The Map Maker and What Lies Beneath It
El cartógrafo y lo que yace debajo
A student describes a joyful meditative experience in which the body seemed to come apart and dance, and asks how to carry that sense of peace into everyday life.
The Map Maker and What Lies Beneath It
A student describes a joyful meditative experience in which the body seemed to come apart and dance, and asks how to carry that sense of peace into everyday life.
It was a very strange experience. The beautiful thing, near the ending, was that I felt as though I was in the air, so joyful. Parts of my body started to feel separate, playing and going back together. I can't fully understand it, but I'm just trying to approximate what happened. I found two centers, one in the head and one in the chest, with different colors, very intense. There was a nice unity between them.
And I asked myself: how can I use this for my difficult times, for my fear? How can I learn from this peace, from this beautiful thing that is me, and include it in everyday life? It was beautiful because I thought, "I have this, and now I see it. The next step is to become more conscious of it and believe that it's real." So that's what I can say. If you have something for me, it would be great.
When you say "split," you said "this part that is split." What do you mean?
Parts of the body. Different parts of the body, but they were dancing together, playing. I was trying to touch them, and then one or two parts would play together and come back. It was a very short image, like a brief film.
I'm curious because you mention "the next step." Are you talking about uniting those parts?
After I experienced the colors in my head and my chest, and they were so intensely interactive, I thought: why can't I use this in my world, in my real life?
But are you saying they felt split and shouldn't be split, that you need them to be connected?
No, no. It was a play. They were playing. But it was very different, very strange.
The map maker
I'm asking a few questions just to understand what you're describing. I think what you're pointing to relates to a very foundational aspect of thinking. The mind has a function we learn from a very young age, and I call it the map maker. It is constantly making a map out of everything we experience: the body is here, the room is there, the books are over there, the computer is here. This is constant, and we don't realize that this is thinking.
When we do a meditation like the one we just did, we move into a form of functioning that changes the way the brain is working and deactivates this map making. You gently bring that filter down, and you get an opportunity to experience reality more directly. It's the same kind of thing that happens with psychedelics. In meditation, you can produce the same shift.
Living without the filter
In a sense, this is what we are looking for, what we're longing for, because when that map making is constant, it feels like a contraction. What I think you're describing is the way in which, for you in that moment, in that meditation, the map making deactivated to some degree, and everything felt like a dance. Your arm is over there, your body is playing. And you're wondering, "How can I live like this more?"
Yes.
And that makes sense, because the nature of that experience is a lot more pleasant. There is a lot more satisfaction in experiencing reality directly, not through the map maker.