Exploring Nonduality: How Mindfulness in Art Can Help You Find Unity in Chaos

Lately, I have been practicing the power of mindfulness in my abstract painting process. Particularly, how to bring awareness to myself when I start unraveling. I don’t mean unraveling in the sense of having complete meltdowns (although it has been known to happen). What I am insinuating here is a subtle awareness of catching myself when I become disjointed, scattered, and or frustrated.

This months print for September 2023

The Practice of Mindfulness

In these moments, I practice mindfulness by observing my actions and returning to the present moment. Then I have the opportunity to choose a different reaction and perhaps change my perception. At the very least, I can take three deep breaths and then choose to resume my disjointed scattered acts, but with greater awareness. 

The Journey to Nonduality

My goal in this dualistic way of being is to become nondualistic and merge my different ways of being. As often as I am disorganized I also have moments of organization. One is not bad and the other good- just different. After all, chaos has its place. Chaos is where I believe creativity is born.

More than anything I sincerely desire to live in a more non-dualistic state of being.

The Experiment of Presence

Within this experiment of presence, I have become acutely aware of when I label a way of being as bad or good. Instead of viewing myself as having two different tension points, and labeling them either good or bad, I can view them simply as two different perspectives. 

I want to weave together my different threads of existence into one whole way of being and live in the intimacy of nonduality. 

So what does nonduality actually mean?

What is Nonduality?

The word 'non-duality' comes from the Sanskrit word Advaita which means 'not two.' Therefore, put simply, non-duality points to the basic Unity of everything. Ultimately, there is no division or separation between you and everything else in your experience.

Mindfulness in Abstract Painting

As a painter, I work with this concept without actually being consciously aware of it.

I work with the tension of opposite colors, bringing together a soft atmosphere with hard lines to create not only interest but harmony. 

The Power of Perception

If we could experience our creations in the world without judgment of ourselves and our work, this would be a form of unity. Yet within perception, one cannot exist if there is no other to compare to. Our perception works in relationship to the other. But the deeper layer is we are all having an experience - a human experience and that alone makes us one!

It can feel a little strange and even nonsensical to look at everything as one when we are so programmed to look for divisions and put everything into its own little box of beingness. 

Further Reading

If you want more on nonduality check out my past blog:  The Perception of Upside and Backwards

To close

One of my favorite poets describes the nonduality process well: 

“It seems the purpose of suffering is to exhaust us of our differences, and the purpose of love is to awaken us to how we’re at heart the same. Then, we discover that the temple is the world. Still, every life, every generation, every age takes its turn at pushing each other away, only to be loved and worn back to the one tribe we belong to. This seems even more relevant in our tense, modern world. For there is no they. We are they. We are each other. And there’s a Unity that always waits below our righteousness and insistence that we know the way. — Mark Nepo

Check out Mark Nepo’s work website.