Maps of Unknown Territory

It is interesting to look at old maps of the world, when the parts of the Earth's surface were not well known. The rough shapes of landmasses are in place, but their details are left to the imagination. The areas that were not yet explored (to this mapmaker's knowledge, anyway) were often embroidered with fanciful scrolls or lettered warnings or fanciful images: mermaids, sea-monsters or warnings that "Heere theyr bee dragonnes". The edges of the known world, in other words, were populated with fantasies and imaginary creatures.

To a certain extent this occurs in any map, whether it is of geographical territory or some other aspect of reality. The humours believed to be injected into the tides of the blood in Galen's time were such, as were the angels said to be peeking through every star in the galaxy. So to was caloric imagined to explain heat transfer.Thus, also, are our political dialogues often populated with imaginary demons when the substance of a situation is not well-viewed. God in his heavens turning the sun around the Earth, against which Galileo tried to make his early scientific proofs, is another one. Yet, nevertheless, it moves. When the territory is better explored by actual experience -- by sailors following the course to the world's edge and finding only more world -- the edges of the known are expanded, and the fantastic creatures that populate the unknown are moved back.

There is a lot to be said about this mechanism, which is widely popular. The contents of the imaginary, and the boundaries of the known, vary dramatically of course, depending on the viewer and the area of knowing under consideration. But there may be a commonality in this observed mechanism that is worth keeping an eye on, especially when one is deciding whether or not to face the demons that dance at the edges of the known and possibly run the terrible risk of dispelling them.

The Eight Faces of Living Dangerously

The intricate web of causes, false causes, effects, false effects, and the infinite array of names and opinions we place upon them demands understanding if it is ever to be navigated, let alone escaped.

The truism of "maps not being territories" is well-used; the truth is that sometimes, maps are not even maps. And even when they are, they cannot help if they are maps from some other land, in some other tongue. Finally, the deepest well of mystery cannot have a map, because it is the Source of maps, the Thou, map-maker, before any map is visible or designed.

In the rivers of cause and effects, there are two false flows which will betray the soul. One is Desire. The other is Resistance. And on the inverse face of each one is its complement: Enforcement, and Inhibition (or suppression).

For any territory, any place within any territory, these are the land-mines, the uninspected betrayals.

Consider that with desire, without enforcement, with resistance and without inhibition, every flow of attention, perception, and understanding would be unburdened, and therefore would pass through its own experience into the liberation of the awareness it engaged. The moviegoer would pass through the screen and return to the complete authorship of screen, projection, plot, film, and deployed light which comprised the illusion of the movie.

When the imagery of the moment is seized as an answer to Desire, or is enforced as a demand on the attention like a Fox News broadcast; or is hidden in its sources, cloaked in mysteries or barriers of suppressed information (consented to or not); then, the film goes on, and all is at it is meant to seem to be. When the movie ends, the moviegoers move out, return to their lives, let the images fade, and engage the next moment of their time.

Here are some things to notice, or consider, or to heal from:

1. The self desired, inhibited, enforced, or resisted.

2. Desired connections, to share creation, love, or family; likewise, the same connections inhibited, suppressed, or enforced, or resisted.

3. The desire for membership or grouphood or neighbor-ness, the belonging of the tribe or the clan or the community, and what happens to that experience when it is enforced, or inhibited, or suppressed or resisted.

4. The desire to exist as human, and the ways in which that existence can be enforced, or inhibited, resisted or suppressed.

5. The desire to exist among life's forms at all--to be among trees, animals, mammal-kind or bird-kind or fish--kind, and the suppression that can inhibit it; the result of enforcing that desire or resisting that existence.

6. The desire -- sometimes a blind hunger -- for existence among material forms and masses, bounded by the lines of time and the breadth of spaces. What explosions occur when desire and suppression collide, or when that face of existence is resisted? Suppressed? Demanded?

7. Consider the love of being one's own spiritual nature. Consider, too, when that love is suborned into desire, and when it is in turn suppressed, or enforced, by ritual or authority or arbitrary infringement, or inhibited likewise.

8. Consider the inklings of the Infinite that are on every hand, and how they too are solidified by enforcedment, denied, inhibited, suppressed.

In all these arenas, the four distortions of desire, resistance, enforcement and inhibition are at play. Imagine if they were to vanish completely, and the Middle Path were made whole.

There would be a travel to write home about. Except that one would be there already.

San Diego

June, 2009