It's All In Your Mind 🗡️

Published 23 days ago • 3 min read • Consciousness, Myths & Dragons

LIFE ON URTH - Episode 113

I keep saying that your mind is all you have, but I don’t think people understand how literally I mean that.

So let’s turn it around for a moment to emphasize this central idea: there is nothing else but your mind.

You see, hear and taste your mind. There is no other place for vision, hearing and taste to appear. The only interface with reality is your experience.

And let’s be honest, we’re barely even in touch with that. Our attentional abilities are at an all-time low. I've been practicing and writing about meditation for years. Still, I spent most of my time lost in thought, confusing the story in my head with the full picture.

Why?

Because it calms me to pretend that I’m in control of the world and my role in it.
Because that next piece of content will surely have the answers I’m looking for.
Because it’s easier to go with known forms than to summon the courage to explore the unknown.
Because to efficiently navigate the world, we’re built to experience it in categories.

In mythology, this human capacity is portrayed as the hero, collecting or looting pieces from the unknown and constructing the world from them.

The Mesopotamian god Marduk confronts the primordial sea-dragon, slices her up and constructs the ordered cosmos from her body:

He splits her body like a shellfish into two halves. From one half he forms the sky, fixing it above as a roof. From the other he forms the earth below.
He turns parts of her anatomy into features of the world: her eyes become the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates, her breasts become mountains, and her tail helps secure the structure of the heavens.
He then organizes the stars, calendar, moon, weather and domains of the gods within this newly ordered cosmos.

This isn’t a random story. It’s a psychological exploration in narrative form, shared across many myths through this sequence:

An original state is watery, dark, undifferentiated or monstrous.
A divine figure confronts the embodiment of that state.
The primordial unity is divided or restrained.
Distinctions appear: heaven and earth, land and sea, gods and humans, center and boundary.
The victorious god becomes the legitimate ruler of the resulting order.

The mythological monsters are the material from which existence is made. Chaos contains the world in unarticulated form. The hero does not create the substance of existence; he introduces boundaries into it.

In that sense, the recurring proposition is:

The world as it appears is previously undivided reality cut into differences.

Marduk’s victory is especially explicit. He surrounds Tiamat with a net, forces wind into her body and strikes her heart with an arrow. There is an insistence that power lies not only in strength but in the capacity to constrain, pierce and divide the threatening unknown.

The mythological hero can turn primordial power into a world. But the price of that world is division.

That’s where our little detour to ancient stories finally becomes useful. They point to an eternal truth, central to wellbeing and any reasonable definition of success: your world is originally undivided.

The point of mindfulness isn’t stress relief. It’s to see that consciousness is already free. Any limiting feeling, fantasy, or fear is only a temporary appearance. So are the good things, but we don’t mind those :P

Your mind is all you have. Within it, the quality of your attention will determine the quality of your life.

It’s your responsibility to identify as the hero in your world. To meet the unknown with courage and curiosity. To chase beauty and truth.

✒️ Quote of the Week: “There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one.” -Kazuo Ishiguro

🎧 Song of the Week: This playlist came from another dimension

Now I’d love to hear from you!

Did something in my writing catch your attention?
Was there an idea you found particularly intriguing?
Or is there a question that’s been on your mind related to these topics?

Just reply to this email or write to me at mail@urth.blog 👈

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All the best,

Adrian / Urth

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