Saturday, May 28, 2016

Marilyn Manson and the Inverted Pyramid People


I had an entertaining dream last night. I’m sitting next to Marilyn Manson at a bar in a very small town in some unknown locale. He says to me, “Is this all that happens here?” I look around and notice the bar half filled with men and women, mostly men, all of them very plain looking, dressed in grays and beiges, nearly expressionless faces, and talking in low humdrum voices about nothing of import or interest. So I say to him, “Well, this bar has theme nights. It’s Mundane Monday tonight.”

Manson nods his head and takes a drink from a bottle of liquor. “ I was hoping for something a little more adventurous.” I tell him that there’s one other bar in town just down the street. “I don’t know if I’d call it adventurous, but the people there are definitely different.” He looks at me and I try not to act alarmed while looking at his opaque eye as he asks me how they are different.

“Well, it’s mostly their appearance. I’m not sure they are any more interesting in terms of the way they talk or act, but they are visually striking if that sort of thing gets you going.” He stands up and spreads his arms wide, showing off his black cape, the chains and piercings on his chest, and whatnot. “Yeah, I get it, Marilyn. I think you’ll dig the people there.” 

As we’re walking over he asks more about them. “Well, there’s two basic types. One type has torsos like a pyramid and the other has torsos that look like inverted pyramids. I made the mistake of thinking one type was male and the other female, but they don’t have reproductive organs. Anyway, the ones with pyramid bodies have heads on top of the point of their torsos while the others with inverted pyramids have heads in the middle of their torsos. Both types have arms and legs of all sorts, though. You might see one with a pyramid torso who has spaghetti legs and tree branch arms whereas one with an inverted torso might have one elephant leg—for hopping—and bicycle wheels for arms.”

I didn’t actually describe these beings in words. It was more that I saw them take shape and form and, by doing so, it was as if I was telling Manson about them. What was interesting to me, though—because Manson sort of faded away as I was seeing these things come into being—was that it felt sort of like I was creating them but without conscious effort. When I got to the legs and arms, especially, it was very much like I was awake and wondering how to complete their bodies, as if I was thinking about them and determining what to “draw” next. But they just kept coming and coming, all different types. I was amused at first, then intensely focused on “seeing” how they formed in such a way that it seemed I was making them form, and then I was laughing in my dream. In fact, I woke up laughing. 

Every once in a while I have “laughing dreams.” They’re immensely enjoyable and I always feel in total control while simultaneously participating as a “character” while creating them as I observe them. There’s three levels of what, I guess, could be called consciousness: participation, creation, and observation. The observing part of me feels most like the “God” part of my being, the creative part of me feels like “me,” and the participant feels like a role being played, only partly under my control—its consciousness as a being almost like a lower life form.

It’s that lowest life-form being of participant in the dream that seems like how all people are in their day-to-day presentation of themselves. Perhaps I could call it “ego,” a rather limited manifestation of being with only limited consciousness. At times, throughout life, I’ve lived in my waking hours that way, mostly unaware that there is greater depth of consciousness within my being, what little awareness I have that there’s “more” is felt as a nagging sense of “There’s something not right; this doesn’t really feel like me.” Whenever I come out of that state, grow into a more aware, creative and observing consciousness, I breathe a sigh of relief, laugh at myself, and think, “How silly of me to have forgotten that I had adopted an identity and then believed that that was actually the totality of me, the ‘real’ me.” 

For a time, anyway, I remain conscious of the roles I play within various identities and try to enjoy myself and learn as I do so, but with the awareness that I’m not being what I am, that I’m really at play within a chosen identity. The trouble comes when I forget and become “stuck” in that role, forgetting that there is a process to free myself from those shackles that were either imposed or chosen consciously at one time. That process, for me, comes through attentive breathing which is why I wrote about it the other day. See, I think a lot of people become “stuck” in particular identities, sometimes for decades, sometimes for life. Identities, though, are no more than roles being played. No one is an “accountant.” No one is a “teacher.” No one is a “lover.” No one is a “fighter.” No one is a “soccer player.” No one is a “daughter.” No one is a “spouse.” No one is a “parent.” No one is “African-American.” No one is “Asian. No one is “white.” No one is a “woman.” No one is a “man.” No one is a “child.” No one is “kind.” No one is “evil.” No one is a “rapist.” No one is a “rape victim.” No one is “poor.” No one is “rich.” No one is an “owner.” No one is a “renter.” No one is “homeless.” No one is “intelligent.” No one is “mentally ill.”

All of those things are roles being played. In today’s parlance, roles are interpreted as “identities” and for the past few decades we have been in the midst of a revolution of identity politics. It’s become so pervasive, so socially meaningful, that people become truly trapped within those roles with little to no possibility of escaping. A lot of these identities are imposed rather than adopted. If you are born in America and have pigmented skin (and even skin with no pigmentation), you are identified and corralled into a racial or ethnic identity. If you have a vagina, you’re a girl or a woman. A penis means boy or man. If you have a child, you become known as a mother or a father. If you’re under a certain age, you are a child. If you are born in the United States then you become American. if you choose a career in law enforcement then you are identified as a police officer. 

You are not allowed, in a social context, to be a person or a being with consciousness with the ability to play different roles. In a sense, we all possess the possibilities of stem cells even throughout life. The possibilities become more and more limited over time because of our mortality, but the idea that the canvas we painted through the identities imposed or adopted over the course of our lives was “who we were” is a pernicious distortion of the possibilities we possessed from moment to moment. We have decided, as a culture, to measure ourselves by “what was done” and “the choices we made” and “the identities associated with us” rather than the very live possibilities in between moments before we made the decisions we made. 

If you consider the fact that we have the capacity to make decisions then it should be more obvious that we are not the decisions we make. We are (or were in the case of the deceased) the conscious ability to decide what we wanted to become — or not become. Who we are not, as identities, is as much who we are as whatever we decided to be. That’s a radical notion in our culture. It may even seem to many to be fantasy. But that’s because most people identify as being the decisions they have made, the identities imposed, and the roles they adopted. They forgot that they could have chosen to identify as inverted pyramids with spaghetti legs. 

