I’m not exactly sure if I’m remembering this, or if I’m only truly learning this for the first time, but it feels like this is the only thing that has ever happened. I feel like in not knowing what the future could possibly hold, no one really knows what to do. Some people have found ways to describe what’s going on in such a way that it illustrates one aspect of the happening that is life, but this does not apply to everyone at every time. I have been trying to find some metaphysical basis for certainty or truth, trying to eliminate as much of the artificial and illusory from my life as possible, and in every discipline and practice I’ve visited or learned from, I have always come full circle to the same singular idea, that:

Everything is about your perception. It’s our perception that creates reality, it is our perception of options that gives us choices, it is our perception of time that gives us prediction, etc.. But most importantly, it is our perception of ourselves that gives us definition, and this has many effects. It can help and hinder us, belittle and praise us. But what are we? I think we already know what life is, but it’s impossible to do anything other than live it or not. Trying to find an explanation never ends because there isn’t one, and trying to capture an aspect of it always leaves something left to be desired. Whether it is the artist imagining a moment in a painting, or a feeling in a dance, or the scientist trying to uncover the code of reality, or see the smallest thing which can be seen. There always seems to be another way of doing something that leaves you humble in the face of the infinite being of existence. I wonder if anything really exists outside of this neutral infinity. Even awareness and unawareness seem to ebb and flow, that is until one is aware of choice. Or is it simply change? I remember watching a recorded seminar or lecture from someone giving a talk. They were describing parallel realities in the way that made physical reality seem like each individual universe within the multiverse was a drop of water in an ocean, or a grain of sand in a desert. Potentially, you could also see it as a point in a three-dimensional grid as well. And all that’s different between one moment and another — in other words, different between one frame of the multiverse and another — is the tiniest modicum of movement in energy, just a subtle shifting from one orientation to another, seemingly varied only by probability. And all that time is is the perception of moving along a track of these still-frame universes. Following this idea, art is known to be significant not because it accurately depicts the infiniteness of life with a single expression, but because it depicts only a single objective reality which never would’ve existed without the artist’s expression of it and the audience’s subjective perception. And our lives are like these depictions of art. Unlike ourselves, our lives are not infinite, unlimited, and all encompassing, which only means that some day it all comes to an end and we cease expressing in the same way, at least for a time being. However, what we are is not a single expression or even a single life experience, but infiniteness itself. We can be anything; there’s no telling what someone, as just one reflection of existence, may become. And at every new moment, we have the opportunity to express a new or the same aspect of existence through our being. We are aware of our expression through our perception of reality, and we see ourselves reflected in the totality of existence. We are not one singular sovereign thing, but that does not restrict our freedom. We individually are chaotic, but collectively we are the order of everything… and sometimes, we just get a little lost along the way. But I think it’s because we get so engaged and so into what we’re doing that we forget we’re only making art.