More and more, we are coming to realize that, along with our bodies, we have souls -- eternal, immaterial essences that accompany us throughout life. From birth to death, while our bodies drive themselves, our minds learn and plan, and our hearts experience love, joy, pain and loss, our souls are alive too, and at work -- though the nature and scope of that work may not always be apparent. Like the flight of a divinely guided arrow, each of our lives follows its own arc, and it is up to each of to discern its path. With thought-provoking paradigms as well as exercises and questions to lead us, Erickson offers seekers at all levels a guide to uncovering our own unique paths.Employing the methods that have proven so successful in her seminars on writing spiritual autobiographies, Carolly Erickson shows us how to take a spiritual inventory and how to recognize the often elusive tracks of the spirit as it works within us.Whether we are on a new spiritual quest or looking to deepen our faith, we will all be the richer forArc of the Arrow,a catalyst for self-knowledge and for a heightened awareness of the divine within, and a practical guide to mapping the course of our spiritual lives.

Prize-winning historian and biographer Carolly Erickson reaches an expanding popular audience worldwide while attaining exceptional critical acclaim. Among her books are The Medieval Vision; Bloody Mary; Great Harry; The First Elizabeth; Mistress Anne; Our Tempestuous Day: A History of Regency England (nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in biography); Bonnie Prince Charlie; To the Scaffold: The Life of Marie Antoinette; (Treat Catherine; Her Little Majesty: A Life of Queen Victoria; and the forthcoming Season of the Swan: The Life of Josephine. She lives in Hawaii.

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Chapter 1: John Bunyan and the Way of the Pilgrim

More than three hundred years ago John Bunyan, an English tinsmith who was also a wandering preacher, wrote a book that became an overnight success. It was calledThe Pilgrim's Progress,and it told the story of an anguished man struggling to find his way from the darkness of the world toward the light of salvation.

Because Bunyan wrote the story of his hero, whom he named Christian, in a vivid and page-turning style, and because his story contains many memorable characters and adventurous episodes, it has been read by generations of believers who see in it echoes of their own often laborious progress toward their ultimate goal.

The action of the story takes place in an imagined landscape, which might be called the landscape of the psyche. It has hills and valleys, rivers and trees, like the material landscape of earth, but from the very beginning Bunyan leads us into an alternative world, a landscape of the religious imagination, where states of mind and attitudes and qualities of character have shapes and forms, some human, some inanimate.

To follow the arduous pilgrimage of Christian over this psychic terrain is to encounter, in outward form, many of the pitfalls and triumphs we encounter inwardly in the course of our lives. For this reason,The Pilgrim's Progressoffers a fruitful paradigm for spiritual autobiography.

Bunyan's tale begins when Christian, who lives with his wife and four children in the City of Destruction, flees his home in search of eternal life. Clothed in rags, and bearing a heavy burden on his back, Christian meets Evangelist, who shows him the gate that leads to the path he must follow -- the straight and narrow path whose end is the Celestial City. But Christian no sooner enters the path than he is enmired in a bog, the Swamp of Dejection, where he loses heart and founders. He is tempted to return home, but help arrives, and, with his understanding strengthened, Christian enters a highway called Salvation that leads to the cross.

At the cross his burden falls from his back, and he cries aloud for joy. Now sealed with the mark of Christ, the pilgrim resumes his journey, shrugging off the bad advice of fellow journeyers who urge him to take an easier path than the one he is on. But soon he meets with another threat: two fierce lions who rise up to menace his progress. Undaunted, Christian successfully passes this trial of faith, and enjoys a respite in the Chamber of Peace in the Palace Beautiful, where he glimpses Immanuel's Land, an arcadian country, abundantly watered with springs and fountains and planted in vineyards and orchards that offers, on the far horizon, a vista of the Celestial City.

The vista is tantalizingly brief, for soon Christian finds himself in the Valley of Humiliation, facing a winged monster Apollyon (in Revelation 9:11, Apollyon is the angel of the bottomless pit, and king of the swarm of locusts sent to torment the unsaved), who commands him to leave his quest for the Celestial City and return to the City of Destruction, on pain of death. For many hours Christian endures the flaming darts and blows of the monster, wounded repeatedly, disarmed, and weakening until he feels he is at the point of death. At the last possible moment, summoning all his remaining strength, Christian manages to regain his sword and stab Apollyon, who is vanquished and flies off.

