Thar Be Dragons!

Thar Be Dragons by Artful Alchemist on Polyvore

On ancient nautical maps, beyond the edge of the known world, mapmakers would write “thar be dragons.” It seems to be human nature to first project fear into uncharted realms before considering expanding the map.  

Even when some individuals begin to push the boundaries, the collective culture often pushes back. When Copernicus and Galileo dared suggest that the world was round, they were ridiculed and severely punished by the powers that be.

We each hold our own map of reality – our certainties about how things work. This map is necessary. It allows us to move through our days without having to relearn every single thing. It’s also exponentially smaller than the whole of reality – and often quite wrong. While Columbus believed that the world was round and set out to prove it, he still thought he’d found the East Indies, not a new continent, because that’s what his map told him he would find. We filter everything through our own very limited map and tend to disregard anything that doesn’t match up.

The ego-self is the keeper of the current map of reality. And let’s not bash the ego as something we need to get rid of. The ego-self is indispensible; it is what allows us to get things done and to maintain order in our lives. Doing those things is easier with a fixed map, and so the ego has a vested interest in not letting the map change.  When your map and my map disagree, the ego-self declares your map “wrong” and my map “right.” It is the ego-self who ridicules and punishes when the status quo is challenged. It is the ego-self who sees dragons in the dark unknown.

The essential-self is the bridge to larger possibilities. It is the part of you that remains connected to deeper realities and truths that lie beyond individual perception. When your map and my map disagree, the essential-self looks for new possibilities and deeper connections. It creates synergy where there were differences and pushes for growth and transformation. The essential-self is not only willing to expand the map, but even to completely redesign it – to recognize when a 2-dimensional flat map will no longer do because a 3-dimensional  globe comes closer to depicting what’s true.

The constant tension between the essential-self and the ego-self is what drives the course of our personal and collective evolution. The essential-self, recognizing the map is too small, pushes forward. The ego-self, fearing dragons, pushes back. As more and more new territory is revealed, a new map emerges and the ego-self is now able to comfortably navigate a much wider territory.

We seem to be living in a time when our collective sense of “how things are” has become painfully dysfunctional. We are recognizing, I think, that the map is too small. Our essential-selves are pushing for a quantum leap – a change on the scale of flat map to spherical globe. Our ego-selves can’t quite wrap their heads around that, so they do what they do: hold tight to the status quo, polarize right and wrong, ridicule and punish the pioneers of new thinking, and project dragons into every dark corner.

It is only temporary ignorance and fear. The new map is emerging. I can’t quite see it yet, but my essential-self can. Beyond the dragons, thar be light!

Imprinting the Universal Field

Seeding the Universal Field by Artful Alchemist on Polyvore

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.
~Rumi

There is a field called consciousness. It is a communal field. Each of us seeds that field with every thought, choice and action we take. Our challenges, failures and successes are recorded there. Each of us also harvests from that field, reaping the benefits (or detriments) of what we and others have sown.

Through a phenomenon biologist Rupert Sheldrake calls morphic resonance (also known as the hundredth monkey effect), when a new skill is mastered by enough of us, it becomes easier for the rest of us to master.  Just watch a 4-year-old with no official training intuitively use a computer or play a video game. These technological skills have been seeded into the field. Our little ones are born technologically savvy. Unfortunately, fear and violence and greed have also been seeded into the field over eons of time, and our little ones inherit this as well. But we can continue to plant seeds of peace and hope and when enough of us do, we will shift the pattern of collective consciousness.

Butterfly Crop Circle, Aug 2009, Holland

If we literally envision collective consciousness as a field, we can imagine that our individual thoughts and actions leave an imprint upon it, like a footprint in wet grass. A thought or act of peace might bend the blades in one direction, a thought or act of violence might bend them in another. All of our thoughts and actions, taken together, create a pattern of imprints, like a crop circle in a field of wheat. We can leave an imprint of chaos and ugliness, or we can create an intricate and beautiful pattern.

Regardless of whether the crop circles that appear in fields all over the planet are man-made or other-worldly, the imprints left in the field of consciousness ARE man-made, by you and me. It can sometimes feel overwhelming to think about changing the world. Yet we are doing so, every minute of every day with every thought, choice and action.

There is a field. I'll meet you there. What imprint shall we leave?