500 WORDS, DAY 4: Reality as Duality from an Artist’s Perspective

This is my fourth day posting 500 words. The topic loosely follows from what I started writing about on Day 1.

• If you want to start reading from the beginning of this endeavor, check out DAY 1.
• If you want to start reading from yesterday’s post, check out DAY 2.

… So, about the corruption which seems inevitable when something pure such as art comes into contact with the world of business and money. How can we oppose this? I don’t know. To be painfully honest, I have to admit that I have no idea. I don’t know if there even is an effective way to do it. Maybe that is part of the duality of this world, maybe humanity is perpetually doomed to eternally strive for a perfection we can never reach, like Sisyphus rolling the boulder up the mountain only to have to start from the beginning once again when it rolls back down. A Bible verse that I always think of when I ponder this idea is the following:

“But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” ~ Isaiah 64:6

Now, to be clear, I don’t necessarily believe in the personal God of the Bible being the creator of the world. I’m also not fully convinced that I don’t believe it, it’s just not something I’m sure of, and to be quite honest, a lot of the times I feel like I just don’t want to believe in it. I’m sure I’m not alone in this, in fact I’m sure there are many who agree with that sentiment. Either way though, putting that aside for now, when I read this verse, I am not thinking about it saying that God is looking at us from above and is unsatisfied with our behavior. What it makes me think of is of a possible metaphysical reality of life, a law of the universe, a universal truth. The nature of life on this planet seems to be dual in nature, in every aspect. Male and female come together to create new life. When we choose one thing, we discard another, we either affirm or deny. We like some things, we dislike others, but even the things we dislike have some aspect of something we like, and vice versa. There is always a delicate balance at play, as illustrated by the yin and yang of Taoism, between polar opposites, which are the same in essence but different in degree, as explained in The Kybalion.

This makes me think about something: regardless of what our spirit is, we know we are currently living a physical reality in this material world. As part of the material world, our bodies might be subject to the same duality. We are awake and energetic during the day, and we become sleepy, immobile and unconscious during the nighttime. Maybe there is no escaping this duality, both in our thoughts and in our actions, even in our emotions, and maybe everything we produce, whether mentally or physically, is tainted with evil simply because it is a product of our physical reality in this world. It’s like the love I feel for my wife. I am aware that I am attached to her. I miss her and long to be with her when I am away from her for a while, and when I see her again and I hug and kiss her it is an amazing feeling, yet I can’t help but be reminded that the more we connect together, the more she and I become a part of each others’ lives, the more it will hurt when the day comes for us to separate. I can’t even fathom the fact that such a day will eventually come, therefore love has become pain, or rather, within love the seeds of pain are apparent. Is there any way to have love without pain? I would dare say there isn’t, at least in this world. Good memories are amazing when you’re in the middle of making them, and even when you remember them, except that at the point of reminiscing you now find that, along with the sweet feelings such memories conjure up, comes a bittersweet nostalgia, a melancholy feeling of having lost something that can never return. These kinds of things make feel like the Buddha was right, life really is suffering in the end.

I realize I’ve strayed a bit from the original topic I was exploring on Days 1 and 2, which had to do with the structure of society, and how we have become brainwashed to believe that things are only worth pursuing as long as they lead for financial gain, but this is still connected to that in a way. The reason I started pondering about the duality of life was because I started with questioning whether or not one can be an artist in this world and still keep one’s purity and integrity, or if one’s creative endeavors are destined to become corrupted, to some extent, simply by interacting with the material world of people and business. The answer to this is not apparent, and it is a deep topic to think about. I don’t know if I will continue this topic tomorrow, maybe it’s something we can leave for the future after more consideration. We’ll see where this all takes us tomorrow though. I appreciate you, whoever you are, if you are reading this, and I urge you to keep on pondering and questioning reality.

If you have a few minutes please consider listening to my ambient/lo-fi/trip-hop song “unconditional gratitude.” If you like it and want to hear more please follow me, as I am always releasing new music.