The sword of Persia is my metaphor for Zorasterianism, this ancient religion that saw the world as a war between Good and Evil, the God of Light and the God of Darkness, two gods. But the God of darkness would be defeated in the end if mankind choose to fight as the Sons of Light abasing the darkness. In the end of time, with the arrival of a savior, the sons of light would triumph and be lifted up. Sound familia? The Jews held captive in Babylon digested this myth and took it back home to put in their Bible. Only in the Bible there is only One God, but evil and sin was brought into the world by….man, thanks to Eve. 

The Sword of Persia is that reality was divided into good and. bad, and man had to choose good instead of bad. When the choices are equal but opposite we get caught in a double-bind where we are damned if you do and damned if we don’t. This is the Sword of Persia. And to bring us to our current involvement in this ancient land, no matter what we do there, we are caught in a double-bind, so the conflict goes on and on, like sand dunes on the desert. 

We can’t accept things as there are, and we can’t leave it, so we are doomed to try and fix it—following the map of Zoraster. When you try to stop sand dunes from moving, that is like trying to fix the desert.

I find the Sword of Persia (the sword that cuts the original One into two conflicting parts) in the Garden if Eden myth. Once. you don’t make the myth historical, it opens up insight as a metaphor. The Tree of Good and Evil, is the True of Duality, the operating system of the conscious mind that must make choices between this or that, and it must choose the better half of the apple. The irony is that the original apple is a whole apple, but the moment the sword divides it, one half is light and the other half is dark. Good and Evil are created. And when the apple is divided, time is created so now we have to keep choosing, keep correcting the divided apple to find its original wholeness…in the future. The Mythic world view of Zoraster and the Cosmic War of good versus Evil creates time where in the future this conflict will someday end, the Promised Land. 

The Map of Acceptance is the Buddha Map, which says the world is what it is and can’t be better than it is, except in your imagination. This is the Triumphan Christ who joyfully participates in the sorrow of the world. 

And there is the Map of Denial, where you turn away from the world and go live in a monastery, or a cabin in the woods. This was the ancient path of Yoga. 

Accept the world, leave the world, fix the world. What map do you follow? What works for you? The value of a map is if it works, if it makes you happy, more conscious, more liberated.