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The Next Iteration of Illuminated Path

If you want to be able to grow in business (and in life) you have to be willing to take an iterative approach. Set your goals, research how to best go about it, create a plan, implement the plan, assess what worked and what didn’t, then refine your process.

As part of the pivot for the last year of taking on more of an active role in Bad Egg Digital, the web design and development business I run with my husband, I’ve been educating myself more about marketing. I have worked with some really amazing professionals in the industry, and they have taught me a lot. The Bad Egg brand has benefitted immeasurably from the insight we have received from working with copywriters, marketers, and a business coach.

I have also discovered that I feel in my gut that marketing is not what Illuminated Path needs. This inspired the blog post I wrote a few months ago, titled “On Writing“, and it is something that I am continuing to ruminate on.

Illuminated Path is not just a brand or a product or a service, though I do offer some products and services. This is my calling: to be in service to others. That much I have known for over 20 years. I created the Illuminated Path brand to support that calling. The products and services I offer through Illuminated Path are just one way I can be in service to others. But it’s not the whole picture.

In relation to this calling, in the last year:

  • I completed my Advanced Labyrinth Facilitator certification through Veriditas
  • I took an intensive course on Runes with Gavin Bone, who co-wrote some of the most influential books for me personally on paganism
  • I attended two sundances, back-to-back, in the US
  • I attended networking events for the wellness sector locally and connected with some incredible not-for-profits
  • I lost the spiritual teacher who has been the constant support to my own spiritual path for the last 15+ years to cancer
  • I went on pilgrimage to Chartres Cathedral with Veriditas (again)
  • I went on a personal pilgrimage to the village where my family is originally from to mark the 25th anniversary of my grandfather’s passing

The question that has arisen for me in each of these instances keeps coming back to: how can I be in service to others? What does being in service to others look like?

The Doing is The Work

Right now, I keep coming back to creating.

I have still been writing and making art this whole time. I have published a few blog posts in the last year, including this recent one about processing grief on the labyrinth and this glimpse into my creative process. I have still more already in various stages of completion.

My work is to teach people how to build a personally meaningful spiritual practice for themselves. I can do that in part just by sharing the example of my own practice.

However, I also want to help people avoid some of the common pitfalls of contemporary spirituality, such as cults of personality, rigid (often for-profit) systems, toxic positivity, and spiritual bypass. The best defence against these is to think critically about spirituality and respectfully about culture.

One of the best ways I can teach those skills is to share my approach and my thoughts through engaging with relevant concepts.

This means my content is sometimes “too long”. It means that sometimes I’m just sharing my thoughts or my recollections as a story, with (somewhat deceptively) no apparent purpose.

I’m doing this to help others find and make meaning for themselves.

You don’t find deep meaning by limiting your word count or only engaging with your audience to sell things.

What can you expect in future?

Right now, my tentative plan is to work on some book reviews of important and/or popular books on religion and spirituality. These will be less content summaries and more highlighting the kinds of critical questions you should be asking when reading these materials and demonstrating some of the ways you can engage with those questions.

I will be engaging with some of the deepest questions we struggle to answer for ourselves: Who am I? What are my values? Where do I belong? I will not be sharing answers, but rather the evolutionary process of ruminating on these questions.

I will be revisiting my religious studies research, detailing how the obscure occult technique I learned and studied in my 20s/during my Master of Arts still forms the framework of how I practice today, even though I rarely talk about it, and some of its parallels with psychotherapy. I’ll also be sharing some of my less mainstream insights from my research background into how and why we ended up thinking it was even possible, much less desirable, to be the autonomous architect of our own spirituality in the first place – and why we’ve kind of missed the mark on that one. (Even though I advocate for constructing your own beliefs and practice.)

I’m even in talks with a few other deep thinkers in these spheres about maybe starting a podcast later in the year to demonstrate what this engagement can look like in conversation, even when we don’t necessarily agree with each other on every point.

Beyond the writing projects I’m working on, I have a few art projects that I am working on at the moment that I will eventually be sharing. The seed has even been planted for a possible in-person display in the coming months. I am working on listings for my online store where you will be able to purchase some of my art from time to time, as well as some pieces from an artist I have encountered on my journey who makes stunning sacred art.

I have been making more music and experimenting with how to make the mediaeval chants I love so deeply more relevant to a contemporary interfaith spirituality.

Finally, I’m taking some courses in graphic design so I can develop the technical tools to continue to grow my photography skills and overcome the technical limitations of Canva for the design work that supports my content.

Part of my motivation for this is to refine the visual identity of Illuminated Path so that the experience of engaging with my brand and its content is better aligned with my goals. My website was not our best work. It needs an overhaul to adjust some of the functionality, so while we’re redesigning the website seemed to me like a good time to re-evaluate my look-and-feel and make changes if I’m going to.

As always, you will still be able to book my services 1-on-1, but its best to reach out directly if you don’t see any availability on my website. (My website booking tools are one of the things that need some love.)

I hope to return to offering workshops later in the year. I’ve got some things in the works, but they’re not finalised yet. You can expect announcements well in advance once everything is firmed up.

Keep in Touch

If this is a journey you want to follow, stay tuned.

The last two are a recent development that I’m still experimenting with. I must say, though, I am very much enjoying the exploration of social media for long form content on Substack and I’m hoping that this will eventually lead to some interesting connections.