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The Museum of Vestigial Desire

Being

tags: destruction published on:

Being is simple but not easy. To be you do not really have to do anything at all, that is the simplicity of it. But being is a process that is multi-variate and somehow becomes complex. This happens because in the flux of each moment we experience the noise of our mind, and this both distracts and confuses us. Even though we know that we can just slip into the default mode, our cultural programming demands us to listen to the noise in our minds and weed out a voice that we should most give priority to.

Now, all these voices are equally fraudulent. There is no truth that can be ascribed to either of these. If you want to go on a ride, then you can go on a ride, but if you are want to identify with either of them then there is no real option. All the voices that you hear in the noise of your mind are false.

Being is about avoidance and automatism.

You have to avoid the voices you hear and you need to be able to break into automatic modes of being. Being automatically is being without knowing what to be.

This is both dangerous and difficult. This is dangerous because for someone who is not ready, who has not had time to let the superfluous voices in their heads to dissolve into ambiguity, there is too much at stake. At any moment, a voice floating around in the head, frustrated at being relegated to the margins, can intervene. The voice can intervene very fatally. At the crux of a moment, when some significant event is unravelling in life, the voice can create doubt and uncertainty in the actor's mind. The actor can feel hopelessly confused and mixed up and no episode of being will be witnessed. For being is continuous, the question is only of witnessing it. Each actor needs a specific amount of time to be able to drop their guard and differentiate their mind's production of experience from the experience produced by the universe. Time to develop the confidence to stop listening to the voices, to leap into the unknown mystery of each moment and witness the outcome.

Each voice possesses the capacity to disrupt the automatic urge to be. And there is no way to work against this except by cracking the pattern of each voice and then guard against it. For voices can masquerade. Voices can sound like what they are not. The voices are infected with the urge to trick you and you have to learn to trick them back.

Being is still possible because being is always possible. It is the becoming that is a synthetic state of being. It is becoming that has to be snapped out of.

This being/becoming balance is fragile. Our sanctuary incubates this balance and gives it a chance to reach an equilibrium. This equilibrium even if slippery is necessary once in a while else the world will perish.

And we do not desire that. We just value the precarious nature of the balance and use it to enact teasing moments, every now and then.

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