Unchartered Territories - The most important journey of your life!
Land ahoy! ⚓
Fair winds and calm seas to you! 🌬️
Good morning, fellow discoverers and explorers! 🌿 We are gathered here today to get through this thing called life*… and I hope you are ready for the epic journey ahead of us! 🥳
Humans are great at mapping every inch of the world that lies outside of us.
I remember the fascination that overcame me when our history teacher in school told us about the times when maps still had blank spots on them, indicating ‘undiscovered territories’. Lands full of myths and legends, untouched by modern civilisation. Entire continents that existed in peace without us knowing about them. (Still safe from us until we traveled there to destroy what we found, in typical human fashion 🙄). And all those pretty maps that cartographers designed in the attempt to find these mysterious places. Wow - it seemed the world had more wonders left a few hundred years ago!
Nowadays, thanks to Google Earth, we can browse every inch of our planet in just a few clicks. Everything on its surface is discovered, and if I zoom close enough, I can even see the colour my grandparents painted their new fence. This leaves humanity with only three big unchartered territories:
1. The secrets of outer space (we better leave these to Elon Musk)
2. The secrets of the deep blue oceans
3. The secrets that hide inside of us
Or are they maybe all the same? 🤷♀️
A coloured version of the famous German Waldseemueller Map (1507), also known as Universalis Cosmographia.
Our thoughts steer the ship that travels through our inner oceans.
As we don’t have space ships or deep-sea-divers handy, let’s focus on our internal landscapes instead - and our mental state is a good starting point for this voyage. 🧘♀️ Did you know that your mind thinks between 60,000-80,000 thoughts a day? WHAT! That’s an average of 2,500-3,300 thoughts per hour. WHATTTTT!!! And of those, 80% are mostly negative, and 95% are exactly the same repetitive thoughts as the day before.** WHAAAAAATTTTTTTT!!!! It’s like we life in a loop - Westworld much? 😳
To say it in a nutshell: We pretty much spend our lives thinking THE SAME THOUGHTS over and over again. And most of them aren’t happy or productive but - to be frank - rather dull. For instance, since I woke up, I already thought at least 20 times about the same chore I have to finish today. Ufff - how boring! What a waste of brain space, and what a waste of conscious life experience. So is there a way to become more aware about what’s going on inside our heads? Are there tools that can help us discover our ‘blank spots’ on the mental map? The simple answer is YES. 💖
Start your own spiritual logbook!
Just like the explorers of the old world noted down sightings during their journeys to unchartered lands that eventually formed a map, I started to scribble my experiences after my meditation practise - my voyages into my inner unknown landscapes - into a little notebook.
Initially, it felt a bit silly: Had I reached the peak of personal geekiness? After a few weeks, however, as words turned into sketches, and thoughts more and more into metaphors, my practise slowly grew stronger, and I can’t help but think that this little book has something to do with it. 💖
One can argue that the goal of sitting down to meditate is to not have any thoughts at all, and writing them down might be counter-productive as the habit might form more thoughts as a result. Point taken! For me personally at this stage in my journey, however, this practise has helped me - and continues to do so - by throwing light on thoughts and patterns that otherwise would stay hidden in the dark.
Carl G. Jung, (one of the people apart from Plato I would LOVE to meet), once said: “Whatever is rejected from the self appears in the world as an event.” Wait - maybe I then shouldn’t write down that I can’t stop thinking of pizza? 😜
Today, take a moment, and sail inside.
The OM meditation track (10:41 min) below, recorded by the lovely Deva Premal, is your perfect travel companion! Find a nice place to sit, remove all distractions (pets, kids, husbands, wives, uncomfortable underwear), keep paper and pen handy (no need to start right away with a notebook), close your eyes, and BREATHE. Where does the journey take you? What do you see? What can you hear? How does your belly feel? Your legs? Your heart? 💖
Once you return to the harbour of your presence, write down your observations with as much detail as you can. Even if you were distracted, and your thoughts jumped around like a horde of wild monkeys, scribble down everything that bubbled up to the surface. Did you think of your grocery list? People you should call? Why you still wear that itchy bra? (throw it out, girl!) Don’t worry, just keep writing.
If you chose to repeat the same exercise every morning, over time, you will be able to discover the blank spots on the map of your inner landscape. It will lay the foundation to the most important journey of your life - the one to your true inner self. Trust me on this: IT’S GONNA BE AMAZING. 🤗
With love from Goa,
Isabelle 🌿
*Quote by The Artist Formerly Known as Prince (TAFKAP)
** Researched by the National Science Foundation (2005)
