“The map is not the territory.” - Gregory Bateson, anthropologist

Consider: Our experience of the world is based more on the map we use than on the territory we travail, because our map tells us how to interpret the territory. Our interpretations give us our responses, our beliefs, our emotions, and even our sense of what’s possible. If we have a map that does not include California or Borneo, for example, we are unlikely to consider the possibility of going there. We may not even know they exist. Likewise if our map does not include love, success, self-esteem, or adventure, we are equally unlikely to consider or own such possibilities for our lives. These maps, made early in our lives, are embedded in our bodies at the cellular level, not just in our minds. To change your world and your experience, then, you have to change more than your mind; you have to re-wire your cellular map of reality.

1. Whatever you want and don’t have, assume it is outside your box. If it were inside your box, you’d already have it. The corollary to this is that people are smart and resourceful, with problem solving skills. Therefore, if your usual method of solving things were going to work on a persistent concern, it would already have worked. In other words, you’ll have to get out of the box and take a different, and perhaps unfamiliar, approach to transforming your life and having what you really want.
2. Symptoms and pain are often a healthy response, directing our attention to an unhealthy situation or internal ecology that needs attention. In order to relieve the symptom, such as depression or anxiety, one must rebalance the system, addressing what is out of balance, stuck, unfulfilled, unexpressed, etc.
3. People are complete systems. The mind, body, emotions, social experience, and spirit are not separate; healing must address all of these, in a dynamic balance.
4. Transformation and growth are a natural part of life. One need not make it happen; one need only remove the obstacles and allow it to happen. The medical model is fine—if people are sick. If people are growing, or on a journey, then a healer or counselor needs to function more as a trail guide on the path, or a village healer, who is a part of the community, rather than separate from it. S/he needs to facilitate the soul’s natural urge to healing and integration, rather than focusing on pathology. (Pathology happens when growth is stunted or is out of balance)
5. All people are made up of a variety of potentials, some of which are developed, and some of which are less developed. Often pain occurs when an old way of being, or integration of these potentials, is outgrown, and a new way of being, with new potentials, needs to be adopted and integrated. This is not a sign of sickness, but a sign of health.
6. All parts and impulses have at their core a positive intent, no matter how destructive they may appear. The trick is to find the positive intent in the so-called negative behavior, and integrate it in some more harmonious manner.
7. The body remembers what the mind has forgotten, The body allows access to events and traumas that need resolution in order for healthy integration to occur. The body wants to heal, and has the potential for healing.
8. We all have a map of reality, which filters and directs virtually all our experiences. This map was formed when we were very young, and wants regular updating, in order to be able to direct us where we really want to go.

copyright © 1996-2004 by W. Hunter Roberts