The map is not the territory, but we think it is.

I am the one behind
the drama I create.
I assign the roles.
I am Ahab and
the great white whale,
the obsession,
the sharp harpoon,
the rage and the wreck.

                    I am the archer,
                    I am the bow,
                    I am the arrow,
                    I am the goal.

                         *   *   *

                    The air is stirred
                    by the flight
                    of my arrow.

                                                                     

Inside or out, I am compelled by meaning, a phantom soup of emotions, images, sensations, words.  I seek pleasure and avoid pain, both dependent on the sometimes invisible results I create with my conditioned mind.  Both can be reversed—accepting pain and avoiding pleasure—if the results get me what I want, whatever that might be.

A flower unfolds.  To one nose it is a repugnant stench, to another a fragrant delight.  In either case it is a plant, dancing a flower dance, pushing its essence into the world to attract a vehicle for its pollination—bees, bats, butterflies, the wind—unaware and unconcerned about which monkey loves it and which does not.

My monkey-self wonders at the enigma of consciousness, sometimes aware of being aware, other times carving the world into pieces, calling this piece plant and that piece weed.  When I am forgetful I feel separate, alone, thinking this consciousness is unique to my primate kind.  It is easy to rip a weed from the ground when it does not match my definition of what belongs in the garden.  Sometimes I forget:  everything belongs in the garden. Everything is the garden.

Somewhere in time, from a memory of searching for new meanings, a voice says, “Stay out of the results.”  Anticipating results thrills me and terrifies me. Possibilities wear many disguises.  What are the consequences of imagining I am a weed in others’ gardens?  How could it be that I imagine myself to be a weed and not a flower? 

I am the garden, the soil, the sower and the seed.  Sometimes I am too ready to name one thought “flower” and another “weed,” forgetting to honor the one life that flows through them both; that flows through all forms.  I forget that in the First Garden story, all things in the awareness of the Elohim were recognized as “good.”  Even in the naming of things, by mythic ancestral me, all things were good.  Somehow, as Story Teller, I found it necessary to explain my frustration, anger, and sense of separation as an act of disobedience and sin, rather than ignorance and curiosity. 

As the archer, when I miss the target, it is not because I am bad, but because I forget the wholeness of the process.  When I remember, I see I am always on target, regardless of where the arrow falls.  Hardest of all, perhaps, is the realization that the naming of self as “disobedient” is my attempt to push my Self into awareness, to survive, and that there are more respectful, effective metaphors.  The voice whispers, “Perfect, pure, and spotless … .”

Just as I seek to carve the world of my experience into smaller and smaller pieces of meaning through cosmology, geology, chemistry and physics, striving to understand my self as Universe, so too do I look again to the wholeness I am.  Struggling to awaken I repeat again and again, “God is seated in my heart, and works his perfect will through my life.”  Something in me rebels, until the truth of it dawns on me.  Then separation vanishes.

When I look around I see that all paths lead up the mountain.  Another me might say all paths lead to the abyss.  Either way the words serve as lifelines I use to navigate the now, to understand the now. Regardless of the meaning I give to things, be it Zeus, spirits living in a tree, or the sacred nature of the All-That-Is, I will arrive at the same portal, sooner or later, and like an Autumn leaf I will fall from the tree. 

It is also my nature to be as certain or skeptical of the Beyond as the needs of my consciousness dictate.  God is a Certainty to some, a Question Mark to others, Irrelevant to others yet, and beyond, to others, Nonexistent.  It is a matter of focus, where I place my attention, inward or out, on the weed or the flower.

In the Christian myth, the Jesus character gives me great clues to the ultimate location of truth as I have come to understand it, at the core of all traditions.  Distilling those teachings into three seminal sentences, “To you it is given to know the secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven.  I will give you the Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven.  The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.”

My emotions are “within” me.  When I do not understand the role they play for me, or if I have choked them off, because they are too painful, too frightening, the “within me” part can seem as much like standing at the gates of hell as the gates of heaven. Yet I know that a major key to comprehending the Kingdom within is understanding the messages of my emotions.

They are not messages about my being.  They do not tell me who I am.  They are messages from my being, signals, whose meaning waits my discovery in ways the world, for the most part, did not teach me to understand.

They are a guidance system. I signal myself with them.  When my internal and external worlds mismatch, I experience the range of emotions I call “negative,”  the weeds.  When there is a match, I experience the flowers.  They are physical sensations in my body, reactions to hormones released into my bloodstream.  I am not my emotions.  I have emotions. They all flow from my core.

Buddha said, “Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think.”  How I experience myself devolves from my defining mind, and my emotions signal me if the definition is working or not.  If I am aware of that, the Universe of possibility opens.

I am the aim of my life, in this form, at this time.  How do I want to experience it, and what will empower me?  What is the essence of my core and the signals it sends? How am I an expression of the One in the All-that-is?

I am the flower and the weed.