Do you ever wake up and for a moment feel disoriented? But not in a manner such as: where the hell am I? And who is this next to me? Although, perhaps, that applies, as well.
I mean, feeling like you don't know who you really are. Knowing who you have become, through circumstance or sheer power of will, but not who you really are.
The way I see it is we all have our internal maps of the "innerverse" we are born with, and when we start out on the journey, they are mostly blank. Sure, there is always that huge, great ocean. But we have to find out ourselves whether our world is round or flat and temporarily housed on a giant turtle. Its edges are not defined, and we do not always know where the continents are.
Some of us never leave, content to stay put on a square of land our parents made their own. Some are explorers, by chance, necessity or choice. We sail out past our self-imposed boundaries – and those set by the society or family we are born into – and discover new vistas. Sometimes we run aground for many years. Other times we return with a hoard of treasure.
As the years go by, the maps become more and more defined. We know the mountain ranges, the seas and the deserts. We learn the hows of our emotional weather and sometimes we are still utterly puzzled by it. The cities have names.
But there are mornings when you wake up and your map is missing, if just for a few moments. It is a scary, strange thing, because all of a sudden you do not know who you really are. Your reference points are not there. You are floating – or flailing – past the edges of the world you have painstakingly built, numbered and measured over time. Then minutes pass, and you are back. You stretch, wonder at yourself and get up to make the morning coffee. Reality as you know it rushes back in to soothe or irritate you – or both. After all, we revel in what is known, even if it is not quite what we dreamed of not so long ago.
I had a thought this morning: all true creativity happens when you are off the map, so to speak. Humans have, for aeons, sought to temporarily get there, via drugs, religious ecstasy, sex and adrenaline overdoses.
But no one can truly live off the map long term and stay sane. Or can they? Without it, one may well go crazy, become very depressed or fearful – or create a work of genius. Sometimes, it seems, all three go together.
Is that what also happens when you meditate? Do you get a bird's eye view of your world and soar past the boundaries of your internal story?
I tried to explain some of this to a friend. I said: 'Reality is what happens inside and outside you at the same time. And magic – the undefinable, "misty" stuff – is what you see out of the corner of your eye. The moment you stare at it directly, it is no longer there'.
Perhaps this is when you are getting a glimpse of what lies beyond your precious and oh-so-little-in-the-scale-of-things world you have been mapping out for so long you completely forgot where you really came from:
The stars and beyond?
