Master or Disaster:
The Art of Living between Mind and
No-mind
by Gary Z
McGee
“A genuine spiritual
path does not avoid difficulties or mistakes but leads us to the art of making
mistakes wakefully, bringing them to the transformative power of our heart.”
–Jack Kornfield
Your
ego is an instrument, a tool, the primitive leveraging mechanism of the self. Some would even say
it is the self. It is there to balance (master) or dissociate (disaster) our
unique energy with the primordial energy of the cosmos. It is forever in the
throes of connection and disconnection, of attachment and detachment, torn
between finitude and infinity. When the ego is being used to dissociate, its
energy is codependent and it is torn between bemoaning the past and being
anxious about the future. There is a woe-is-me attitude and self-pity is rampant.
As a result unhealthy psychosis ensues.
However,
when the ego is being used to balance itself, its energy becomes
interdependent, and it is liberated from the past and free to create the
future. As a result a healthy enlightenment process ensues. There is an
out-of-mind experience. Indeed, an above-mind experience of healthy detachment
called No-mind.
“There’s
an absolute connection between the toxicity of the world and our state of
consciousness.”
– David Avocado Wolfe
Our
modern day egos typically lean more towards dissociation, since the majority of
us were raised in dysfunctional and dissociative cultures, and most of us are
not even aware to what degree. Because of this, we are plagued with a plethora
of psychological problems that grossly effect our ontological perceptions. In
short: we are walking disasters.
To
be human today is to be party to a perplexing existential illusion –that human
individuals are independent agents– which exacts a heavy emotional and
psychological toll on us. It is the source of all anxiety, envy, jealousy,
anger and the violence that inevitably ensues.
Modern
Man is a troubled species indeed, he can only state what he is not; and what he
positively is, remains obscure and shrouded in doubt. We have become
dissociated from finite nature and infinite cosmos: our true self. And we are
in need of healing. But as Lao Tzu cryptically opined, “New beginnings are
often disguised as painful endings.” The ending of our rampant dissociation is
a taming of our ego and a letting go of our attachment to the mind.
Here’s
the thing: everything is connected. We all know this. Our boundaries are fluid
and blurred. They aren’t even boundaries at all, just the illusion of a
boundary. We are all profoundly linked in ways we can hardly fathom. Like Alan
Watts said, “’To be or not to be’ is not the question — because you can’t have
one without the other! Not-being implies being; just as being implies
not-being. The existentialist in the West — who still trembles at the choice
between being and not-being and therefore says that anxiety is ontological —
hasn’t grasped this point yet. When the existentialist who trembles with anxiety
before this choice realizes suddenly one day that not-being implies being, the
trembling of anxiety turns into the shaking of laughter.” (See The Cosmic
Joke).
A
master with high humor is needed to resolve the disaster of the self. This
master lies dormant inside us all. It can only be found by having the
out-of-mind experience of no-mind. There, in the stillness, the master is
meditating. The master is connected to the source of all things, her
thousand-petalled lotus spinning like a galaxy above her head. He/she is
radiating inside of you, bursting with wisdom and nth-degree-questions. She
pirouettes like Shakti. He foxtrots like Shiva. He/she is the all-dancing,
all-laughing oracle of the primordial self. And it can only be found there in
the silence, between inhale and exhale, between being and non-being, between
mind and no-mind. There, above thought, is the source of human creativity: the
place where artists, poets, musicians, and even scientists have discovered the
secrets of the universe.
Like
Leonard Cohen said, “You lose your grip, and then you slip into the
masterpiece.” What is truly needed to become a master of oneself in this life
is the ability to disincarnate and incarnate at will, to dissolve the ego and
also use the ego as a tool toward higher thought. Disincarnating is dissolving
the ego and quieting the mind. Incarnating is leveraging the ego as a force of
nature, using it as a tool for further exploration. In between is where the
magic is, where Shakti and Shiva dance eternally.
The
human condition is like a snakeskin that we must constantly shed in order to
embrace the new. Looking at it this way helps us to stretch it, to open it a
little wider; a kind of evolutionary self-permeability that makes us more
spiritually flexible. The way we do this is first realizing that we are not our
mind or our ego. We are our Consciousness. We are the
unique-as-our-own-fingerprint wave of consciousness curling out of the cosmic
ocean. Our ego, our mind, is just as much a tool of our consciousness as our
body is. In short: we have to be able to lose our mind and then retrieve it –
and we have to do this over and over again, like breathing in and out: inhale
– mind; exhale – retrieve mind.
Like
Eckhart Tolle said, “Thinking and consciousness are not synonymous. Thinking is
only a small aspect of consciousness. Thought cannot exist without
consciousness, but consciousness does not need thought.” photo Beginner-mind
begets learned-mind begets master-complex which must be subsumed by
beginner-mind in order to achieve self-actualized-mind, thereby renewing the
cycle. Being a master is learning how to unlearn. Being a disaster is not
questioning what you’ve learned and believing in it blindly.
And
it’s okay if so far you’ve been a disaster. The first step is accepting it, so
that you can begin to liberate yourself from the clutches of fear that have
held you back. It is your responsibility, and yours alone, to synchronize with
your inner cyclic entropies so that you can achieve a place, an inner Locus of
Control, where your super-serendipitous creativity is free to erupt into the
world.
Like
Firmin DeBrabander said, “The passions, Spinoza argued, derive from seeing
people as autonomous individuals responsible for all the objectionable actions
that issue from them. Understanding the interrelated nature of everyone and
everything is the key to diminishing the passions and the havoc they wreak.”
Indeed, for the same reason that you put an oxygen mask on yourself before a
child, you discover a Locus of control before attempting to control the
locusts.
Thinking
with ego less, and being conscious more, is the key to becoming a master. It’s
not easy, by any means. It takes persistent discipline and constant practice.
It takes existential vigilance and loving compassion toward the disastrous
many. Remaining a disaster is easy. It just requires you to never question
anything, especially not yourself; and to simply remain safe and secure in your
tiny comfort zone babying your tiny spoiled ego.
There’s
a tug-of-war going on inside each and every one of us. It’s between mind and
no-mind, attachment and detachment, love and fear, responsibility and
complacency, truth and deception, healthy and unhealthy. The list goes on and
on. It’s been the same inner battle since the dawn of Man, and it’s fought best
in the no-mind state of the detached master.
Like
e. e. cummings said, “To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its
best, night and day, to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest
battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”
Image sources: No-mind symbol Mark Henson painting - Third-eye crown Suzuki quote -
For more information about 'your' consciousness see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/consciousness
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