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.