Where is our place in the world? Telling our biography in search for meanings and tasks

At the end of October 2024, I attended a course called Biography Week. This course focused on retelling our personal stories and narratives, with the intention to further understand who we are today and where is our place in the world. Biography Week is an integral part of the curriculum at the International Youth Initiative Program (YIP) because it explores what is happening in our inner world. In previous weeks at YIP, we explored what’s happening outside us globally and locally. We discussed challenges of education for students and the disabled, healthcare, system thinking, biodynamic agriculture, financial system, conflict and narratives. Biography Week encouraged us to look at our inner worlds.

Read my full writing here: https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/where-is-our-place-in-the-world-telling-our-biography-in-search-for-meanings-and-tasks-077f93e38782

leaving Sweden to another world

.The main instructor is Annie Meijer, also the co-founder of YIP, together with Leonora, Mary and Rebecca. Annie’s language is beautiful in a such a way that I idolize her and want to speak like her. I admire so many people but never I have felt so touched by the words of anyone like Annie’s. Her words carried a power that made my presence and emotions feel transparent.

.

At YIP, we have the freedom to learn and practice, meaning it’s up to us to take what to practice and believe regarding all anthroposophical theories discussed in courses. We don’t have to fully follow the teaching if anything does not align with our will. In this article, I’ll write about part that most resonates with me, and stays with me.

.

Human beings, as we know them today, are so driven by materialistic accumulation and perceive spirituality as wishful thinking and superficial. We do not recognize the interconnectedness of everything and everyone, but act on separation and judgment. Humans continue living in a rat race, and many lack the courage to fight for a purposeful life. Our soul struggles to be grounded by any belief or religion. Our “anchor points are dissolved” in the fight for money and power. Materialistic gains are more important than the richness of the soul.

.

Biography Week aims to let us enjoy and marvel at: “What it is to be humans?” What is my human experience? What do I want to experience in my lifetime?

.

We dwelled in a “conscious process to step back from my biography” in which I look at what was developed from my past and contemplate “what is the relationship between me and my biography?”. This is a search for “renewed meanings of existence, to see the wholeness, the purpose that might be submerged in a political view of the world”. This is a “mysterious way of discovering our dignity and life meanings from an inner perspective”. I must ask: “What it takes for me to live my life?”

.

Photos on our last day of the first beautiful part of the program. It was time that "we shall learn to lead in love."