I am the stem cell of consciousness fueled by breathing. To say it another way, I am the possibility of becoming while already being. If there was a model for how everyone could be, I suppose it would be Speed Levitch. But I know this: no two Speeds would ever be alike and no one Speed would ever be the same in one moment as he was in any other. And Speed would understand that in the moment it was forgotten. I suppose it could be said that my experiences in Amsterdam were an exploration in Levitchism even though I did not know of Levitch at the time. But that’s because Levitchism defies association with any particular being at any particular moment. And Levitchism would always deny that it is an “ism.” Because it isn’t and wouldn’t be even if it could.

Movement cannot be a movement of a political sort because it can’t be a civilization; movement is never still in the way property is. The very concept of property prevents movement in reality. Oh, the lands I would travel were there no property! Civilization is a mistake that can’t escape form itself and it has trapped beings inside compartments called identities that must follow the rules of movement limited by ownership, limited by political and monetary currency. There are other currencies, those still found in moments that have as of yet remained unbound. That’s the thing, though: these currencies are created and discovered in moments and then dissolve completely as if they never were. Those currencies can not be owned because they are tangible only as they happen. 


Nothing secure has ever been fun. Uncertainty was betrayed when it was made a principle. Living need not feel like dying. We could, but we don’t. Society is the means by which psychopaths turn the masses into sociopaths. Other things that could be written.

Friday, May 27, 2016

Humor in the Age of Social Media



Person 1: A guy walks down the street and—

Person 2: Why does it have to be a male?

Person 1: A woman walks down the street and—

Person 2: Why does it have to be a female?

Person 1: An adult walks down the street and—

Person 2: What about the children?

Person 1: A person walks down the street and—

Person 2: What about the other eight billion people on the planet?

Person 1: Eight billion people walk down the street and—

Person 2: Why does it have to be species-centric?

Person 1: All living creatures go down the street and—

Person 2: What about inanimate objects?

Person 1: The earth and everything on it, in it, and around it goes down the street and—

Person 2: What about nature?

Person 1: The earth and everything on it, in it, and around it gather in a forest and—

Person 2: That would destroy the environment!

Person 1: The earth—

Person 2: What about the rest of the universe?

Person 1: The universe—

Person 2: What about alternate universes?

Person 1: Everything that exists, has existed, will exist, and might exist in the past, present, and future—

Person 2: What about things that can’t exist?

Person 1: [silence]

Person 2: That’s hilarious!



Ba dum bump

Thursday, May 26, 2016

Breathing


Breathing is love. Notice that I did not write “Love is breathing.” The order is important. Why? Because it is through breathing that anything that can be felt or expressed or identified as love comes into being. I could say, “Love is always there,” but the vagueness of meaning of the word “love” provides no access to the experience of love nor the capability of loving.

So I write, “Breathing is love.” You know how to breathe. Breathing is ever-present. It is always with you. Thus, your access to love is always with you. It is the one thing that occurs every moment that can be experienced and controlled. There is nothing mystical about breathing. Love, on the other hand, carries so many connotations for mystical, inexplicable experience. But that’s because love is a concept separated from its necessary core: Breath. 

Everything important in human life starts with breathing. Yes, of course there is the circulation of blood, the nervous system, but of all of the moment-to-moment essential life-giving and life-sustaining functions, breathing is the only one with which we can consciously, with awareness and attentiveness and feeling and will, participate. 

It’s a strange thing to breathe consciously. It’s not so much that it doesn’t involve the senses, for the experience of breathing involves touch, taste, and smell—if one focuses attention delicately—but that it’s difficult to isolate the “place” or specific part of the body where breathing begins and ends. But that is because breathing doesn’t begin or end. It’s always occurring. I am breathing even when I “hold my breath.” Granted, I have interrupted the airflow, the in and out process, but the lungs continue to work even as I prevent exhalation and inhalation.

Exhalation and inhalation are the acts of breathing that can be consciously controlled. In that sense, what we call breathing are those acts. And in that case, we can stop our own breath. But for only a very short time and it is in those times that we can be reminded of breathing’s centrality in every moment. But what is most often expressed in terms of basic survival needs is water, food, sleep, and protection from the elements (clothing and shelter in particular). Yet, we can survive for days without water, a week or more without food, even longer without sleep, and—except in the cases of extreme heat or cold—even longer without clothing or shelter. In the case of breathing, however, we can only last a few minutes.

Viewing needs as time-based changes the perception of their importance. For whatever reason, time is rarely factored into the importance of the provision of needs. Part of the ignorance related to the importance of breathing is that access to it is ever-present for many. But when inhalation and exhalation no longer occur effortlessly, when breathing requires more attentiveness, effort, and patience, then it’s impossible to be ignorant of its importance. Anyone with severe asthma or emphysema can tell you how difficult it is to live with what I call a “breathing-impairment condition.” If you’re drowning, you notice how important breathing is. If you’re being waterboarded, you learn how important breathing is (one of the reasons it most certainly is a form of torture and perhaps one of the worst forms in terms of immediate and long-lasting trauma). If you live in a factory city in China, a metropolitan city in the U.S. on a sweltering 100-degree and humid day, next to a hog confinement facility, near an agricultural site where pesticides and herbicides are sprayed, or any place where the air quality is poor due to pollution, climate, weather, topography, or vegetation, then you become aware of how difficult it is to breath.

However, for those who have only ever experienced living in such conditions—industrial and agricultural pollution, for example—it may not be known that breathing conditions are better elsewhere. Even if they know this intellectually without having experienced breathing in an environment with wonderful air quality they don’t really understand how comparatively extraordinary life can be with unpolluted and well-oxygenated air. Where is the best air? Forests and coasts. This, more than any other reason, is why the Pacific Northwest is the best place I have lived in terms of air quality. Of course, anywhere in the Rocky Mountains (but the further north and away from populations the better) as long as there aren’t any forest fires. But that’s why the coasts of Oregon and Washington are so attractive: Ocean to the west and forest to the east. Plus, tons of rain.

