Dedication to Reality

Some would call my spiritual quest foolish, heretical, dangerousw ... I would say that it is merely a dedication to reality and the truth. I am rereading The Road Less Traveled and I wanted to touch on the chapter on Discipline.

Peck says the our view of reality is like a map. They lie somewhere on a continuum of true and accurate to delusional and false. The better map we have, the better choices we make, the more we are able to experience peace, hope and love. So, get a good map, have a good life.

The problem is that we are not born with maps. We have to make them and that requires effort. Dang it. There is always a monkey wrench, isn't there ....? And to make things worse, reality is not static, it is always changing. So, we must continually revise our maps. Double dang it. (Can you tell I tend toward laziness?)

Many people stop revising their map at some point in their lives. I am blessed/cursed to not be one of those people. Why do people stop revising their maps? Pain.

It is painful to revise our maps, it entails "letting go". We must let go of our old beliefs, attachments, theories, questions that have become so comfortable. In fact, we may even view them as our "self". None of us wants our "self" to die, but if we are going to have more accurate maps, die it must. Some people are not willing to suffer, so they stop revising.

"...we must continually revise our maps, and sometimes when enough new information has accumulated, we must make very major revisions. The process of making revisions, particularly major revisions, is painful and sometimes excruciatingly painful. And herein lies the major source of many of the ills of mankind."

Peck says that some will actively or passively ignore the new information in order to preserve their comfort and avoid suffering.

"We may denounce information as false, dangerous, heretical, the work of the devil. We may actually crusade against it and even attempt to manipulate the world so as to make it conform to our view of reality. Rather than to try change the map, an individual may try to destroy the new reality. Sadly, such a person may expend much more energy ultimately in defending an outmoded view of the world than would have been required to revise and correct it in the first place."

I've burned a few maps in the past couple of years. There is suffering involved. In fact, later in the book Peck says that depression is a form of "letting go". Been through that too...but there are new maps. New places to see, new information to learn, new experiences to be had, new people to interact with....

Go make a map!