Life is lived forwards but understood backward. Søren Kierkegaard
Traditionally, a Biography is a written story of someone’s life.
Within the Art and Science of Biography, each person evaluates their own life course, with the aim of obtaining deeper self-knowledge.
During a person’s lifetime, each human being walks their own unique pathway, made up of many events and adventures. This walk also shaped their personality and character.
At any point in your life, it can be worth looking at your path, finding its themes, threads, and motives, and learning to see it more objectively, as a Biography.
Especially if questions come up like: Who am I? What is next? Or... Is this all there is?
Science of Biography
Science of Biography offers an archetypal knowledge of the rhythms in time, the phases, life themes, and the biographical development. This all provides one with a context, a backdrop against which one’s individual path stands out.
Well-known and characteristic in biographies are the different phases, e.g. three major life phases (each about 30 years) can be distinguished:
- Growing up as a child, where you need love, care, attention, and opportunities from the environment.
- As an adult, where you are faced with the challenge of finding and training your talents and abilities and participating in society through your work.
- As an individual matures, the phase in which life wisdom can possibly come into its own.
Other phases that can be observed are the seven-year phases, which, in each phase, can have its own development motive.
Art of Biography
Art of Biography means that you create artistically in the present, working with events and experiences from the past and with dreams and wishes for the future.
The inquiry into our own biography is well served with artistic work. Our life experiences can be expressed in e.g. drawing, story-telling, writing, and modeling. This makes the life events visible, tangible, and audible, so one can learn to see his/her biography in its own uniqueness.
The Art and Science of Biography encompass various key concepts.
They are described here:
Salutogenesis
Salutogenesis means the origin of health. A powerful source of health is the Sense of Coherence. Anyone who experiences this coherence in one’s own journey has an inner understanding that brings greater benefits to physical, psychological, and mental health. Coherence arises when life events are understandable, manageable, and meaningful. Giving meaning to events is inherent in this.
Phenomenology
The life events are observed in a phenomenological way. That is to say that they are perceived in the capacity in which they appear and that their expressiveness arises from there. It is not based on presuppositions and explanatory theories. In the memories that are retrieved and described, factuality and experience are distinguished. Both are essential, but they each tell a different side: the inside and the outside. It is this activity that adds to a person being able to 'read' into one's own life as in a biography.
Life mission
One way people give meaning to their lives is to sense and feel that they have meaning. Everyone wants to be purposeful and contribute to others and the world. This begs the question: How do I discover and realize my own life mission? It is a life question that is not always consciously expressed, but one that guides the course of life. By consciously taking this question as a starting point, new connections and insights arise during the biographical self-examination.
Karma and Reincarnation
For millions of people in the World, Karma and Reincarnation make life meaningful. In the West, this is less obvious. Looking at Karma (the law of cause and effect) with an 'open mind' gives a biography an extra dimension. Life experiences then have a longer shelf life; so that they may cross the threshold of death. There, our immortal consciousness, our 'I', looks back on the life lived, takes stock, and forms a new life plan. In this next life, this karma is worked through. Viewed from Karma and Reincarnation, the life course becomes an ultimate school in which a person learns how to realize the best in himself.
Amor Fati
A person’s life course can be seen as a Space in Time in which you live, work, and grow. Everything you experience from happiness or adversity is part of your life. You can draw a life lesson from every life event through which your life wisdom can mature. This is helpful in coming to terms with your destiny in life.