Breathing Forward

I've been trying to tackle all my goals for quite some time now. It's always been clearly more than any one person could manage, but I loved the idea of mixing it up and keeping things exciting so much that I piled everything on my plate anyway. Of course, it hurt to see things slide right off and fall to the floor even though I knew it was going to happen.

After many years, I've come back to the idea of cutting it down to the present moment. Not in the big picture way, I'm still doing a wide variety of things because I enjoy them, but more practicaly. I realise that any good experience needs to be fun, which is the only way to live a good life. So, I've been focuing intently on my moment to moment experience.

Whenever I stop to take a breather, I look up at the giant mountains in front of me, and they seem so insurmountable, it totally disorients me, casuing me to lose my footing. Achieveing anything meaningful or worthwhile seems so difficult that you feel like dropping everything off and tackling it with all your might. That's what I've been doing all these years, haven't I?

That's no way to have fun, and it does totally derail you from the path that matters most. So, I'm trying every single day now to just breathe and take it easy. I want to write, draw, shoot, code, direct, create, record, edit, sell, sing, play, show, share, and lead. But I first need to simply be. The only way you can really have fun is in real life, and that happens outside of yourself.

Of course, seperation is an illusion, but when you take yourself too seriously, turning the other way is the best path to equilibrium. I guess that this is my ultimate addiction, to get swept up by the waves of my emotions, and try to ride the tide like a dragon. They call it urge surfing when you let your emotions peak on the inside, and simply watch it fade. 

It seems that my inner wiring is all too stubborn to let me do that, so nowadays I try to breathe. This breath will be my saving grace, it seems. Doesn't that sound fun? I think that would be a proper way to live life. To just sit calm and content, breathing consciously and engage fully with whatever is there in front of you. Imagine that, it has to be the key!

I see it now so clearly, breathing is one of the most core fundamental of phsiological activities. What life can you lead if you are not breathing clearly? I also realised an issue that whenever I try to breathe consciously the paradox immediately becomes apparant to me: "try" to breathe? Do I not breathe all the time unconsciously?

The body clearly knows how it works, so conscious breathing must mean better somehow. It must be about breathing fully and perfectly and completely. I read that book once about the Science of Breath! I must need to apply it then... Okay, let's see, hmm this part of my chest is not right, my posture seems off, why can't I sit straight? Is my nose blocked? UGGGGHHH DAMN IT TO HELL!!!

Screw this whole endeavor! Let it all rot. This is the most interesting part of the process of unbecoming, letting go, and returning fully to the here and now. How you do something is how you do everything. Ultimately this is the point of all great spiritual undertakings: to get back in touch with your natural rythm of being.

I can see it all happening inside me now, as I type this out. The conscious mind has gone off in a million direction and pulled the body along with it. It relives past traumas, fights imaginary futures, and runs away from the here and now. Eventually, the body becomes used to this erratic way of life, this desperate and sporradic frequency.

Meanwhile, the subconscious keeps everything else running, albeit at a slightly ower capacity. Why lower? Because a portion of the brain has been sacrificed to stimulation, orchestrating a chaotic theatre of kaeliedoscopic odysseys. Is the world so bad that you feel such a need? Is simple existence so bording and cumbersome?

Perhaps it has become so inadvertently. From pride, greed, lust, sloth, envy, and glutony, we have made a world where most of Earth is getting inhospitable. Cut down all the trees and construct massive buildings that breed even more concrete. We never intended to hurt our senses, but now we see our unintended consequences.

The biggest one being that artificial environments breed artificiality. Surrounded by man-made constructs leads man to make more things, even internally. Breathing again becomes the process that puts an end to this circus. First, the frenzied state continues of over optimisation and control. You try to do the perfect breath again and again, the trying defeats the purpose.

If you keep it up, it starts to change. Uncomfortable as it may be, you allow the strain, making room for the mildly irritating pain. Maybe at first you shift and dance, to crack your bones, to set your anatomy straight. You twist and turn to stretch your muscles, pushing parts and pulling things at every single angle. 

Slowly even that passes, and you can't help but move on, now settling into the process of supposedly breathing wrong. However, it's not that you were breathing wrong, half your mind simply kept moving on. After a long time waiting, the rest of your body started aching, and we never even realised how divinding ourselves would cause this plight. 

Eventually we can return, to unite our minds and feel our bones. Just make sure to keep on breathing, and every wound will keep on healing. Something deep will start to ease, loose and lax, your heart will beat. Every knot now starts unturning, the wretched blocks now start glowing, all the blood and juices freely flowing.

Just like that we start anew. With bodies light, our spirits flew. Talk about a new lease on life. With senses honed, such sweet delights. The smallest motions bring joys abound, your feel so whole, no need to frown! I guess we get swept up and start to lose focus, we get carried away and obsessively bogus. This then leads us to certain doom, splitting ourselves we make cocoons.

Oh damn it there I go with the rhyming again... Basically, maturation or social development leads to overemphasising the ego. The overstimulated ego detaches from the being and wreaks havoc, causing knots, blockages, and wounds. Breathing makes us whole by unraveling everything and puts us at ease. So, more than anything else, I just have to breathe.