Motivations can be understood as they manifest in the reactions to each moment, everyone is coming together in the Now—this cannot be transcended as it is the truth of the condition, of the condition’s form (1). If you are unreactive to the Now you can look at it better while it’s happening (2). From chaos we come, fragmented, all the varied images behind us (3).
There are methodologies—ways of seeing (4). Some are more confusing than others, the confusion to arrive. The philosophical pursuit is the same as the yogic, the same as the mystic, the prophetic, the ascetic, the musical—each a principled life. So, methodologies. And a capacity for a multitude of them within each self. Every methodology produces a different way of seeing, a different way of encountering the Now, of witnessing genesis upon each rebirth of breath.
Some are visions as I walk in the dark November and the trees hang over the winding road, coming around the turn voices skidding across the planes of my skull. They shatter behind my head. What is that shadow? It could be the white van parked at the end of the road—running headlights past 11 pm. A man sits behind the wheel, behind the panel of red and green lights. Passing him now and so that is behind me too. And I am just helpless to it, it is in front of and then beside and then behind me in such secure succession and then, upon the moment of their occurrence each of these moments came to be true all together—one after the other and now all gathered, existing. Mine to pick from I suppose, and so am not so helpless after all.
They cast a shadow behind me. In memory time goes both ways, the Now is the future because you are watching it from the past. The future is memory, is known in memory, is known right now. It is happening, has happened already. You are of, coming from, every moment you have lived. This will always be an aspect of the condition.
All that can be contained in the moment is all that truly exists (5). Each moment is as separate from the next as a cycle of breath, the depths of within as the depths of the sea.1 A multitude of methodologies exist inside the potential of each moment, they coincide, the body is where they intersect and through the body they are practiced: made.
There are considered actions and there are reactions (6). The latter belong to a class of egocentric practices—they are performances of identities, characterisations, particular prejudices, fictions—confusion.
Methodologies produce images when applied to the perpetual sequence of moments, the shape of the hand makes the shadow (7). A particular kind of image is begotten by application of aparticular kind of methodology. We all practice the discipline of witnessing the Now. We share in power, a mist through all of us, to exercise the moment. It is not power over, it is power through. This is the gift of consciousness, this is what we all have in common.
Fragments behind me having in the past come from my future into the Now, through presence becoming real. They arrived, each of them, they cast shadows as I approached them they cast shadows that lay behind me. Rebirth is perpetual as passing as running water it is always ending it is always beginning. Life will come to its final truth at its end, its entirety knowable and held in my body and this will be the ultimate moment, the singular moment. The self alone holds the epitome of its own truth at its end and if I want to, if I am paying attention, I can watch it happen. Through the methodology of detachment you may practice removal, not identify with any practice or any thought, may simply be and witness the entire truth of the moment which is infinite possibility. It is contained inside the body, it is the capacity of the self (8).
It is the one that is happening already and right now.
It will always be true, the singularity of that moment.
The truth is not contingent on recognition. It does not become more true because you are looking, it does not become less true because you stop.
The altered state is the primal state—the state from which you can bear witness to origin—to the creation.
It is dark, shadows come down from the sky, leaves cut up by light from lamposts—the trees look spied upon now, caught in headlights.
Each moment is creation, is birth because we participate in it. By participating in it we are part of it, as constituents of the moment we cannot be separated from its intrinsic meaning.
I do not know if I can answer your question until you have asked, I can only speak the truth and sometimes I do not know where it lives in the shadow of the question; glinting like a needle, like a silver fish, catching in the light of my pocket mirror. If I am not looking I cannot find it, lurking as it is—a sliver in the shadows catching for a moment the light across its entire self a glowing line. I will turn the mirror more than once looking for the needle. At times I will turn the mirror and will want to know what vanity feels like so I’ll rotate my wrist aimlessly and my head and eyes will roll completely away from the mirror and towards the empty wall and I will become futile.
