I’ve always held mind and its state above any other. I’d go as far as to say it’s the state in self and in others that I find myself to be most consumed. It’s the state by which I define time, growth and personal evolution, choosing to read over old written pieces and notes as an indication of progression rather than paging through an album of past processed light. Choosing to Identify with the reflection of my mind in memories mirror more so than the countenance on my face. It’s the underlying thread I choose to seek and unravel in every conversation, in every observed action or in action in order to understand the person it keeps. It’s the medium through which I choose to interpret the world, and the realm in which I feel I’m least likely to suffer defeat. (No, not because I have egoist disillusions regarding my intellect) but rather that mind, mine, always seemed like a utopic universe. A perfect place to pause and make sense of sensation, to dissect experience into multifaceted dimensions in order to understand intentions every angle and not merely perceptions outline of it.

However I admit that although I strongly endorse cultivating a mind that is somewhat of an “un-fuck-with-able” fortress, one needs to be able to identify when you’re no longer able to see over your own walls. When you’ve become imprisoned by its power, and no longer protected by it. You see, as we escape to said fortress, we have to pause the present to allow life, and its infinite volume to be processed by squeezing through the slow revolving door that lead to our mind. It’s in this pause, this adjournment from the “now” to deliberate on what’s happening on the other side of our fortress walls that we begin to entertain a life of illusionary separation, that we begin to exist outside of experience itself where things no longer happen in real time but rather as we’ve assumed, perceived, played back, paused and replayed according to what we think is going to happened, bringing forth images to mind that completely contrast and contradict those that lie directly before us. It’s at this point that we begin to become victims and reactionaries rather than creators and contributories to presents natural flow. That we become consumed by the people outside our walls, contemplating over their doings. What they’re saying, thinking, plotting and where they’re stepping in order for us to ensure we’ll always be ten steps ahead. It’s in the slow processing of this cluttered consuming thought, and the company of our relentless thinking voice that the gap between what is, and what “seems” begins to heighten, building a wall that becomes nearly impossible to ascend. The greater the gap, the higher the wall, the richer the doubt and the louder the voice that isolates and narrates every transition between decision and incision, every assured answer to a further question…

I guess what I’m trying to say is this; whilst there is nothing more beautiful than escaping to your own mind. Nothing more satisfying than traveling through the secret world that hides behind your grin(s) and the ability to fade in and out of it on a whim. Nothing more empowering than transcending adversity through your ability to control your thought, or warming than the light that illuminates through the mental battles you’ve fought. Nothing more fulfilling than watching your mind untangle a complicated mess, (only to tie it in a perfectly rational bow that can be undone by tugging softly on one string.) You need to understand that your mind is equally capable of tugging on all strings and tying the once rational bow into an irrational knotted mess. You need understand the necessity to protect your mind from false perception, (and therefore yourself from entrapment and separation) by understanding how to defy your mind as much as you’ve learnt to rely on it.

This defiance, defiance against the disturbance from within, from our own false perception involves letting go, opening the gates and dropping the walls to allow the osmosis of oneness and the procurement of peace that can only be found in presence. To allow spontaneity to out play over planning, indecision and analysis. To be free of scrutiny, and the fear of being wrong, or making mistakes. To no longer be hindered by hesitance, and to act effortlessly and intuitively without the need for a second guess. It involves discipline over distraction, and the understanding of the stressors that throw you off of focusing on your intellectual hygiene, your own cause, your own being. Most importantly, it involves the awareness of the power pivot. That power is carefully balanced on presence, and absence and that the true power of mind requires the mastery of both aspects. Think about it, bring to mind something, or someone that you feel exudes power over you, imagine its absence, their absence, and you’ll realize that if anything, their power is amplified in the void. In exactly the same way, there is power in practicing “no mind”. To simply be silent and rooted within yourself, and therefore in everything. In this silence, the interval, (or pause to process) begins to diminish until eventually the mind responds instantly to what the senses bring. The mind, and what is being experienced become one in the same thing. It’s in this absence that we’re able to reach higher consciousness, and in knowing where we can go to find it that we’re able to attain personal bliss and tranquility.

So, by all means, when life requires an escape, run to your “un-fuck-with-able” fortress, but only just for a moment in order to catch your breath, in order to restore your strength until you’re ready to turn and face what awaits. Its only when you become entrapped in your own mind that you become an identifiable, slow moving target, but it’s when you know where to go in order to be absent of it that you become untraceable, and indestructible.