The mind tends towards re-generating what it knows, what it is familiar with. The inside of its cage, the struggles it cannot see beyond, the delusions it cannot let go of.
If we know this, then when we act, react and enact — whether in “real life” or in the container of artmaking in any form — then we can see the mirror for what it is and have a chance to stop invisibilizing its reflections.
We can watch the mind communicate to us the patterns that it cannot yet move beyond, and in doing so, play with them rather than hallucinate their solidity.
The incarnate world is thus.
A re-creative process in which the organism can glimpse the body it is inside of, and dare to dream that body beyond its current limitations, ideologies, identities and behaviors.
But to dream beyond the current state of being, we must first dream the current state of being, without disassociating. We must traverse the dreams of pain, fear and desire that we are already yoked to, and ride them.
This not the glamorous, idealized methods of exceptionalism in which we are drowning. This is not the fake salvation of the influencer or “guru”.
The way that can be named is not the perennial way.
So too, the methods which are merely reflections of the mind’s imprisonment are not the liberatory methods.
If we can stay long enough at the site of the most unpreferred phenomenon, we can break through into an open sky which may be more terrifying than the initial constriction. Which may be why we stay inside the cage of the familiar and only speak platitudes about freedom.
At the heart of every animal is a voice that only ever asks two questions: the first is “am i safe?” and the second is “am i hungry?” In other words: is this situation dangerous? and, do i have enough resources? And to the animal sensibilities the answer to both is “not good enough”.
This is the drive of an organism to survive, but it does not produce actual satisfaction. It is merely the foundation on which more complex inquiries can be layered.
The heart of nondual meditation is to recognize this endless cycle and include it in a wider experience that is not just solving the problems posed by the animal mind’s two questions.
We must discover this, not build it.
In doing so, all the terrible ups and downs of living out of sync with nature take their place within a broader nature which does not hold anything in contempt.
But it will not save you from the pain you must endure. It will not necessarily buffer you from the harshness of reality. You may feel as if there is no real point to any of this. This is all just the gasping narcissism of the animal. Beautiful and stupid and beautifully stupid, doing what it believes it needs to do.
What you do with this information is solely in your own hands.