FINDING THE CENTER

Where are you? It seems like a simple enough question at first. I’m here writing at home. I’m at work. I’m in a meeting. In LA. In the USA. In my hometown at First and Main. And if in doubt, there’s always GPS. But, are any or all of these answers really accurate ways of describing place in space/time? We may have come a long way locating ourselves in the last several centuries. Amazingly enough, it had been in estimated in 1740 that there were as few as 120 countries that were actually mapped in the entire world according to David Grann in “The Lost City of Z.” That left enormous regions of its landmass labeled with the captivating, but elusive description as “unexplored.”

Not only were there famously areas of the sea that were illuminated on early maps with dragons, sea serpents, and other monsters, but most people—whether navigators or just ordinary landlubbers—believed that if you ventured too far into the unknown, you would fall off of the edge of the world. The invention of the chronometer in 1773 did a lot to help maps along by providing the key measure of time.

Prior to that, the so-called Age of Discovery and Exploration may not have seemed so grand to the “discovered” tribal peoples who were doing quite well, thank you, without the intrusion of the conquering, gold and spice seeking boat peoples. It did much, however, to cure the notion that you’d fall off of a flat earth into the abyss. But, it wasn’t until the expansion of the British Empire in the 19th century that the lands and wild countries of the planet were finally mapped.

Google Earth has recently “mapped” areas that persisted as “unknowns”—like an area the size of Texas described in the best-selling, “Morning of the Magicians”, between Amazonian tributaries, the Xingu and Tapajos Rivers that was unmapped going into the 1950s—or the infamous location of Area 51, the top secret test facility whose existence has been denied by the US Air Force, now “mapped” using handy Soviet Spy photographs. Still, our recent sense of security in thinking that we know where we are with such tools as Google Earth and GPS may turn out to be false.

A recent NY Times article about a new scientific study indicated that the increased use of GPS is having a deleterious impact on the spatial abilities of humans. It may be one more example of how McLuhan’s celebrated perspective that saw media and technology as “extensions of man” extending the senses, are having quite the opposite effect. Could it be that sensory systems developed thousands of years ago are being deadened by the use of technology?

The difference between men and women’s sense of direction, for example, is the subject of many jokes and popular culture. Evolutionary biologists offer theories that there may be a basis in truth to differing navigational abilities of the sexes. They have theorized that women--who were stuck back in the cave raising clans and cooking--did not need to develop the same spatial acuity as their hirsute, club carrying mates who needed to remember geographical features for hunting purposes.

Our world--where we may be losing our compass, so to speak--is sharply contrasted by the tribal world. Take for example, the American Plains Indian ceremony known as the “smoke sacrifice.” First of all, the so-called “peace pipe” was the real deal. The tobacco that filled those pipes was the uncured variety, a highly potent hallucinogen. This is precisely why it spawned so many peace treaties that were not remembered by white men in the hungover hazy light of the following day. It is also the reason why tobacco was used ceremonially by native smokers in contrast to its convenient, addictive commercial form today.

The Smoke Sacrifice is illustrative of an orientation in the world and cosmos that tribal peoples have shared throughout time. The cardinal directions were not just points on the compass, but sacred points of origin which were associated with spirits, colors, animals, and other significators that defined the human world as allies. Anthropologist Dennis Tedlock has aptly called this orientation, specifically with respect to the Maya as “finding the center.”

The first puff of smoke that a modern cigarette, cigar or pipe smoker takes is usually pulled greedily into the mouth and lungs. The Smoke Sacrifice is initiated when the smoker blows six puffs of smoke in an offering toward the cardinal points on the compass and to the axis described by the nadir and the midheaven which runs up the spinal column. When this has been accomplished, the final puff is inhaled, thereby completing the ceremony by establishing the smoker as the center of the universe circumscribed by the sphere of smoke. In effect, one’s heart becomes that nodal, essential point of being. The ceremonial smoker is centered by paying respect to the sacred directions and is ready to move out into greater world of creation that always surrounds us wherever we are. Now that is GPS!

So, the next time someone asks, “Where are you?”, think on how many responses a truly accurate answer might have—because even without the smoke, the heart is our only guide in finding the center which is everywhere that we find consciousness.