Hardly has he passed through this dread challenge than Christian is faced with a worse one. He enters the Valley of the Shadow of Death, made almost as black as night by overhanging clouds of confusion. Howling spirits gather around him and frighten him as he begins to walk along an extremely narrow ledge between a deep ditch and a quagmire, fearing, as he takes each successive step, that he will miss his footing in the dark. In his terror Christian thinks yet again of turning back and retracing his steps toward the City of Destruction, especially when he sees, in the side of a hill, the flaming, smoke-filled entrance to hell.

Surrounded by tormenting fiends, in constant apprehension of death, with only prayer and his pilgrim faith to sustain him, Christian plods on through the endless dark valley, his wits so confounded at times that he cannot even recognize the sound of his own voice. Traps, snares and pitfalls menace his every step, and he is reminded of his own mortal danger by the sight of the bones, ashes, and mangled bodies of other pilgrims who had preceded him and who had fallen prey to the manifold hazards in the valley.

Finally Christian's path leads him out of the valley, and he continues his journey with a companion, Faithful, and together they come to the town of Vanity, the site of a great fair or marketplace. The temptations of Vanity Fair are very great, for every worldly prize is for sale there: not only houses, estates, and chests of treasure but high offices, power and influence, even entire kingdoms, plus the means to assuage every sensual desire. The chief lord of the fair, the devil Beelzebub, presides over this festival of worldly offerings, providing entertainment for all and turning a blind eye to the lawbreaking, theft, even murder that goes on in his domain.

Christian and Faithful resist the allure of Beelzebub's fair, averting their eyes from the glittering offerings and buying nothing. They are despised for their attitude, seized and beaten repeatedly, and thrown into an iron cage. Brought to trial before Judge Hategood for their contempt of all that the world has to offer, the two pilgrims are condemned to execution, and Faithful dies at the hands of his persecutors. Christian, however, manages to escape, and finds another companion, Hopeful, with whom he rests in a plain called Ease near the river of the water of life.

Resuming their journey, the pilgrims take a wrong turning, and eventually come to Doubting Castle, presided over by the giant Despair. Now comes Christian's severest trial, for the giant beats both men unmercifully and throws them into his stinking, disease-ridden dungeon and leaves them there, without food or water, for four endlessly long days. Their hearts sink, and Despair assails them continuously, trying to convince them to kill themselves, as there is no hope of their ever being restored to health or liberty.

To outbrave external danger is one thing, but to fight off the gnawing, uncontrollable inward conviction of hopelessness is quite another. Christian, inclined to choose the grave over the dungeon, seriously considers taking Despair's advice. But Hopeful pulls him back from the brink, reminding him of how far he has come and what valor he has shown in averting many dangers; can he not summon the strength of will and faith to resist the urge to do away with himself?

A prolonged prayer vigil brings into Christian's tortured mind the memory of a key with which he has been presented -- the key called Promise. With it he unlocks the door of Despair's dungeon and walks free.

Passing safely through the Enchanted Ground, a region where they become drowsy and are tempted to enter an eternal sleep, Christian and Faithful arrive in Beulah Land, where the sun shines day and night and where the Shining Ones, bright messengers of God, walk abroad. From Beulah Land they can see the Celestial City, built of pearls and precious stones and gleaming with such brightness that they cannot bear to look at it directly.

But before they can reach the gates of the city, one more trial awaits. A deep river, the river of Death, divides the pilgrims from their destination. They are told that the depth of the river will be according to the firmness of their faith. At this ultimate terror, the terror of drowning and losing all that he has fought so hard to gain, Christian once again falters. He enters the river, but soon cries out that he is sinking. Hopeful urges Christian on, and holds his head above the surging waters, but Christian has difficulty believing that he can overcome death, and his senses fail him.