I love deserts in many ways, but they can’t offer the air quality that the Northwest can. Because I value breathing to the degree that I do, it’s easy for me to choose the forests and coasts of the Northwestern United States (and British Columbia) over the southwestern deserts and smoggy coasts. And rain, rain is beautiful, so disturbingly underrated and strangely resented by so many. Rain is crucial for clean air. And trees! Oh, THE reason to eschew the desert. The two things we should be most concerned about preserving, as a species, are the forests and the water quality of oceans, lakes, rivers, streams, and groundwater. As bad as industrial pollution is, agricultural pollution is even worse because it pollutes both air and water, the two things most essential for the best breathing conditions!

I have wondered why environmentalists focus so ridiculously on forests and oceans as if they are entities in and of themselves. If the environmentalist centered his or her political philosophy on breathing then all else would fall into place in a way every human being could appreciate. Who gives a shit about forests or oceans if no one can explain why they are so critical to the quality of life around the world, even in areas that are not forested or near the coasts? But, that’s their ignorance on display. The best environmentalists are humanists (of some sort). In other words, only a species-centric approach (the HUMAN species) can result in an environmentally-friendly world. Start at what’s most important for the sustainability of quality life and then build from there. 

As I wrote at the beginning, breathing is love. Everything I have written is evidence of that. Notice the tone is not touchy-feely or mystical or gooey or romantic. It is simple, practical, basic. None of what I have written is inaccessible to anyone. In fact, my guess is that most people reading this will find that I am reporting nothing that they haven’t already heard in some form or another. Perhaps, though, I am providing information and insights in a manner that ties together concepts that were formerly considered to be disparate. Of course, that is how narratives are created. It’s been well-documented that narratives are central to human beliefs and values. What we experience in societies are the narratives that have created the physical world around us: buildings, streets, highways, trains, airports, canals, industrial farm fields, poultry confinement facilities, mines, shipping docks, offshore oil platforms, and so on. What existed before those narratives became the physical spaces around us were forests, plains, rivers, lakes, hills, mountains, and other naturally occurring topographical and oceanic features. 

Narratives in and of themselves are not bad. But what has been created because of the narratives that have thus far been adopted through history, narratives such as private property, ownership, parliaments, liberty, freedom, justice, etc., can be measured through not only those physical structures I mentioned, but also air pollution, water pollution, and deforestation as well as poverty, crime, loneliness, despair, health care inaccessibility, and so on.

Rather than try to fix the problems that have been caused under the old narratives by insanely using the old narratives again and again, it seems wise to create new narratives based on less insanely abstract notions such as freedom, justice, and ownership. Those things may come into existence under a new narrative, but they cannot be the foundations themselves. They are dislocated from the core realities that might support them.

Breathing is not the beginning or the end; it is the constant that runs between the beginning and the end. Everything I have written in my Amsterdam writings is related to these thoughts, these ideas, these insights, these principles. The critical components of discovery are in there: Breathing, sensation, eating, drinking, sleeping, movement, stretching, walking, cycling, sex (and sexuality). It’s about the body, the discovery of the body, the movement of awareness away from abstract concepts to the basics of the body. That is what enabled me to shed the imposed narratives that had become the basis of my identity, beliefs, and values, and construct new narratives of what was important in life.

In fact, the very idea of “life” had to be shed in order that I could live. It was living that enabled the discoveries that gave rise to new narratives over time. Through the body, I was also able to engage in conversation, develop friendships, and sexual relationships with an appreciation for the bodies of those I encountered. I don’t mean appreciation in the possessive sense of “Your existence is for my appreciation of what you look like, feel like, smell like,” etc. No, I mean appreciation in the sense of caring, kindness, togetherness, gezelligheid. I discovered what “we” meant. “We” had only ever been a concept to me. I couldn’t experience “we” because there were too many narratives of abstraction getting in the way of being present with others, listening attentively, observing silently, engaging through the eyes and through touch, sharing through laughter. What resulted was joy, sometimes quiet, sometimes euphoric, but joy experienced as “we.” 

Language is a very strange thing. Words become easily disconnected from actuality, not removed once or twice from the experience of time and space in a body, but removed so entirely that the body in time and space becomes all but lost, a thing that exists in some way that is utterly detached from thought itself. One word that has been used to describe such a phenomenon is “schism.” But that word creates more confusion because it’s too abstract. It doesn’t adequately describe the experience of what is called schism. That’s true of many words. Maybe all words. 

It’s not that words should be abandoned entirely. I’m not suggesting that. What I am suggesting is that they are secondary in the experience of “we.” The way you smell, the facial expressions you make, the gestures you make, postures you adopt, the tone of your voice, inflection and volume, the way the skin of your forearm feels when I grasp it while laughing, the way your lips taste when I kiss you, the way your eyes sparkle when you’re telling me about the new “love of your life,” all of these things and innumerably more say so much more than the words spoken. When I stopped focusing on simply what was said, I was able to experience being with others in a way that created “we.” Not with everyone nor all the time. In fact, I noticed that few were either willing or able to engage as “we” with me. In my experience, Amsterdam is the best place in the world in this regard.

But I haven’t been to Tibet or Sri Lanka or Rome or … the number of places I have not been exponentially exceeds the places I have been. So there’s that. But I have been to many places in Europe and even more throughout the entirety of the U.S. (even since my “vision quest” in Amsterdam) and I can truthfully say that I met far more individuals capable of being “we” than anywhere else in the world. And as far as it goes in the U.S., the Northwest is better than anywhere else in the country (I have to include northern California in that regard, perhaps starting with the Bay Area and working up the coast). Portland was the best I’ve experienced in the U.S., but perhaps only because I spent more time there. Maybe Seattle is better. Maybe Eugene, OR, is better. Maybe somewhere in Montana. 

