It Took Me Years to Learn the Map Is Not the Territory

No spiritual tradition has the one right version of the truth

Dogmatism is alive and well in almost all spiritual traditions.

I had good intentions when I first entered the spiritual path. But I mistook the map for the territory and got stuck in dogmatic beliefs. You can easily get sucked into dogmatism and never realize it for years. But holding dogmatic beliefs just thickens the veil between you and the truth.

Here’s how I fell into dogmatism and escaped from it too. I hope sharing my story will help you avoid the same trap. It might even stop you from wasting years of your life.

You might be skeptical at first. But honestly, you might be more susceptible to dogmatism than you think.

Curious? Let’s begin.

If It’s Good for Me, It’s Good for You, Right?

You might associate dogmatism with Christian extremism. But I’m quite sure it thrives among Westerners who follow Eastern spiritual paths as well.

When a non-dual teacher recently insisted I don’t exist, I knew they had fallen down their particular ideological rabbit hole.

I’m certain dogmatism remains alive and kicking among New Age spiritualists too.

The term “New Age” may be dead. But I assure you its zeitgeist vibrates among the young wanderers and old hippies who populate the outdoor tables at my local health food store. They believe mystical drugs comprise the path.

Your immediate reaction might be to exclaim, “Dogmatism? Not me.”

If that’s the case, take a moment to look within. Might a tiny bit be hiding in there?

Swept Into Dogmatism

How did I get swept into dogmatism? My story begins in childhood.

I went to a Catholic elementary school, where a cadre of nuns injected fear into my soul—fear of their punishments just as much as fear of God’s.

“Did God really turn Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt just for looking back at the burning cities of Sodom and Gomorrah? Could that happen to me?”

I worried about those kinds of things as a child.

After a cross-country move, my parents put me in public school for eighth grade. Released from the matrix of fear, or so I thought, I disentangled myself from the Catholic religion altogether over the next few years. I couldn’t believe in a cruel God. If asked, I might say I was an atheist and done with religion.

Then I encountered Tibetan Buddhism in my late twenties.

Tibetan Buddhism emphasizes unwavering devotion to a spiritual teacher, who can be more dogmatic or less. Guess what? Mine veered toward the seriously dogmatic side.

Tibetan Buddhism also contains countless guidelines including its own lists of wholesome and unwholesome behaviors akin to the Ten Commandments I had left behind.

And there’s a plethora of smaller instructions that need to be followed precisely. Never step over sacred tests. Never lick your finger to turn their pages. Never, never, never.

The Tibetan Buddhist description of eight hot hells, eight cold hells, the neighboring hells and the ephemeral hells rivals the Catholic one-hell-fits-all version any day.

But let me clarify.

Ideally, ethics in Buddhism isn’t about following external rules to the letter. It means discerning between behaviors that cause happiness or suffering for yourself and others. Then, choosing wisely.

But again, the degree of dogmatism around any guidelines depends upon the particular Buddhist teacher you follow and your own proclivities.

As you can imagine, all the fear implanted in me by those Catholic nuns shot back up to the surface when I entered into Buddhism and found all these should dos and should not dos.

On top of that, my teacher used fear to keep his students in line, which made the call to obedience all the more intense.

I could make an infinitely long list of all the ways my teacher injected doses of fear into our psyches day after day. He plucked examples from traditional teachings, which made them seem bonafide.

Here’s one.

My teacher employed the metaphor of a snake in a tube to describe how your choices are suddenly limited once you begin to study the advanced Buddhist teachings called Vajrayana.

Like a snake in a tube, you can only go up or down—in our case, to hell or to enlightenment. I suppose you could also remain stuck in the tube endlessly, but he never mentioned that.

Just to be clear, there are many Tibetan Buddhist teachers who don’t convey these teachings in fear-inducing ways. And, the 8th-century CE Indian philosopher and Buddhist monk Shantideva described the hell realms as states of mind rather than actual places.

I’m sure many students blew off those traditional stories.

But I didn’t. I worried. I worried about students who talked back to my teacher. We had been told negativity on our part could adversely affect his health. What would happen to them?

I worried about my ex-husband who eventually questioned this teacher’s methods and started to pull away. Would he be sucked into hell like a snake gone awry in the tube?

I worried about invoking my teacher’s wrath by making a simple mistake of my own.

I can’t believe I accepted all that nonsense for so long. The years of constant stress led to chronic illness. And I wasn’t the only one from the group who ended up with ill health.

I still believe there are consequences for our behavior. But I prefer to assume a merciful universe where we get infinite chances to get it right.

Regaining Myself

I felt too much fear to consciously detach from my dogmatic teacher. Instead, when I became fantastically ill and dwindled to eight-four pounds, I headed to Hawaii to rest and recover. I never returned to the mainland or his home base in Europe.

I remained a part of my spiritual community and participated online in retreats and study programs.

I lived two oceans away from my dictator teacher, but I still feared him. I worried he’d call. One way he kept close students in his net. Would I be able to explain myself adequately?

Eventually, my teacher was revealed as a serial abuser. Thus, my split from him began. I still felt terrified of him and afraid of possible repercussions should I align with the abused rather than the abuser.

But I did.

Dogmatism Dissolves

As the split began, I sometimes thought, “What about me? What about my spiritual path?” Self-centered perhaps, but an understandable concern.

I was still tied to the notion I couldn’t experience a spiritual awakening without a teacher. And even worse, by speaking out about my teacher, maybe I was now the snake sliding down the tube.

I wandered in a spiritual wasteland for the next five years—not knowing who I could trust or how to continue on my spiritual path. But in time I deepened my commitment to the exploration of non-duality and spiritual awakening.

As I did, dogmatism fell away.

The more I study non-duality, the more I meditate and the more I contemplate, the less I truly know for sure. How can I say one way is right and another is wrong?

I still resonate most with the Buddhist explanation of reality. But one day that will have to go too.

The great mystery can’t be fully explained by concepts, ideas, and words. The map is not the territory. It’s not even close.

You have to sit still and experience the great mystery, whatever you wish to call it, for yourself.

Concluding Thoughts

It’s easy to slip into dogmatism when you fall in love with a spiritual approach whether it’s a traditional religion or an eclectic New Age mix. You feel the joy it brings you. Naturally, you think it’s the right way for everyone.

But how do you know?

Dogmatism leads to schisms, conflicts, and even war. It leads to rules that can keep you inside or push you outside, suddenly alone. It makes you think there’s one way to unravel the great mystery when in reality many roads can take you there.

Take a moment to look within. Are there any spiritual beliefs you hold onto too tightly? How does that benefit you? What would happen if you let them go?

Remember, the map is not the territory. Not even close.

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