"Be of good cheer," says Hopeful. "Jesus Christ maketh thee whole." Hopeful's words penetrate the veil that has fallen over Christian's awareness, and he gropes once again to see the face of Christ. The image clarifies, and Christian begins to find his footing.

Now Christian and Hopeful ascend the hill that leads to the great golden gate of the Celestial City. With a crowd of heavenly greeters to accompany them, trumpets sounding and bells ringing in joyful cacophany, their faces shining, they arrive at last at their destination, and enter, as Bunyan writes, "into the joy of the Lord."

The Pilgrim Mentality

Bunyan's story is more complex than this brief retelling of it, but I have included the essentials. It is inviting and somehow satisfying to view one's spiritual life as a journey, with birth (or perhaps a childhood baptism or confession of faith or other religious event) marking the beginning of the road or path and death marking the ultimate arrival.

We may experience our spiritual lives as a series of episodes, or encounters with unforeseen events or conditions, forming no consistent pattern -- like a meandering river that winds from one bend to the next. In tracing this life course, we might follow Bunyan and give names to the prominent features in our psychic landscape: Mount Martyrdom, the Arbor of Lust, the Vale of Success, the Cave of Wealth, the Thicket of Deceit, the Wasteland of Divorce.

The hills, fruitful meadows, quagmires, dark shadowed valleys and overflowing rivers of our experience may seem to lead us onward toward a worthy goal, or they may cause us to double back on ourselves, to regress, or even to return to our starting point -- or to our own personal City of Destruction where psychic dangers lurk.

But just as in Bunyan's spiritual map, we will probably recall seasons of ease, peace and renewal, and important spiritual companions who gave us encouragement and showed us the way when we were lost.

The pilgrim journey is sharply focused; it is a quest, in search of an ultimate prize. Our spiritual lives are rarely so one-pointed. In thinking about your journey, you may identify long stretches of time spent in Pastures of Dullness or Plains of Inattention when your spiritual awareness dimmed. Or you may have tarried in temples of agnosticism or fortresses of atheism, or built shrines of your own to deities (persons, ideologies, career goals) that, for a time, seemed to promise meaningful rewards but which you ultimately abandoned.

The way of the pilgrim is to be in this world but not of it -- to be always restless in the midst of earthly life and longing for that higher, purer, transcendent realm that lies in the far distance, at the end of the journey. Thus the mentality of the pilgrim is that of a rootless wanderer, a sojourner in a foreign place (for all places are foreign to one who cannot be at home until he completes his quest). It is not a comfortable frame of mind, or an easy one; the pilgrim looks out on the world with a wistful gaze, and a watchful one, for he expects dangers and difficulties.

For the pilgrim, life is a struggle against snares and temptations, dangers and challenges. To be sure, there are oases of refreshment and rest amid the strife, but the struggle is neverending and constant vigilance is essential. If the tale of Christian's journey appeals to you, it may be because, on some deep level, you are always comparing everyday life with its flaws to an ideal or utopia, whether spiritual or secular, where perfection reigns. You may look on the world as a hostile place, or at least a dangerous one. Or you may simply be gifted with a vision of betterment, an unquenchable hope for humanity that finds spiritual expression in the ability to look beyond the mundane and in the prayerful or meditative contemplation of your own understanding of the Celestial City.

Exercises: The Way of the Pilgrim and Your Spiritual Story

1. Using as large a sheet of paper as you have available (art paper two feet square is ideal), draw a map of your spiritual journey, naming important landmarks along the way. Do this in any way that feels appropriate to you -- as a landscape with mountains and valleys, rivers and lakes, as a "flow chart" with arrows and boxes, as a series of pictures or images, as a blueprint. Let your map reflect who you are and the lens through which you view the world.

Although your journey is not yet complete, indicate, perhaps with a dotted line, where you think it is leading and what your ultimate destination will be.

2. Choose three episodes from the story of Christian the pilgrim (for example, the fight with the winged monster Apollyon, the encounter with the giant Despair, and the temptations of Vanity Fair) and relate them to occasions in your spiritual life.

3. Who in your life has played the role of Faithful? Hopeful? Evangelist?

Excerpted from Arc of the Arrow: Writing Your Spiritual Autobiography by Carolly Erickson
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