That’s neither here nor there, just self-indulgence on my part. The important point was that once I had made the transition to living in the body and attentively engaging as “we” with as many people as I could, the quality of my life changed dramatically. Over time, even in situations and locales in  which there was no possibility of “we” I have become able to live with a sense of fulfillment because breathing is ever-present. I forget at times. I get distracted, worried about things of lesser importance, things too far removed from being, things like finances, status, missing friends, missing travel, missing the forests and the coasts, and so on. Breathing never abandons me. It’s more reliable than all of my friends and family, more reliable than whatever income I have, more reliable than food or water or clothing, more reliable than anything else. It’s always there. Thus, I am never alone. No one is.

That is but one reason why I say breathing is love. Anything that is always there, always providing life, always providing companionship, always enabling the experience of “we” even when no other person is near, that is love. Why would I or anyone want to dismiss such a wonderful gift and take it for granted? I laid out part of the reason when I mentioned the narratives that dominate societies. There is nothing in the stories of capitalism or socialism about breathing. None that I’ve read. And that’s the thing—I have read plenty and while some of what I have read has been very valuable for me in terms of creating narratives that put me in my body and enable me to become more capable of “we” (even experiencing “we” with there trees and the beaches), none of those works would have been useful without my experience of being. 

I would suggest to everyone that they begin their own narrative re-creation by being more attentive to breathing rather than by adopting anything they’ve read as gospel. You can discover everything beautiful and wise and kind and loving through the practice of attentive breathing over time. Everything that has been written about such things was discovered by someone who had first experienced them and then interpreted their experience. But each is person is different, has different bodies, lives in different times, different places, under different circumstances, and so your own breathing can tell you immeasurably more than whatever insights I’ve gained through my breathing can. It’s not like you need to spend every waking moment in conscious focus on breathing. You wouldn’t be able to if you tried. Maybe if you went to a monastery and spent decades at it you could “arrive” at that point, but that’s not necessary and probably not feasible.

I remember reading something about a yogi who meditated and described after decades how he had come to break through yet another barrier (whatever that means) and “saw” a blue dot in his mind’s eye. His interpretation was that this was something central to universal consciousness or whatever. I had read this before I went to Amsterdam and focused exclusively on my body, my being, flushing shit like that from my system. It’s not that the guy didn’t experience this or perhaps even that his interpretation is wrong. The problem is when volumes of books are written about the subject and someone who is new to meditation reads that shit, well, it’s easy to feel like that’s the point of meditation.

Notice that I’ve just now used the word meditation. I don’t like that word. I focus on breathing, not on “meditation.” Fuck that word. Does so much fucking damage and you see it with all types of new age freaks who are buying crystals dreamcatchers and volumes of books by yogis and shamans and, most often, charlatans. When I tried “meditation” — and I kept calling it that until recent years (been a gradual process of understanding the damage of the word, the disconnect it creates) — I thought the point of it was to experience some mystical state, to “see the blue dot.” Naturally, that kept me from focusing on my breath in an easy, relaxed, and appreciative manner. I mean, if a blue dot someday comes, whoopee! I’m being facetious; I don’t give a shit. The simple silence of breathing, feeling it, using it, changing the rhythms, finding different “grooves,” that’s wonderful to me. It sheds what I need it to shed, but it never happens in “aha!” moments. Well, except when I’m shrooming, which I haven’t done for some time and, really, don’t need to any more. I probably will again at some point, but the high-octane ingestion in 2007 and 2008 is no longer necessary. Did the trick.

I had to live several years to catch up to what I discovered during that time. It was the right choice then and I wouldn’t be able to experience life the way I do had I not done that and because of it I can now breathe attentively just while sitting in a chair, lying in bed, standing, walking, wherever. Breathing comes with me wherever I go. It is me, more than these words I’m writing. These words are enabled by my breathing. Not just the ability to type by keeping me alive, but focused breathing allowed me to develop these thoughts. Not so much while I was engaged exclusively on breathing; but at times when I was partially focused on breathing while also contemplating, wondering. People use the word learning—and that’s okay, I think—but learning is a result and, from my experience, learning is a result of contemplating and wondering. And, for me, contemplation and wonder, are different. Contemplation is very quiet, grounded, simple; it’s like an “ohm.” Wonder, on the other hand, is soft but bouncy, an alpha wave that doesn’t mind becoming untethered from its moors. Wonder, in a sense, is a cousin of imagination. Imagination is a sort of directed play whereas wonder is undirected play. Well, those are a few ways of expressing how I experience what those words supposedly describe. 

Breathing is both grounding and liberating. It changes the experience of being based on rhythm, volume, depth, concentration on various parts of the body. Kinesthetic experience can be controlled (and is best controlled) through different “ways” of breathing. Feelings such as fear and exhilaration are created through breathing much more so than narratives/beliefs. However, narratives and beliefs regulate breathing in ways not easy to detect. Whatever breathing patterns you may have are tied deeply to how you perceive your identity as well as the beliefs and values that determine how you think and what you think about. These are also reasons why engaging with your breath more and more over time is important. I think it’s the best, if not the only, way to liberate oneself from harmful narratives. The reason seems obvious to me, but I’ll state it here again in another way: If your narratives are tied to your breathing then if you change your breathing you will have an avenue to change your narratives. The Western world has it backwards; they think changing ideas is the way to start, but how can a person change their ideas if they are always breathing in a rapid, over-excited way (or any other particular way).

Spend a few minutes several times a day, maybe a half hour here and there, maybe a special weekly two hour attentive breathing session, whatever, and you’ll notice changes in how you think over time. You’ll wonder where those thoughts came from. You might even freak out because, well, “Why the fuck am I thinking about that? Why am I thinking in this weird way I’ve never thought of before? Oh my god, I’m losing my mind! I must be crazy. I’m fucked up. I’m not supposed to have these thoughts. If I tell anyone about them they’ll lock me up in an institution!” 

