Accept all levels of reality as valid, then get back to work

What if right or wrong was neither here nor there?

What if winning and losing were both aspects of the same reality?

What if there was no distinction between good or bad?

What if success and failure were two sides to the same coin?

According to many of the world’s oldest spiritual traditions, it’s possible. Mystics call this nondualism. It’s a mature state of consciousness where we transcend the dichotomies that limit our experience.

We accept all levels of reality as valid and embrace the true oneness of everything.

The question is, how does all that esoteric stuff play out in our day to day lives as creative professionals?

Let’s explore a few examples.

Perhaps you’re considering a career transition. You’ve spent many years working for creative agencies, and now you’re thinking about the next chapter of your professional life.

Maybe hanging out your shingle as a freelance designer? What about getting a job as an art teacher? Or launching a startup business with your best friend?

Naturally, you’re anxiously wondering to yourself, well, what’s the right path? How can you avoid picking the wrong one?

Nondualism would invite you to stop asking these kinds of questions. Because in any given career, there’s no such thing as the right path. The right decision is the one you make, and the right path is the one you take. What’s more important is why you chose to take it, what you carry with you, whom you travel with, how you talk to yourself along the way, what you become in the process, and how fulfilled you feel by the time you arrive.

Everything else is a matter of degree.

Here’s another example of how nondualism can become a useful mindset for your creative life.

You’ve just started a new creative project that involves a significant amount of grunt work. Mundane, tough creative execution that absolutely must get done, but it flat out sucks.

That sounds like a perfect opportunity to dissolve the dualistic tension that might be adding to your suffering.

That’s the thing about experiencing reality with a judgmental mind. Instead of relaxing with whatever work arises for you, you divide the moment before giving yourself over to it. Not helpful.

Announcing that the emails you have to send or the press release you have to write is absurd might be true, but it’s not serving you.

How nondualistc are you willing to be about your creative practice?

Remember, if you’re willing to embrace the underlying seamlessness between yourself and the work you’re called to do, there’s no telling how prolific you can become.

Once you accept that there is no side to take, no opponents to crush and no scoreboard to workshop, then you can enter in a relationship with your creative work where winning is no longer necessary.

How mature is your state of consciousness?