The Context of Opposites

Dancing in Duality & Ridding the Waves of Creative Living

There is hardly any reason not to assert that being human is first and foremost an experiential happening. I see the courage to live out this experience we call life as the ability to face its dualities and contradictions without nuances, commentaries or interpretations. A sort of advanced cosmic surrender.

What is dualism?

Dualism or duality implies a split or a twofold division that is irreducible. Duality also implies the notion of opposites. However, it seems rather curious to me that only one side or state at a time is truly possible.

For example, the universe cannot expand and contract at the same time. Furthermore, a woman cannot be pregnant and not pregnant concurrently. Is duality escapable or is it more desirable to learn how to navigate it?

Success beyond survival

After all, we all search for various degrees of successful thriving, prosperity and wellbeing. We work for it individually as well as collectively. Is it possible then to reach a complete state of creative bliss beyond dualistic living?

Duality though it is always right under our immediate contemplation is not possible by definition except when it is perceived and contemplated in its totality or two-sidedness. Duality means two and points to two sides of the same coin because they arise together at all times.

For instance, I might presently feel good but the thought or memory of feeling bad is always there in the background, though momentarily forgotten. Hence, transcendence or seeing through is the desired state.

Awareness trumps everything

To be truly aware is to see something through its totality, hence, its duality. I feel satisfied now but I will feel distressed some other time. Conditioning is also dualistic in nature. Ideas of obligation and liberty, to love or not to love, making money or being poor, brave or cowardly, lonely and whole, feeling good and being depressed, young and old, free or imprisoned, etc.

Clarity is all

Only clarity is possible as a true non-dualistic state. Clarity or clear seeing in its true form is not dualistic in essence as it encompasses all opposites. It is a state of acute awareness and seeing through. Hence awareness and happiness are paradoxically synonymous because outside of their romantic or emotional values, these states transcend duality.

Misery as well as all forms of anxiety is a conditioned focus. Conditioning means it had to be learned and enforced through repetition to be experienced. There are committed or conditioned states and inherent or complete states. Freedom comes by distinguishing our conditioned states. It is also key to distinguish what is possible and what is not in terms of reachable permanent states.

Beyond misery

Only the awareness of our incessant vacillations between opposite emotions and states of mind can lead to feeling free. That something is possible is what keeps us marching and feeds us genuine hope. In a sense, it is our potential for awareness that keeps us sane. Furthermore, the realisation that only what we truly are aware of is satisfying within duality also keeps us balanced and thriving correctly; the rest is perfect instinctive living.

The culture of love

In the process of producing art, I have discovered that art is actually a call to the cultivation of love, hope, and joy in a universal sense. Love, outside of its romantic and emotional commonplace meaning, is simply the absolute certainty that I am alive and that everything in the universe is alive and fully present in a perpetual dance of transformation and synchronicity.

Awakening to your true nature

As an artist, I cultivate this aliveness by being aware of it rather than thinking about it. The difference between thinking and awareness is the difference between imprisonment and freedom. Between love and fear. Only thoughts are dualistic in nature and there is no escape from that. It represents a primary seeing or realisation and the beginning of awakening to our true nature: self, being, existence and as a natural extension God. We are here to experience not suffer pointlessly. When we let our dualistic minds run the show it can only lead to further distress and missed opportunities.

Recognising Life

For me as an artist, thought is the energetic tool life utilises to feel and recognise itself. Thought or mind, by its perpetually changing and forward movement cannot be self-reflective. Thoughts feel real through constant projection and belief but thoughts do not reveal, for instance, the secret of life or the origin of the universe though it questions it, analyses it and advances theories about it.

Thinking and Awareness

I assert that much of our emotional and psychological problems are sourced in that original lack of distinction between thinking and awareness or consciousness. Awareness is total and thought is dualistic, partial, creates tension and eventually returns to non-existence as it exhausts itself. Love or life itself is deeper and encompasses thought. Life is free and thought is dependent. Freedom is not a destination but a realisation or again the awareness that it is always here, except that we are often busy thinking about freedom. Thinking creates memory so does instinctive animal living.

Cultivate Love

Of all possible cultivations love or aliveness is the most rare. That’s because as ego and conditioned man takes over our decision process early in our development, it generates tension, separation and a deep-seated sense of loss. We think ourselves instead of being ourselves. Comparison, competition and duplication represent splits in our consciousness. They are spiritual illnesses until they are transcended as in recognised for what they are.

A split in consciousness creates the idea that I am or have a “me”, a personality, free will, and a destiny. Splits also create the illusion of time, which is simply the comparative process of two separate events or happenings. When something happens the brain memorises it; then when something else happens it also creates a memory and now has something else to compare it to. By the time we are fives years old we have collected millions of these comparisons based on our impressions of the world within and around us.

How we Create a Thinker

Vibrations or moods are collections of thoughts. When thoughts happen it creates a thinker: a me. Thought creates a reality and tension sets in because thoughts give us the “appearance” of reality but not reality in its totality. Who we think we are, is not who we are. When thoughts happen spontaneously there’s no thinker. A thinker is only here when the spontaneous thought is “thought about.” The thinker is the ego or personality. Ego is always tense. Lee Strasberg in his breakthrough work with actors understood it perfectly when he declared: “you cannot be if you are tense.”

The artist, painter, poet, writer, actor, etc., knows how to cultivate the love of life in all its possible interpretations, appearances and hopefully without too much attachment as to the veracity of his or her views. Life itself is the actual context and content of existence.

Farmers of Love

An artist is in fact a farmer of love, beauty and intuition contained within life itself, and artists are not limited to works of art in the traditional sense as means of expression. Love is cultivated through presence, intuition and awareness. Above all love is realised not created.

The evolution and liberation of man depends on artists and we are all artists. Evolution speaks of the evolution of thought. I need thought to move forward and create movement. Animals don’t need artists in their species as their survival depends on reproductive laws not emotional, psychological or spiritual laws. Conversely, animals are completely controlled by and surrendered to existence itself.

Humans are different because of their intuitive understanding of the larger context of existence. Artists who understand their place in evolution act as perfect bridges between the animal (instincts) and spiritual worlds. Any awakened being is automatically an artist and vice-versa regardless of their professional or personal activities during their lifetime.

When I Love I am Artistic.

When I don’t experience love it only means I am not cultivating it but rather, busy thinking. It is like expecting flowers from a garden I don’t water. I think about watering but do not water. My strength is my love and intuition, which come from the love I feel, cultivate and share.