[I speak from personal experience in this case about being locked up in an institution (against my will); yes, focusing on your breathing can be dangerous … but only because we live in the culture that we do. In another culture you might be considered a guru or shaman or whatever, but I don’t live in that culture and neither do you so … that’s why I say a few minutes here and there throughout the day rather than two hours in the morning, an hour in the afternoon, three hours at night. Several times I have gone to the point where I was doing it so long that I lost language almost entirely for days. When you “lose” language, the experience of living is not even remotely close to anything you can imagine. There are no words because … words are not. People get really freaked out and it’s partially because, for me, at least the first few times it happened, I didn’t understand what was happening and I thought I was going crazy. The “feeling” of losing language is like … the first time, especially, it felt like there was no way to regain language. I forgot what language was—written and spoken language, that is. When I heard others speak I struggled mightily to “come back” to language to understand what they were trying to convey. That was when I first noticed, in a very extraordinary way, that people talked about things that were absolutely insane, things like “What do you want to do?” or “How are you doing?” or “It’s nice outside today.” If I could have thought in words my thoughts would have been something like, “What the fuck? Can they not see me? Do they not see everything around them? Can’t they tell it’s 1.6487 degrees F too warm today? Can’t they tell that the barometric pressure is 3.2957 points too low? The level of ozone in the air is atrocious! The visual haze is self-evident: The sky is not blue; it’s an opaque blue-gray fog of toxic particles! I can barely fucking breathe! 100 yards from us is the Interstate and I can feel the constant pounding vibrations of semi tractor trailers with their fucking jake breaks and it feels like all of the molecules of my cells might become ripped apart! The noise is terrifying! It sounds like the devil himself is farting hate onto my eardrums! I need water with more alkalinity, not this acidic slimy shit from the tap or the acidic stale water from the bottle! I need to drink straight from a fucking mountain spring! And I mean, I want my mouth on the opening of the spring so that I can get REAL water into my body! And I want cool rain to pour down on the skin of my naked body! Why are you freaking out while I’m taking off my clothes?! They feel horrible on skin! I need the fucking air to touch all of my skin cells! What the fuck is wrong with you and why are you looking at me like that, with such horror and anger and confusion? And why are you grabbing me and forcing me into a car! I don’t want this! I don’t want this at all! Leave me alone!”]

So, yeah, that’s one thing that can happen if you spend almost all day every day focused on breathing. If I had been in a Buddhist monastery or something similar, I probably would have felt right at home. Sitting and breathing? Gardening in the rich soil, breathing the fresh air? Lovely. Fulfilling. I have wondered if I wasn’t meant to be a monk, but that sort of thought comes from a former narrative. I am now a monk though I don’t live in a monastery. I haven’t taken a vow of silence, I haven’t eschewed friendships, I am not celibate (well, for the time I am, but it’s not something I think about at this point and if I’m with someone who can be “we” then, yeah, sex). 

As it is, I breathe. I may stop saying “I love myself” and start saying “I breathe myself.” Same difference. That’s one of the few colloquialisms I really like. It’s just so funny. But this does raise more questions about language and how language removes us from reality or at least confuses our relationship to reality. Hell, think of the phrasing “language confuses our relationship to reality.” The sentence structure creates a differentiation between “us” and “reality,” as if we could possibly exist while separated from reality. A more accurate expression is “Language confuses the perception of our relationship with reality.” This wording sustains the notion that we are always in relationship to reality (never mind the implications of that word for the moment) even if language has created a perceptual distortion that leads us to believe that we exist outside reality and can connect with it only in certain ways.

Our misinterpretation of our relationship with reality is created by language — or perhaps a misuse of language. While I think it is language itself, I am fluent only in English and therefore I can only claim with certainty that the English language creates perceptual distortions of our relationship with reality. This is, among many other reasons, why attentive breathing is useful in reconnecting to fundamentals of reality as a human; in other words, focused breathing leads to a cessation in linguistic thinking that allows conscious awareness of reality without the filter of language separating us from our awareness of being “as we are.” Instead of intellectualizing the importance of breathing and understanding breathing as a definition, a kernel of knowledge, we realize through the power of experience that breathing is the moment-by-moment active force sustaining life. It’s possible to be filled with awe while attentively breathing without linguistic thought because what had been merely a story about something each human does becomes personally real. It no longer matters that everyone else does it; it no longer matters that you know the scientific definitions of what breathing is. Instead, you experience breathing as an explorer discovering uncharted territory—not territory uncharted by language or scientific description, but uncharted by your perceptual experience of breathing with attentiveness and absent linguistic thought. 

While it may result in awe at times, though, it also results in fear and anxiety for others. A person’s relationship with uncertainty, their capacity and practice in dealing with what is personally unknown, can be terrifying. Without language to compartmentalize emotions into feelings, the experience of being can feel like being adrift in a stormy sea with no sight of land and no means of returning to land. This is the main reason I think attentive breathing should be practiced in short timeframes over a long period of time before increasing sessions. Call it using training wheels or wearing a lifejacket, if you will. One of the analogies I use is the Holocaust survivors who were discovered by Americans and died when they ate too much of the food they were given, especially foods such as chocolate. Their bodies had been ravaged so severely for such a long time that they couldn’t handle the diet of a relatively healthy person. Well, the person who has used linguistic thinking almost exclusively for decades is like those Holocaust survivors; their capacity for digesting attentiveness without linguistic thought is meager. Thus, those individuals do not have non-linguistic means for managing their emotions. 

In fact, the brain of such individuals is so accustomed to using language every moment that an automatic, uncontrolled linguistic response to attempts to be attentive to breath will continuously pop up “against the will.” In a sense, whatever will such a person possesses is severely atrophied from lack of use. Thus, the long-term habit of linguistic thinking overwhelms the individual and they find they have no means to stop it. This is why most individuals who are new to “meditation” complain that they can’t concentrate, that they are continually distracted by thoughts about this or that. This is yet another reason to frequently attempt the activity in low temporal doses as a means to acquire the willful strength to do what no longer comes naturally. Ideally, one will be able to consciously and willfully choose to think with language or be attentive without the use of language whenever he or she needs or wants. 

