An inherent danger with any navigational aide is that one may become dependent on the map and mistake it for the territory. The more we rely on external directions, the less we exercise our own capacity for discernment, gradually trading direct experience and independent judgment for the comfort of being told where to go.
Like relying on GPS for every journey, we may reach our destination while gradually losing the capacity to find our own way.
A map can tell you where you are in relation to something else. It can reveal a shape too large to see from where you’re standing. It can help you recognize that the apparently random terrain beneath your feet belongs to a larger landscape.
What it can’t do is become the landscape. This distinction is especially important when it comes to the Phases of Jumpers we’ll be looking at in the coming weeks.
I first developed the phases after moving through this territory myself and later encountering others undergoing recognizably similar forms of dismantling. Over time, a loose pattern became visible. I began coming into contact with different people in different circumstances. Different personalities, histories, beliefs, careers, relationships, and external lives. Yet beneath all of that variation, I started to see that the developmental movement had a surprisingly consistent shape.
Something that once worked begins not to work. The structures holding identity together become increasingly unstable. What first appears to be discontent eventually becomes disruption. Disruption gives way to deeper dismantling. The architecture of the existing self eventually loses its authority altogether. What follows is typically an interval in which the old organizing structure is gone before anything capable of replacing it has formed. Then, gradually, life reorganizes around what I can best describe as function without falsehood.