The Significance of Maps on your Spiritual Journey

by Elijah Ignatieff Harmonic Thinking Systems

If you dumped 80 zillion tons of water on a city, that would be an out of balance situation. Anywhere you have too much air, too much water, too much of anything, its out of balance. Alchemy is the knowledge of how to keep these things in balance. If you understand these geometries and know what their relationships are you can create what you want.
The Flower of Life

The whole idea is to understand the map underneath it all, remember the map is the way Spirit moves in the void. If you know the underlying map, then you have the knowledge and understanding to co-create with God.
The Secret of the Flower of Life Drunvalo Melchizedek

The Significance of Maps on your Spiritual Journey

For years I have been drawing maps. Conceptual maps. Maps of how to organize the mind. Ive been trying to figure out how to connect various maps together into one whole system of maps to run any business using the spiritual principles that connect them together. I didnt do that in the beginning. I read books. Spiritual books. Anything I was drawn to. I had no idea of thought structures, or sacred geometry, or thinking systems. I was just looking for something that I felt was missing. Once I found my own path and stated my own spiritual purpose and wrote down my spiritual vision of what I wanted to createthings changed. The outer search became an inner search. And I was led to finding a way to organize my values into a whole The Enneagram system. Putting values on a map. I didnt know it at the time what I was doing. It kind of evolved. Most of the values I saw were organized on a list in a hierarchy. Yet I was drawn to a symbol called the enneagram. It was the map that always stayed around. There was something that beckoned inside of it. If you take any of the major numbers but 7 and divide them by seven you get the same recurring number: .142857142857142857142857 over and over again. No 3,6,or 9. Why?
George Gurdjieff

This always struck me as significant. Why is this so? George Gurdjieff, a spiritual master who brought much that was hidden into western thinking, said you could not understand anything until you could put place it on the enneagram. What did that mean?

The importance of significance is underrated. To be significant means it merits attention. Yet how do you know something is significant? Of all the information available, why would we think anything stands out? Thats the hardest part of the spiritual journey, finding out what is significant and then paying attention to it. There are so many ways to get lost in the glamour or illusion. So many books, so many masters, so many teachings

To me there are fundamental truths that are there all the time. They are the laws of the Universe. The laws of Gods creation have to be the fundamental structure of everything. Thats why Science and Spirituality are the same thing.
The Tree of Life

So a map is a way or looking at the organization of the structure of things. The way the laws of the universe come together. I came across many maps along the way in regards to the many spiritual traditions. The Tree of life is connected to the Cabala tradition.

People spend their entire life studying this map and what it means. Why? What is it about this map that is so important? What is so significant about it? I saw that it linked the planets, the tarot, and the Hebrew alphabet together into one whole system. That seemed impressive. Another spiritual tradition, the native path also had maps. Their main map is called the Medicine Wheel. What was so interesting about their system is that it was fractally arranged. You go deeper inside one of the 5 circles and a map would appear below on another level structured the same way as the level above, only the information was different. And all the concepts would then integrate together. It seemed such a cool way to organize the knowledge. And the words they used applied to all situations. The medicine wheel seemed the most harmonious way to organize knowledge. Very general concepts at the top levels and more detailed concepts on the lower levels. It was easier for the mind to memorize how all the knowledge fitted together. The map became the structure. The concepts were the content.
4 Elements

4 Worlds

Then I came across a map that seemed to be EXTREMELY significant:

This map comes from the Twisted Hairs Metis Medicine Society Council of Elders. Originally established in 1250 B.C. as the Rattlesnake School of Turtle Island, it is a body of shamans, medicine men and women, sorcerers and magicians from many tribes throughout North, Central and South America, who have traveled and studied beyond their traditional tribal boundaries and evolved to levels of great learning, wisdom, power and knowledge. I had never before seen a map that had all the religions on the planet, or most of them, on one map and showing the perspective of the whole they were responsible for.

Maps help you to identify what you are part of and how you break down into smaller parts. In terms of spiritual traditions, it teaches us to value each for their own truth. But without a map to see this, people end up arguing and fighting over doctrines that actually complement each other, if you could only understand the connections. But we are all connected, the maps prove this. Map of Language Source
The Light In the Tent

Another fascinating series of maps is found at www.meru.org. What Stan Tenen discovered was you could create every letter of the English and Hebrew alphabet by shining light through a tetrahedron with a golden mean spiral inside. You have to check out his site to really understand what this means. But fundamentally it proves that the origin of language is not manmade but may be inherent within the design of the Universe. Isnt that amazing?

Everywhere you look there is something looking back at you. Consciousness is everywhere. Intelligence is everywhere. The maps of all these spiritual traditions help people to alter their perception and see how all things are connected together. Are you beginning to get how significant maps are? They are the interfaces of the abstract mind with the Divine Mind. When you use them to perceive the connections of the universe you access your own Divine Intelligence.
Chakras

The Map of the Chakra System Another odd thing is how the charka system is not part of mainstream Western science. Most spiritual traditions, especially the Eastern ones, have chakras as a very important part of their spiritual knowledge system. They

are the energetic vortices of our energetic body. They control the intake and output of energy. Without a simple map you would not be aware of their existence, except when you feel them The Inflow Matrix At the end of all my studying of maps I looked to create something unique and useful. The reason for writing this paper is to show spiritual aspirants ,who may not realize the significance of maps, how important they are on the spiritual journey. Especially why it is necessary to memorize to use as a blueprint to see how things connect together.
The Inflow Matrix

In my own work, the enneagram became the primary reference point for designing a values based multi dimensional business thinking system called the Inflow Matrix. Like the Medicine wheel the maps are arranged fractally. This means the original thought structure is always the same one used. But this paper is not to explain any of the maps mentioned or how the Inflow Matrix is designed. It is just to reinforce that the map is the key to understanding how things are designed and if you can mentally follow the design, you can begin to participate in the magical arrangement of the Universal Flow.