Stuck in a partial mind, that is, a conflicted mind that theorizes about clarity and idealizes wholeness as a means to remain as it is, we tend to function much like a pendulum swinging back and forth in place. Politically, this is very easy to see—back and forth between liberal and conservative ideals. But we also do it in the medical field when we pat ourselves on the back for inventing clever ways to keep ourselves alive in the midst of health crises that are equally of our own making. We now have heart surgeries that take 30 minutes to perform and you’re out of the hospital the next day. This sounds miraculous until you realize that heart failure is a crisis in younger and younger people and it’s because we overeat foods we’ve poisoned, breathe air we’ve poisoned, and don’t exercise enough. On we swing between disease and cure.
We do this with the arts as well, though it’s harder to see. We laud artists, authors, and musicians for bringing forth the unconscious and also for shining a spotlight on the darknesses of society. But what that’s saying is, we are unconscious people and we need other unconscious people to articulate what’s missing and buried, bit by creative bit. Bit by interesting bit. It must be interesting or we will not pay attention. It must connect with us on an intuitive or emotional level, or we will pass it over. We set up all of these rules to keep wholeness and clarity at bay—to keep them not me—and on we swing between darkness and light, unconscious and conscious.
The pendulum mind is your mind—even as you swing around looking for stillness. The stillness you seek is neither internal nor external, neither unconscious nor conscious, neither darkness nor lightness. The stillness you seek is nothing to be proud of. Neither is the seeker. In fact, the seeker is nothing at all.
The pendulum, a wisp of a thing.