific understanding of ourselves and the world, and 2. to make choices to live a complete life guided by our insights.
The spiritual activities of intuition, self-reflection, choice, and creativity are like the roots of the tree drawing energy from the spiritual ground of truth, beauty, love, and their derivatives from which we create our personal creed.
The vitality of our personality, our relationships, our career, our politics, and our religion depend on the vitality of our spiritual roots.
Vision Circles is based on the principles that human effectiveness and meaning are the dominant motivators of all our actions in all the dimensions of our life and that the practice of the mindful activities of intuition, self-reflection, choice, and creativity are necessary for an effective and meaningful life.
The Vision Circles method will show you how to use your spiritual activities:
- to solve problems in all the dimensions of life
- to create a living, personal creed composed of your ideals and pragmatic strategies
- to transform your personal ideals into productive actions.
The diagram below illustrates the flow of our mindful activities in creating our world.
