Description
Third Tenet of Explorations - Express
Following the first two steps of the program, "Relax" and "Question", in which we allowed ourselves to view and experience reality as it genuinely exists and then violently destroy that which can be, we find ourselves at my personal favorite and, by far, the most worthless tenet of the program, "Express".
I'll begin with an image. Imagine for a moment, an infant writhing in gravel in the middle of an unmarked road. Naked, damp, cold, the most vulnerable thing that could be imagined. Its screams pierce the soul of anyone that could have possibly heard it...but there is no one. Whether by sun exposure, a wild animal, or a passing car, this peeled little grape will die soon, and its futile, desperate cries to a world it can't even begin to conceive, will go unheard.
Whether upset or uplifted by this image, you can feel the truth of this somewhere inside of you. Since space is limited here, I will dispense with analogies and further condense what is normally a 6-7 hour-long lecture during my seminars and bluntly state that self-expression is worthless. I mean this without irony or any other abstract way of speaking. Many people, especially artists, some of whom are probably reading this right now, believe they can change something about themselves or the world around them through their art. This belief, certainly not exclusive to artists, that self-expression is important or even essential to "humanity" or "society" or whatever else, is not only an inaccurate belief, but a defense against a brutal but plainly obvious truth with inexhaustible amounts of evidence: that their efforts and that of their peers will amount to nothing. They will individually and collectively disintegrate into a churning flux of being that will annihilate anything they do, are, or could have been.
The actualization of the self or some other vague idea of "transcendence" is a hideous myth. To believe otherwise and to foster this belief in others is akin to the worst abuse humanity has ever perpetrated on itself: a multi-level marketing scheme built on complete defeat of the mind and self-castration.
Self-expression, itself, serves us as a focal point through which we meditate on this truth. Nothing, nowhere, for no reason, and to no discernible end but death.
- Leslie