The Blackberry Walk

The Real encompasses all facets of the human experience - it's what appears to us in the world, what appears to us in our dreams, and what appears to us in the beauty of a painting. These aren't 'just' in your head; they exist in the world, and we have to improve to experience them. Understanding the divine good is a form of study: to know what a good book is you must read many books and pick out the best parts; to know a good anime, you must watch and judge many anime; and to know what a good person is like, you've gotta meet and share experiences with many people to understand who's traits are best. With these experiences of the world, we map out the territory of reality, discovering the geography of what exists. However the world is overflowing with goodness should we only choose to observe it. The way my bookshelf holds up my books so sturdily is something I'm forever indebted to it for. The rocks of the landscape too hold one another up without acknowledgement. My bed loyally supports me in comfort every night; my neck supported by my pillow which is squished without complaint. The Real exists in a kind of divine Goodness (with divine Truth and divine Beauty too, but a similar argument stands), which is the goodness inherent in the territory, since Reality is the territory. But to see the goodness and beauty in everything may well be beneficial for a monk (and perhaps to us all, to an extent), but not for everyday living. If you break down crying in every field of flowers at the sheer beauty, people will think either you're mad or have acute hayfever. We need to experience our map of the world in order to take for granted the bookshelves and beds, otherwise we would be exceptionally inefficient. That is why we experience the world as map not territory. We can stare at our maps for too long, however, and only see the forest without noticing the trees. The map is of course useful - it will guide you through a rocky reality - but the map can distract you from the reality which is really out there. Reality that's out there is purely real, and can be diffracted into Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Much like light, reality shines upon darkness, fakeness, a property which is only an absence of perceived reality. Reality exists in it's entirety in all places at all times, but we just can't perceive it. Through honing ourselves by exploring reality, the terrain, not by making new maps, we get into closer contact with reality and better able to experience it. In summary: reality is the single substance through who's absence fakeness can exist; the Good begets fate through right-fitting things occurring; reality's territory must be mapped to be tilled into something useful; the map can be a distraction and through it you can lose sight of the territory; and, most of all, the map is not the territory.