The map in your head

The map in your head is made out of your own construction, not out of the actual facts of the world you live in. A good map can be considered as one that is very similar to the territory it describes, because then it can accurately predict what is going on out there. A map of Jerusalem created in the year 1922 is not a good map to use when you want to explore the city today.  

As mentioned before, the inherently limited structure of our language makes it extremely difficult to create accurate verbal maps of the extensional world (reality). Any mental map you may have is one that distorts the territory it describes. It has to do so, because your brain is not a blank slate. 

By the time you are skillful enough to express yourself verbally, your CNS is a host to numerous subjective beliefs, ideas, concepts, metaphors, agreements and other mental constructs that serve as filters between perception and interpretation. You may think that the trouble is with the distortion in your mental map, but that is not the case. 

The problem is when you are unaware of the distortions and confuse subjective interpretations with facts. 

You can certainly adjust to what’s going on around you when you know you are in the wrong. But when you’re not even aware that you’re wrong – that’s when conflict is ruling your thinking process. 

Remember a while back, when we were discussing disturbing emotions and how important it is to be self aware? If you are not aware of the actual strategy that is running in your unconscious mind and distorts the way you perceive your reality, how can you NOT react with anger and resentment? 

The problem is not in the distortion itself, because merely by becoming aware of how a trigger is causing you to react in anger, you disarm the trigger. Imagine you find out that every time your spouse makes a certain hand movement, your unconscious mind is flooding your brain with associated memories of discomfort and it makes you feel insulted? Your spouse did not mean to insult you. He or she just moved one hand, and you are suddenly in a completely different mood.  

Once you’re aware of such a neurological link between a hand movement and your emotional reaction, you create a gap in that process: consciousness. Now you can consciously assess the situation and choose whether or not it is appropriate or useful for you to feel bad about their hand movement. 

Before you became aware of it, you simply reacted. Your unconscious mind did what it was trained to do, probably when you were much younger and had a strong emotional event in your life that presented a visual symbol (specific hand movement) that happened at the same time as you felt inadequate, angry or insulted. The symbol might not have been even related to the reason you felt insulted originally, but your CNS is not a logical processor – an event happens, a symbol appeared – they are linked. This is the Pavlovian response in essence. 

When you consider it after the fact, it seems silly, but remember: your unconscious mind does not work the same way as your trained conscious mind. It is unreasonable, yet predictable. It will always show the same associations, in the same order, when the same symbol (trigger) is presented. That is why we can map it out and make these links conscious. 

In order to adjust, and literally survive, in the world we live in, we are dependent on having adequate mental maps. Acting out the wrong assumptions in the wrong places can only lead you to troubles. Prisons, hospitals and dysfunctional families are full with people who had distorted maps of reality.