Manifestation Basics: The Map Is Not The Territory

Part One

When was the last time you saw a tree? Take a second and think about it. Have your answer? 

Good. Your answer is probably wrong.

Unless you’ve actively attempted to undo your conditioned perspective, the last time you saw a tree was right around the time you learned the word “tree” and everything it’s meant to represent. After that, you see a leaf, or a branch and your brain goes “I know what that is, it’s a tree,” and you write the rest of the experience off. But a tree isn’t just a “tree.” Trees existed for millions of years with nobody around to name them – they weren’t “trees” then, and they aren’t “trees” now.

Words or concepts are representations that exist only for our convenience. They are not "real."

Tree-ness is in the tree -- not in the word "tree."

Our brains are exposed to an overwhelming amount of stimuli. The fact that we’re capable of conceptualizing – of understanding what "trees" are generally, whether it be an oak, a palm, or a maple – is an incredibly useful tool. It allows us to organize and make sense of our experience. But that comes at a cost.

Most people never actually “experience” the world. They live in an imagined world made of concepts and categories established months, years, or decades ago. Occasionally they’ll be forced to deal with a new stimulus and will snap back to experiencing things on a deeper, more visceral level -- but the second they’re able to make sense of what’s happening (to contextualize based on their past concepts and categories) -- that experiencing ends.

When you spend your entire life swimming around in concept-soup, you start to lose track of reality. 

The meanings we ascribe to things no longer register as imposed – we start to believe that our “meanings” or our “concepts” are concrete characteristics of the objects and experiences we encounter. We begin to mistake the map for the territory it represents.

We take for granted that our experiences have inherent meaning. Someone yells in my face -- that’s bad. It’s inherently unpleasant. What if you’re an actor shooting a scene? The woman I love kisses me. That’s inherently good. What if she’s leaving me with one last kiss after deciding she wants to end things? You can try to argue that the context in which a situation arises is as “real” as the experience itself, but it isn’t. It has no objective existence -- a scientist could measure how loud you yell, or how high your heart rate gets, but could never "find" the narrative you spin about what's happening.

And this matters for manifestation, why?

The experiences we want to manifest are maps; the feelings those experiences represent are territories.

If you visualize yourself driving around in a Ferrari – if that’s something you want to manifest – it’s only because you’ve “linked” that experience to feelings of abundance, security, freedom; with feeling like you're rich. You take those feelings to be inherent to the experience. But they’re not. What if you’re a Gopher at a luxury car dealership? You'd find yourself behind the wheel of a different Ferrari every day, but probably wouldn’t feel abundant. 

This understanding is essential. It’s the reason people struggle to “change beliefs” or to stay in their desired state when faced with "reality." They visualize winning a Grammy -- an experience they deem to be inherently awesome -- then open their eyes and are in a tiny bedroom -- an experience they deem to be inherently negative. To them, one narrative is imaginary and the other is "real." They forget that a Grammy winning artist could wake up in a cozy, little bedroom then walk out into a penthouse suite overlooking Paris.

The awesome-ness isn't "in" the experience of winning your Grammy. The awesome-ness is in you -- you just project your internal feeling onto an imagined experience.

For this entire weekend, try and take the positive feelings you associate with your desires and “link” them with day to day experiences you deem to be negative. Wake up in bed alone? When you’re with your SP, there’ll be times when they’re away on business or on a trip and you’ll wake up alone. So you can lay in bed and feel loved and cared for now, even if you’re alone. 

It's effortless to choose your state when you realize all narratives are imaginary constructions. The reason it feels so hard is because we believe our state is a response to some inherent quality of our experience. From this vantage point, it's basically impossible to change your state -- because you've given away all power. You've said, "the sadness and anger I feel are just logical reactions to the inherent unpleasantness of my experience. I want to not feel sad and angry, but my situation compels me to feel as I do -- therefore, I cannot change states except by "pretending" to be unaware of the objectively unpleasant quality of my life."

If you’ve ever said “I can get into my desired state when I visualize it, but then I open my eyes and am faced with reality…” FREEZE. The only "reality" you’re faced with is that you open your eyes and see a room of a certain size filled with certain objects. That’s it. Anything further you say is your own imposed narrative. And I know on some level you're thinking, “come on dude, stop. My life sucks. I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t. I live in my mother’s basement. It is objectively awful, and you cannot tell me otherwise.” 

Yes. I am telling you otherwise. And I will die on this hill. That your life “sucks” is your own imposed narrative. It is in no way, shape, or form a “true” statement. You're the one pretending. It doesn’t matter how attached you are to your narrative. It doesn’t matter if a million other people confirm it for you. It is not objectively existent, and you have full power to change it. If you think you can’t, or that it's difficult to, it can only be because you think the meaning you’ve injected into your life is “real.” That the goodness or badness is in the experience and accessed by/responded to by you, and not in you and projected onto the experience. Once again -- this belief should crumble when analyzed for even a moment. It is so, so, so egregiously, glaringly false.

Some advise others to “be delusional.” I get their point, but the word "delusion" implies your experience has an objectively true meaning and your job is to delude yourself into not admitting it. It isn't delusional to stop imposing crappy narratives. It’s delusional to believe that the meanings you’ve ascribed to all the stuff in your life exist in any concrete way outside of your mind. 

See the falseness. Feelings are in you -- not in your desired experience, or your current undesired one. This is the essence of manifestation.