One possible way to do this is to employ the senses in certain environments as a step in the direction of attentive breathing. The biggest hurdle for most is linguistic thought so breaking down the involuntary drive to think linguistically is a necessary step, one that may not be possible for most by closing the eyes and adopting a Lotus Position (sitting cross-legged). Instead, observe a sunset for ten minutes without thinking, watching the colors of the sky gradually change. When thinking, it’s not possible to notice the moment-by-moment changes occurring, but by breathing steadily and focusing as much attention as possible on sight alone, changes that seem subtle to the linguistic mind become striking to a still mind (an open mind). The sensation of sight observing a constantly but subtly changing visual field requires enough stimuli to prevent linguistic thought from taking place. In a very important sense, this is the Way of the Aesthete as well as the Way of the Artist, a means to escape linguistics and return to the senses. It is anything but mundane or simplistic. It is a practice as sophisticated as any science or philosophy. It is also a means to prepare the mind for wordlessness without sensory stimuli, whether taste, smell, sight, sound, or touch. Emotions can be more easily managed in a non-linguistic way while engaged in attentive sensory observation than through attentive breathing. 

During advanced or well-developed attentive breathing without linguistic thought and negligible (if not absent) sensory experience, an experience of “oneness” can occur. The notion that “all is one” is not, in my estimation, the truth of existence. However, it is an authentic experience, a true experience, the authentic experience of being without linguistic thought or sensory attentiveness. It is no more a distortion of experience than the experience of being through linguistic thought or sensory involvement. What seems authentic or real or true through language or sensation is specific to such experiences. In other words, linguistic thought is a contextual experience, sensation is an environment-specific experience, and “oneness” is an attentive breathing experience (though not the only attentive breathing experience).

Time is the determining factor in all of these experiences. With linguistic thought, each word or symbol creates a change in experience. With sensation, each new sight, sound, smell, etc., changes experience. With non-linguistic and muted sensation, the only new experience is through breathing. Once a “breather” is developed to the extent that a rhythm of breathing can be sustained for a duration even without attentiveness, the experience of time is diminished and can even be eradicated entirely from conscious and even subconscious experience. That is how “oneness” can become an experience. It is not mystical; it merely differs from the experience of differentiation. One reason why mantras are sometimes used is that they can control the flow of linguistic thought and a short phrase such as “I am” or whatever can become as regular and rhythmically steady as the breath. Oneness can be experienced in this way as well, but that’s because the words cease being language and become a part of breathing. Using mantras is another useful means to cease linguistic thought to regulate breathing. 

Unfortunately, many seem to think that “oneness” is the true self or universal consciousness or something similarly mystical. I can only surmise that these notions develop once the person comes back to using language and applies a linguistic interpretation of the experience. That distorts what the experience was. What I think is occurs is that the individuals who say these things really mean, “Breathing without linguistic thought and unnoticed sensation and even losing consciousness of my breathing created the best experience of conscious awareness I have ever had.” That’s significant as it is! It’s huge as a telling factor in what is important in life! But claiming all else is false and that “oneness” or “universal consciousness” is the supreme truth and all else is illusion does more harm than good. Such claims create ideologies and suddenly it isn’t the practice itself that is important but believing that there is a universal consciousness and that “we are all one” that becomes important. Suddenly meanings and values are twisted to bend to this new religious ideology. Language is suddenly used to control a particular experience of wordlessness without sensation. 

However, it is also absurd to believe that subjects and objects exist in the ways conceived and described through language. Importantly, though, that statement and all the others I have made are the results of linguistic wondering. Each time I break from linguistic thought and attentively breathe, I give myself a chance to reconsider, to question, and to discover that I was wrong or that I used the wrong words to convey intended meanings. Whenever I am using language or when I read the language that others have used, I allow for the probability that there are distortions, misinterpretations, mistakes, and manipulations. I recognize that any and all narratives are contextual and even contingent. Even if I make a statement, which is a claim, I don’t fully believe my claim except in the sense that it serves a purpose for a time, but may be proved problematic in different contexts if contingencies arise. This allows me to make claims strong enough to give me grounding in a society in which I must function in particular ways but also allows me to change whatever notions I have cobbled together when circumstances prove that my narrative is neither accurate nor useful. 

For example, when I was younger I didn’t examine the difference between specific verbs. If I was asked if I existed, I would have said, “I do” which was short for “I do exist.” But using the verb “do” isn’t necessary; “I exist” is sufficient. “Do exist”? That’s … weird. “To do” suggests that there’s an action or effort involved, but “I exist” — at least in a given moment — without any action or effort on my part. Another way to say “I exist” is to say “I am.” But why not say “I be”? You see such usages by toddlers and in Ebonics. What often happens when a toddler or preschool-aged child says “I be” is that a parent, teacher, or other adult informs the child that the proper phrasing is “I am” not “I be.” That’s confusing for a young person who is learning a language. What toddlers are most often doing with language is learning by mimicking. They discover, not consciously, a structure within the language and many of their mistakes are not so much theirs as they are inherent within the contradictory and confused structure and usage of language. Well, the English language, at least. 

In this sense, no one really acquires language with conscious effort and willful inquiry. Instead, it is imposed. Yes, it is learned, but more through mimicking and direction than wonder and exploration. This is especially true once a child become school-aged. When a child asks, “Why is the sky blue?” most adults don’t want to explore the question with the child. Most often, the parents and teachers don’t know themselves and they have moved on to the functionality of life as created through the political, economic, and other cultural narratives of their time. They define even themselves in relation to such narratives. “Why is the sky blue?” is of less importance than “Where am I located on the socioeconomic hierarchy in my city, within my career field, and in relation to my spouse/partner, family, friends, and neighbors?” Working to achieve some sense of meaning in relation to others according to “who is important” in the caste system of looks, age, sex, wealth, etc., is an integral part of the American narrative (and likely in other countries as well, though it may differ significantly in societies with different economic and political systems). 

