NV11

Inspired by and based on a comic panel from Doctor Mirage (2019)

The character made me consider The Traveler archetype from a non-physical perspective. For example a traveller between worlds or even different spheres of thought.

1. Imagine that you are sitting in a very comfortable, beautiful room. You are relaxed, at ease, and with you in this room is another person. This person isn’t someone you know in regular life, but imagine that this is someone you are dearly familiar with. They know you better than anyone, even your own mother. You’ve always shared everything with them and they’ve always been understanding and guiding. They are your teacher and you trust them with everything. Imagine what they look like, see them smiling at you, and feel the comfort in you that is there from being in the presence of this person.

2. You’ve been talking about your recent life, all the ups and downs you’ve experienced in the last year. Your mentor looks at you straight in the eyes and says “I think there’s one very important thing you need to change.” They go on to tell you what that one important change is and why it is important to change it.

3. What is the one thing they told you to change? Write it down. If you find this difficult and didn’t get an answer run through the exercise from the beginning one more time, immerse yourself in your imagination.

4. It is time to depart, but your teacher gives one last advice “make the change starting today. This is important, the sooner you start the better.”

This is a simple exercise that leverages your mind’s natural tendency to compartmentalize different parts of your psyche. In this basic scenario you allow the unconscious to channel a specific archetype of the teacher, mentor, or guru into a character which your conscious ego can then interact with.

Even when it works, what’s the point? How long until you are already again unsatisfied and wanting something else?

I feel like these are just meta parlour tricks that the more realized use to keep the masses happy and from slipping into the existential abyss.

Real magic, to me at least, is a special dance with mystery. It’s intimately personal, inexplicable even to the self, let alone to another. If anyone thinks they’ve figured it out then they are only indulging in their own illusions.

The insane depth of this experience is reserved for very few people, and yet at the same time every single person in the world is actively experiencing it.

We were all only kids

Near a big primal forest

Living in big open fields like a tourist

In a wilderness tamed

Won't be long till I'm trained

Let me tell you my sins, let me tell you my fears

The primal man with a grin and the boy full of tears

Living close in proximity, couldn't find an affinity

Don't you know? Don't you know?

Little boy that your soul

It is one with the river, the forest, and flow

Don't you know? Don't you know?

Little boy that your soul

It is one with the river, the forest, and flow

Yeah the parents told stories

Of the tribal and gory

Of the men on the horses

With feathers and paint

On their faces and horses

Decorated on point

Time to time they would ride

And those times we would hide

At the edge of the forest

Protected by fence

Yeah we're living so modest

With our modest defense

And you know that we're tourists

In a forest so dense

Don't you know? Don't you know?

Little boy that your soul

It is one with the river, the forest, and flow

Don't you know? Don't you know?

Little boy that your soul

It is one with the river, the forest, and flow

And one day he got tired, got tired of hiding

Yeah he felt so inspired and he didn't fear riding

Grabbed the sword by the handle and handled it well

Then he stabbed it right through, through the heart of the river

Through the heart of his soul with a sword made of silver

Modern man he can't live with the river and wild

Modern man he can't sleep with the darkness behind

So the boy was protecting his family and tribe

So he thought while rejecting his soul and his vibe

Don't you know? Don't you know?

Little boy that your soul

It is one with the river, the forest, and flow

Don't you know? Don't you know?

Little boy that your soul

It is one with the river, the forest, and flow

Having stabbed through the beast

Yeah the beast of the river

He was left there to feast

On the butter with fever

Oh it tasted so good, yes so good he could drown

Yeah he feasted on food made of wilderness downed

Not knowing he’d killed that which was to be found

Oh he thought he was skilled, yeah he thought he was sound

But the forest still came, it still buzzed in his ear

Like the bees it still came, with a sting still to fear

Little boy with a sword yet he still lived in fear

Don't you know? Don't you know?

Little boy that your soul

It is one with the river, the forest, and flow

Don't you know? Don't you know?

Little boy that your soul

How do I do the thing?

Just do the thing.

What if I'm bad at it?

Keep doing the thing and you'll get better

What if I never accomplish the thing?

Highly unlikely, keep doing the thing.

What if I die before I finish the thing?

Then you die fighting, you die with pride rather than regret.

What if I find out the thing wasn't worth my time?

There is no objective value to anything, but doing the thing will make you better at doing all things.

How do I know what thing to do?

Any ol' thing will do, the point is the doing not the thing.

I don't have the energy to do the thing!

Analogous to Newton's first law; every time you force yourself to do the thing it'll take less effort the next time--just make it a regular occurrence so it gains, rather than loses, momentum.

It is physically impossible to do the thing!

Do a different thing.

People are preventing me from doing the thing!

Go beast mode, get savage, and do the thing.

What if the thing is bad for me?

Then stop thinking about it, if you can't resist then just do the thing and get it out of your system.

Does it even matter if I do the thing?

Where a dream is the self creating an illusion of reality

Read at your own discretion! I write as I learn and study. I don't go back to rewrite outdated understanding.

To summarize, novices enter the authentic path by means of investigation and familiarization, so first go to a place of solitude, sit on a comfortable cushion, and generate bodhicitta, the aspiration to achieve perfect enlightenment. With sincere devotion, offer prayers of supplication to your guru and take the four empowerments. Then identify the primacy of the mind among the body, speech, and mind, dispelling any uncertainty about this point. Then carefully investigate this so-called mind in terms of its initial place of origin, its location in the interim, and its final destination. Analysis of these points reveals the emptiness of its origin, location, and destination.

Then investigate the mind as the agent that conjures up all kinds of thoughts, seeking out its shape, color, and form, as well as its source, beginning, and end, and whether it really exists or is totally nonexistent. By doing so, once you have determined with confidence that it cannot be established in any way at all, you have entered the path.

If you forcefully suppress the thought process while focusing your mind single-pointedly on such things as a stick or pebble, then many obsessive thoughts will arise, as if you had blocked an irrigation canal, and your body, speech, and mind may become sharply uncomfortable. In that case, loosely relax and watch your thoughts from afar, clearly observing whatever arises.

That which observes is called mindfulness, or awareness, that which is observed is called movement, and resting in that state is called stillness. Identify them as such and meditate! If you meditate earnestly, stable meditative experiences of the bliss, luminosity, and nonconceptuality of śamatha will arise in your mindstream. Consequently, when stillness, movement, and awareness merge into one and all discursive thoughts are self-knowing and self-illuminating, meditate by identifying this as awareness. And when thoughts automatically scatter in all directions, meditate by identifying this as the mind of unawareness. By doing so, in accordance with the degree of sharpness of your faculties, various meditative experiences such as bliss, luminosity, vacuity, stillness, and harshness will certainly occur. Just as it has always been in the moon’s nature to wax and wane, so it is in the mind’s nature to be periodically happy and sad. So without hope or fear, rejection or acceptance, negation or affirmation, do not lose your own grounding in that very luminosity and cognizance. This is a crucial point. Meditative experiences and appearances disappear by themselves, fading away, unable to sustain themselves, like illusions and dreams, so recognize this. If you cherish, refute or affirm, hope or fear, or become attached to or fixate on experiences such as bliss, luminosity, vacuity, harshness, dreams, or subtle extrasensory perception, this will lead you toward errors and obscurations, so recognize this.