The mind can be likened to an entire world, its features a geography
all their own. This inner world is a complex place, fraught with
pitfalls reflecting the dilemmas of everyday life. The mind is a
jungle, with myriad animals and plants all impeding the struggle for progress. This is the state of humanity - constantly obstructed,
constantly wandering the trackless waste that is comprised of the
little things in life.
Habits form, and paths begin to develop where travel is frequent. We
rely on these paths - how else could we get anything done - and fear
leaving them, for why would we step ever so boldly into the unknown
when the alternative is to remain in light, so bright that one can
eventually forget that there ever was a time when it didn’t exist. We
move along these paths, and it takes a truly weighty object to sways
us from them. Seldom do we abandon our routines for long, and never
without effort.
Success is merely the ability to choose these paths correctly, to see
through the jungle to the transient clearings of success and failure
and to navigate where one wishes. Insight is the jungle falling away
for an instant, all details becoming transparent, a single thread
leading the way to some distant destination.
When the thread is severed, however, the shock is truly
devestating.The path vanishes, and the poor victim must once again
blunder around in the darkness, forging new paths, with perhaps no
relation to the old ones. The mind is resilient, however, and there is
no manner in which the new trails can be judged to be better or worse
than the old. Difference is the only attribute that can be used to
define them, in this abstract land without frame of reference or
exterior factors.
It is instinctive to think of the internal world as unique, that the
jungle of the individual is so far removed from that of any other that
all analysis is pointless. That may be true, as far as such things go.
No two men walk down the same river twice (or something to that
effect), and experiences differ. They do not differ nearly so much as
to force absolutely divergent outlooks on people, however. Trials and
tribulations (Trails and tributaries, to maintain the metaphor) remain
the same, and truly, this can be seen through the most compelling
evidence ever made available - it has been found profitable by the
greedy, and industries have sprung up around this mass-produced
analysis.
When the world contained in the mind becomes interesting - because it
clearly does not hold interest merely due to some conjured-up merit of
individuality - is when the jungle falls away and an imposing plateau
surges towards the sky (or perhaps the top of the skull). This is not
some sudden clarity of purpose - The plateau lacks any signposts, has
no roads carved across its face, and is not even aways a sudden
presence filling the horizon. One may instead hold the plateau in a
blind spot, refusing to focus on it for any other reason than to
better be able to avoid it. This, as a whole, does not work. The
plateau may sneak up on you as well. The comfortable homogeneity of the
jungle may suddenly vanish, and with a rush of vertigo you find
yourself in an arid, barren land. The plateau is a warning - it is the
last chance to turn back from some momentous happening. The plateau
is an opportunity to get your bearings, to turn back on the
nearly discovered consequences of progress. It is an awesome
realization, a realization that your world - your view of the world -
may be woefully out of date, perhaps painfully redundant, or even just
plain wrong.
There are many ways down from the plateau, back to some semblance of
how things used to be. There is the careful descent, avoiding any
danger through ignorance. This leads merely to the awareness that
something is wrong, but this awareness does not come thing the
requisite knowledge of what is truly wrong Even if you know that you
are living a lie, the desire to know the truth still exists. If one
finds this option distasteful - if they do not want the queasy
tension of denial - There is a far more simple, cleaner, more violent
and brutal route to be had. One can merely step off, embrace that
which they had previously denied, adjust to the new world that they
are thrust into. The fall is short, and the landing is abrupt -
damage, perhaps, inescapable - but the damage has an honesty to it
that denial so obviously lacks.
The pain may never go away entirely, but adjustment to the truth is
far easier in the long run than living with dis-ease without respite.
That is the true deciding factor, in the choice of whether to embrace
the new world as it is presented to you, or to ignore it as much as
possible - Whether you are willing to suffer the short, sharp shock of
realization, or whether you cannot handle it, and put it off, inviting
another encounter with the plateau. Or you may descend into madness,
unable to keep up the fantasy of living in the world of your choice
without it subsuming you completely, leading you to the loss of your
grip on everything, including your own mind.