When exploring a new city or new place, we are “filling in the map.”

Slowly, as we probe new streets or new corners of the building, the unfamiliar becomes familiar. Discomfort morphs, gradually, into comfort.

We figure things out.

Get the lay of the land.

For me, whatever that means, the mindscape, the mindspace, is a vast frontier for exploration.

Slowly, sometimes painstakingly slowly, the beam of an awareness flashlight reveals another area.

Sometimes, the reaction is fear and terror. I turn the light away from it, but deep down, I know I can never “unsee” it.

Sometimes it’s sadness.

Sometimes it’s a tool, like a discovery in a videogame, of something that I feel can be beneficial.

Sometimes it’s a mirror.

And sometimes, I have no clue what it is or why it’s there.

It just is.

Each of these moments conjure something up. A quickening of the heartbeat. Goosebumps on the skill. The weight in my shoulders or chest or stomach that signals shame, guilt, or “less than.”

The really difficult part- and I do mean really difficult-is having the awareness of the awareness.

These things may feel real.

But they aren’t.

They are just new parts of the map, to be integrated into the whole.

When exploring a new city or new place, we are “filling in the map.”

Slowly, as we probe new streets or new corners of the building, the unfamiliar becomes familiar. Discomfort morphs, gradually, into comfort.

We figure things out.

Get the lay of the land.

For me, whatever that means, the mindscape, the mindspace, is a vast frontier for exploration.

Slowly, sometimes painstakingly slowly, the beam of an awareness flashlight reveals another area.

Sometimes, the reaction is fear and terror. I turn the light away from it, but deep down, I know I can never “unsee” it.

Sometimes it’s sadness.

Sometimes it’s a tool, like a discovery in a videogame, of something that I feel can be beneficial.

Sometimes it’s a mirror.

And sometimes, I have no clue what it is or why it’s there.

It just is.

Each of these moments conjure something up. A quickening of the heartbeat. Goosebumps on the skill. The weight in my shoulders or chest or stomach that signals shame, guilt, or “less than.”

The really difficult part- and I do mean really difficult-is having the awareness of the awareness.

These things may feel real.

But they aren’t.

They are just new parts of the map, to be integrated into the whole.