The Day of the Dead
Today is Soulful Sunday, which means we talk about being dead.
All week we go over leads and lags, progressions, intentions, and manifestations, but then at the end of the week we talk about why none of that matters because, you know – stardust.
Soulful Sunday, you are not the body, you are not even the mind. You are a drifting pile of consciousness in the rafters of an old building, cosmic anti-molecules with trillions of similar neighbors, all fighting for real estate.
Infinite Mindset within the Finite World
We are finite beings within infinite space, and so we should have an infinite mindset within the finite world to keep things in balance.
You can look at it in sequence, first as three, then as five.
Or you can look at it like concentric circles, and you are a blip in the middle with big feelings, such big feelings! And uncertainty about where to put them.
The Sequence of Three
The sequence of three goes – “past, present, future.” The past is finite. It happened. It is written in universal archives. The energy has been exchanged. The stone has been carved. The present is infinite. Forever, unchanging, and inevitable. This is not to say it has anything to do with fate, just that once you’ve gotten here, there’s no way anything else could have been possible.
And in this infinite moment, you absolutely have the choice of joy or suffering. Because there is no infinite past associated with your present situation, there is no pain except your mental narrative. And because the future is unrealized, there is no pain there either. So this infinite present that you are experiencing is raw, unfiltered connection to all other beings, should you choose to accept it.
The future – is also finite. All things come to a close. In my case, and in yours, this means death. There is a final breath, a final heartbeat, a final pulse, a final thought. And then, the page turns, the chapter ends, the novel is complete.
And so, we have the three pairs. Finite past, infinite present, finite future.
The Sequence of Five
Now the sequence of five. Add one to the beginning – infinite past. And one to the end – infinite future. The infinite past is where you think that time centers around you – that the world began when you were born, that you are the creator and the judge. And the infinite future is where you fight for permanence. That you fight against death. That you think pleasure means you live forever. That you have a legacy. That in two generations, anyone will remember your name, your gravestone, or the value of your ashes.
In concentric circles, your life is the dot in the middle. You have main character energy. You are omnipresent and surrounded by spotlights. Immortal. Outside you, the finite world of beginnings and endings. Then outside that, the eternal cosmos. We’ll talk more about this later.
Breathing With Wim Hof in the Lotus Training Laboratory
In randomly related other news, Peggy told me about an app that helps you train for freediving through breath control exercises. I started that yesterday for kicks. My first day personal best was about a minute – apparently you can get up to six minutes comfortably holding your breath with some practice. I’ve decided to call the Full Lotus goal of mine the Lotus Training Laboratory, and mix in all physical and mental stuff I’m working on, like an umbrella term, but with the manifestation of the effort being, of course, the full lotus posture, in six months. I should give it an actual end date for metric purposes.
Nutrition Tracking
My nutrition tracker app is stuck updating, but supposedly when the update comes through, I’ll be able to snap a photo of food and it will tell me calories and nutrition and things. I’ll find out just how trenchy my eating habits are. Ha! I want to get a fitness tracker of some sort to help with all this – I wonder, can you get an Apple Watch without a working phone number? I won’t hold my breath. Get it?
The Death of Me
And do you see how these are all ruminations on death? The beat of the heart. The oxygen of continued respiration. All gone when you are. Or, if they go before you, you come soon after.
I mixed the breathwork training – called apnea – into some Lotus Training Laboratory work today. The crossing of the legs just right so the ankle bones sit where they’re supposed to, and the concentration of the relationship between the lower back, the pelvis, the hip flexors.
And all this effort, the study, the application, the associated pain within the illusion of time, all transitory, all temporary. Annica – ah-nee-chah. This is the greeting between Vipassana graduates. One ancient way of saying “this too shall pass.”
See you next Soulful Sunday.