The question “Why is the sky blue?” is related to sensory experience: “Why do I see what I see?” Further questions, if the question had been more sufficiently explored, might have been “What is sight?” or “Why am I here and the sky is up there?” There could be any number of other questions as well, but of great significance is subject/object relations. First of all, what is a subject and what is an object? The critical piece of that puzzle is that both subjects and objects come into being through language. Sensation is how self/other is experienced. Language is the way in which explanations and descriptions are applied to what is sensed. In this way, linguistic meanings trump sensory experience. They control the perception of what is experienced through the sense and through emotions (which are biologically related to sensation). Linguistic thoughts have become the dominant means through which humans classify, compartmentalize, and order sensory and emotional experience. “The sky is blue” is a way of classifying what we see and where we see what we see. The sky is “up” or “above” in relation to us. We center the meanings of things in the ways in which we experience them. We sense colors visually and we give labels to certain hues. The word “blue” means as much to us (if not more to us) as a symbol as the color we experience viewing through sight. This one-to-one relationship is not glaringly problematic when it is a label for something that is sensed. That’s not to say it isn’t problematic, just not obviously. Abstract concepts such as “crime” and “justice” are more obviously problematic.

It’s not just that societies skip the importance of breathing and sleeping in their rush to address crime, justice, economics, and more. Language lumps “concrete” and “abstract” concepts together in the same category within sentence structures as nouns. Noun/verb relations form perceptions of subject/object relations, self/other relations. Subject/verb/object is a serious issue. “You are tall” really means “I believe you are tall according to my conceptions and perceptions of tall and short according to the narrative that informs my judgments of my sensations.” But we don’t say the latter, certainly not in conversation and few ever even think that way. But if I say “You are tall” I am aware that I am using my own narrative to give me information about what height is abstractly “tall” or “short.” If I say, “Your height is five feet and eight inches when standing flatfooted with an aligned posture,” then I am using less abstract and ambiguous concepts based on my personal narrative value system.

However, the subject in the latter example is “you.” The speaker (“me”) is not included in the statement, yet the “invisible” unsaid subject is me. So I could modify the statement to say, “I have used English measurement units to determine that your height is five feet and eight inches when standing flatfooted with an aligned posture.” Now it’s clear, without confusion, that “I” am the subject and that “you” are the object. In fact, “you” is always an object even if it is being used in a sentence as a subject. Even more striking is that “I” is ALWAYS the subject of every sentence. The English language allows “I” to be unsaid and unwritten in sentences, though. While it seems like it should be obvious that there is always an “I” making a statement or writing a sentence, it’s not really the case. I say that because people tend to believe statements are claims that may have some inherent truth to them independent of the author. That can NEVER be the case because it is only through the author of the statements that any reader or listener can encounter them. The delivery mechanism (the author) is the most important component of every statement. 

Why do I even mention this? One reason is that statements join with innumerable others to become ideologies and belief systems detached from their authors. One example can be found through religious texts and teachings (“these are the Words of God”). Another example can be found through scientific research reports and texts. Science, by making a claim of a lack of bias by following strict methodologies, creates the impression that the individuals who performed the research and wrote their observations and interpretations of results are not really authors. Their tests were the authors, the methodology was the author. But it’s not true. The person (or persons) using the methodology and performing the tests is the author (or are the authors). While it may be true that electrons exist and have X properties and act or function in Y ways, such a claim can only be made if a person or persons used particular methods and performed specific tests to discover such things. But when a statement in a textbook claims that “electrons are X” there are thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands of individuals who researched electrons and wrote reports over generations that led to the statement that “electrons are X” being a scientifically sound statement. 

Even then, because scientific research is ongoing, never-ending, the statement must be understood as “electrons are X according to what has so far been researched and written about by thousands of researchers and writers around the world from 18XX to 20XX.” Even then, it’s not an inclusive statement by any means. For example, “In Sweden, these scientists in X institution researched electrons between 19XX and 19XX based on receiving an endowment from the state for the purpose of XYZ, whereas these 40 different institutions in the United States researched electrons between X and Y dates for these 24,076 specific purposes as stated and claimed by various governmental bodies, universities, corporations, and nonprofit organizations.” In other words, there’s a hell of a lot driving science besides science. By knowing the people involved, as well as the author of any given text, stated sentence by sentence in terms of motivations and actions, it becomes evident that electrons are a human construct. Certainly, the symbols describing and explaining electrons, whether in English or through mathematics, are not electrons themselves. Yet, for most individuals the notions of electrons are entirely linguistic. For those who have performed the research studies using electron microscopes and other technologies, electrons have a sensory/perceptive reality of some sort. But for everyone else, such science is a matter of trust.
That’s not to say that scientific discoveries are untrue. It’s more a matter of understanding that scientific discoveries are discoveries by humans; thus, the authors of science are human. That’s of vital importance if one is to prevent oneself from adopting science as an ideology. Science is a practice and like all practices, it is a human practice that is specific to a certain scope of behaviors and thought processes. It is not “all” or a source of universal truth. It is contextual and vulnerable to contingencies just as every other practice that becomes a narrative is.

Returning to the “am/be” issue, consider these statements as well subject/verb versus subject/verb/object statements:

“I am”
“I am hungry”
“I be”
“I be hungry”

This is about differentiation, about “being” versus “being what I am.” To say “I am hungry” is to say “I am what I crave.” Hunger is not my being itself and yet the wording of “I am hungry” is claiming that my being is that hunger. To use a “to be” verb to describe what one feels is seriously problematic because it shapes how we think of ourselves. On one level, at least, it would be better (and less dangerous) to say, “I hunger.” In this case, “hunger” is a verb, it’s something my being is experiencing. While being is never separate from experience, the specifics of experiences change whereas being itself does not … until death, anyway. And death is an important subject in relation to all of this, but I don’t want to address that yet. It’s certainly important in relation to breathing, though! And just as breathing requires observance, so to does no longer breathing since the permanent cessation of breathing is inevitable for each person. 

