I wrote something for you.
I didn’t mean to, it just kind of took hold of me as I started writing it, and ~six hours later, it was finished.
(that’s why we didn’t have an email yesterday)
I call it The Maze.
It’s an allegory for the spiritual journey — or, if you prefer, the human journey, which is really the same thing.
Read it to the end, and when you’re finished, I’d love to know what you think.
Enjoy.
– T
The Maze
“Your mission is to solve the riddle of this world.” – 3 Body Problem
Wake up.
Wake up!
Where — and while we’re at it, who — are you?
Where you are appears to be some sort of maze:
A multi-level, multi-player maze, full of bright lights and shiny signs and others who race in all directions, frantically chasing… something.
Who you are — well, that’s not so clear.
Your mind has been wiped blank:
No memories. No sense of identity. Not even a name.
How you got here is a mystery, but that question will need to wait for later.
The more pressing question is…
Why.
Why are you here?
What is the purpose of this maze?
What are you supposed to do, in this place?
The others seem to be chasing some sort of bright, shiny substance, hard and golden.
Some race after it, pockets jangling with small piles of the stuff — while others hoard larger piles in private, guarded corners.
A few of them see you, and stop.
“You’re new here,” they say, slapping you with a glossy name tag. “Here’s what we’ll call you.”
“But, who am I really?” you ask.
They point to your name tag.
“And, what am I doing here?”
They motion to the maze.
“Look around,” they say, “and follow along.”
So you do.
You start slowly, at first, but then you pick up speed, and soon you’re racing around corners with the others, scurrying down side-streets, chasing every golden flicker that catches your eye and carefully stowing every scrap you get your hands on.
And, to your delight, it’s fun:
The competition is thrilling, at first, and your growing stockpile spurrs you onwards.
Before long, you’re so absorbed in the chase that questions of who you are and why you’re here fade into the background of your mind.
Your name tag has become your identity, growing your stash has become your purpose, and the maze has become your world:
Your single, total reality.
You have no memory of anything else, which means you have no reason to believe anything beyond this maze exists.
But, once in a while, when the maze goes quiet, those deeper questions stirr like sleeping beasts, threatening to wake.
“Is this really all there is?”
“What am I actually meant to be doing, here?”
“Who, beyond this flimsy name tag, am I?”
Time passes, and the questions in your mind grow louder and harder to ignore, and you find yourself adventuring into deeper layers of the maze, pulled by a growling hunger for answers.
You move carefully at first, and then more boldly, striking into wild, unmarked zones where the crowds are thin and the dangers are hidden.
You cut around unfamiliar corners and dash down darkened alleys, piercing deeper, further into the maze, looking, searching…
And then, you’re all alone.
For the first time ever, you’re navigating the maze with nothing but your own inner guidance and desperate faith that the answers you’re searching for exist.
You push further, more violently now, too far from home to ever retrace your steps, dangerously beyond the point of no return.
“This can’t be all there is…”
Your anxiety grows frantic as you move faster, forwards into the deep maze — or, is it backwards?
All routes look identical now; forwards has blended with backwards, left has blended with right, everywhere you look is empty, silent, and black.
Your head spins, and darkness surrounds you as the walls close in.
You try to press forwards, but the walls press back.
There is nowhere else to go.
There is nothing more to do.
There is no hope of retreat.
The game is over.
With finality, you close your eyes, tilt your head upwards, and surrender.
Then, you open your eyes.
A narrow band of light cuts through a small, obscure crack in the ceiling above you.
A crack?
You look closer, eyes straining in the darkness, and the light grows larger, brighter, intensifying, blinding.
You try to pull away but your vision is captured, locked in shocking awareness of the view breaking open before you.
Light erupts, tearing through the illusion of the dank, shadowy maze as it dissolves around you and the world beyond explodes into view.
The world beyond.
Your mind is ringing with realization as your eyes struggle to adjust.
“There is a world beyond the maze,” you think, before realizing that’s not quite true.
It’s the same world; you haven’t moved, and yet the maze is gone as though it was never there.
In its place is a wide-open world of dazzling, shimmering space, no walls, no obstructions, no limitations.
You rub your eyes as though to wipe away the remnants of sleep, as though the maze was only a dream and you are now, finally, awakening.
Recognition wells up and overflows within you; it feels as though you are looking out at a world you have always known, for the first time.
And, for the first time since you arrived, you speak the words and know them, with certainty, to be true:
“I am home.”
Epilogue:
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes.” – Marcel Proust
The Maze is an allegory for the spiritual journey, which begins, for all of us, with a blank slate.
We arrive in the world with no sense of self, no idea where we are or why we’re here.
And so, with no other choice, we look to others for guidance:
Who am I? What is this place? What am I meant to do here?
Of course, others arrived blind just like we did — which means any guidance they give us can only be a guess.
But we adopt this second-hand worldview anyway, living as though it is true and forgetting that it isn’t.
And for some, that is enough — the essential questions fade into the background of a comfortable life, dying unanswered — while for others, the questions linger, like a thorn in the mind:
“Who am I?”
“Why am I here?”
“Is there more to life than this?”
And so we set out on a journey, pulled by an invisible impulse, not knowing what we’re looking for but praying that it exists.
Perhaps we think we’ll find a new world, a higher dimension or a secret, magical land, or maybe we think we’ll become someone new in the search.
Many never find what they’re looking for, but those who do are inevitably surprised:
The journey ends not in a new world, but in the same world, seen through radically fresh eyes, and we have not become someone new, we have become who we really are.
To those lost in the maze:
Keep going.
What you are looking for is real. It exists. It is yours.