For now, though, “I am.” I be. As much as anything, the difference between the two words, in terms of their meanings, may be related to how they sound. That the verb for “being” (meaning “existing”) could end in a consonant in one case and a vowel in the other seems … confusing, at the very least. When I say the word “am” there is a finality to the sound, a “This is it” quality. But the sound of “be” is open-ended, could go on and on, who knows when it will end; it has a truth in “now” that sounds free and full of possibility. “I am” is … constant, without differentiation. “I be,” though, even without an object after the verb, has the quality of indeterminate differentiation. Yet, to say “I be” is grammatically correct only when used as a subjunctive in subordinate clauses (especially mandative) or an interrogative sentence: “He requested (that) I be there” or “Should I be?” These are arbitrary rules created for words regardless of sound or image. They are important grammatical rules in the sense that they provide language a uniformity allowing it to be useful for communication. But those rules also define who we are as beings and how we perceive … everything. We can’t rid ourselves of language, but we can be aware that when we use it in thought, speech, and writing we are limited to certain understandings of the world and certainly are susceptible to believing that a wide range of narratives are truths rather than stories we tell ourselves about what we experience and what happens when and where we aren’t present (as well as why and how). 

To say “I am hungry” is strange. “I hunger” solves the problem of tying a desire to being itself. “I crave food now” communicates with even greater specificity. After all, people use “hunger” to describe how they feel in relation to sex as well as other things they want. This is why objects are so important in language. In this case, they communicate what is craved by who and when it is craved by who. There is the being (“I”), the experience (“crave” — verbs being the words that describe experiences, often identified as actions which I personally think is misleading), the object of desire (“food”), and the timing of the desire (“now”). It’s not necessary to use “now” because “crave” is a present tense verb, but without the use of now there is ambiguity (“Maybe he always craves food”). 

I’m getting into this for the purpose of showing how perception and belief can be formed and maintained through language. A more serious example is “I am an alcoholic.” The equivalent is to say “I am an addiction.” Really? Your very being is an addiction? “He’s a walking addiction.” This is one of the ways in which we devalue and delimit self and others. Even if this statement is rephrased as “I have alcoholism” or “I have an addiction to alcohol” the relationship between being and alcohol has now severely pigeonholed identity. In fact, it’s trapped the individual. And if I think of you primarily through the lens of alcoholism, then you are reduced to a person who is no longer fully human, a being with possibilities. I am most likely to compartmentalize you and interpret your being and everything you say and do through the distorted lens of the narratives of alcoholism that I have adopted (consciously or not). Even if you’re much more than what you call alcoholism, you’ve limited your view of yourself by claiming you have alcoholism and my view of you has been limited by your claim. Even if you don’t make the claim, I can make it for you: “He’s in denial about his alcoholism.” That’s another way of saying, “I have diagnosed you and placed your being into the category of alcoholic. You are alcoholic first and human being second, if at all.”

Words such as alcoholism and addiction are extremely dangerous. They are control words, words society uses to control and limit individuals and determine how they are — or should (moral imperative descriptions) — be perceived and treated by others. Personally, when I see another person, my first reaction is “She breathes.” Something of that nature, anyway. Well, not necessarily; I don’t always compartmentalize another through language right away. I try not to do that, anyway. Hence, one of my many reasons for practicing attentive breathing. It prevents me from labeling others so concretely in ways in which they have no flexibility to demonstrate that they are immeasurably more than my first impressions of them. That’s a developed skill rather than an innate part of my nature. Empathy, too, is a skill. For some it may come easier than for others, but it’s a skill in any case, one that improves with practice. 

Flexibility in perception and empathy, these along with other skills aid in preventing the calcification of linguistic judgments made about self and others. Likewise, they prevent calcification of judgments that “He is a good person” from becoming a static universal with the type of permanence that disallows openness to the possibility that the “good person” may do some shitty things sometimes. Words are extraordinary in their capacity for descriptive and explanatory rigidity. How else to explain why Galileo was considered a heretic when he stated his observation that the earth revolves around the sun? The teachings—which are the spread of words that have become beliefs—that had come before Galileo’s claim had become so intensely fused with the narrative of the nature of humanity in relation to everything else, that to suggest that a fundamental tenet within that worldview was deemed not just wrong, but so dangerously wrong that any spread of such information justified exiling or killing the person making such an utterance.

And while we, in the United States, live with the First Amendment which guarantees the civil right of free expression, we still witness how vehemently and even violently many attack those who use words and express beliefs that they don’t believe. It’s not just issues such as abortion or anything as severe as that issue. It’s seemingly little things, like when a person says that “He doesn’t listen to me” or “She’s always nagging.” These descriptions of others, whether expressed to others or merely thought, determine how we treat one another and how we think of  and treat ourselves (“I’m a failure”). 


I’m attempting to demonstrate how dangerous language is and why the thoughtless use of it determines who we are and how the world is. Going back to the very basics of living—breathing, sleeping, eating, drinking, etc.—can help eliminate the destructive ways in which we use language. Ironically, it is by appearing to be selfish or hedonistic to the outside observer that we most capably enable ourselves to become caring, kind, and empathetic, as well fostering ways to escape from the habits of judging ourselves according to dangerous and destructive narratives about belonging, status, achievement, and fulfillment. This is just a way to open the door and learn a practice that empowers, expands possibilities, develops the will and conscious awareness, and … so much more that I think it’s best to experience it than read what I’m writing. I thought it might be worthwhile to share some insights, though, in order to illustrate why it’s been so useful for me. I also have “selfish” motivations: I’d rather live in a world where people are developing this practice and using it to change who they are in a way that changes the world for the better. What “better” means? While it might be somewhat evident from what I’ve written, I think it would result through a worldwide human practice of attentive breathing without my needing to use language to describe it.