OlympicNationalPark

In the first section I provide an Overview that summarizes my journey that I have described on this webpage. In the second section, I detail behavioral changes that I hope to make from the insights of my journey. The third section has pictures and full descriptions.

1. Overview

I was sick of having my attention fractured every 5 minutes by checking email and social media. I felt as if my existence was shattered and that I was incapable of experiencing anything sustained over time. I was also feeling an indefinable feeling of disharmony within myself, as if a core part of me was missing. I was sick of my own internal dialog that would fill every second of my existence with words, it felt like my internal dialog was preventing me from merging with the moment and experiencing true beauty. So, after about 2-3 years, I decided to go on vacation to the Olympic National Park where I spent 8 days in complete solitude with nature, with the goals of disconnecting myself from all of my addictions, understanding the two parts of my Identity (my internal dialog (Zzymbrr) and the Observer) and strengthening my ability to be in the moment sustained over long periods of time (part 1).

I spent my first day exploring Hurricane Ridge (parts 3-6) and was disappointed that I could not awaken a feeling of deep spiritual connection. I felt exactly the same as I do at home and my mind was overrun with meaningless looping thoughts and chatter. I became ill (parts 4-6), most likely from eating berries (part 2), and experienced an altered state of mind where my internal dialog’s grip on my mind weakened and none of my looping thoughts were sticky. Although I still had the same number of useless thoughts, they did not drag me down a repeating and spirling path and I found beauty in spending sustained time where my mind was not looping because of the slightly meditative altered state of mind induced by momentary illness (part 6). I also thought about how easy it was to fundamentally change my perception of the world because in my illness I lost all desire to see beauty or experience the world (part 5).

After leaving Hurricane Ridge I went to Lake Crescent and climbed Mount Storm King (parts 7-12) and marveled at the beauty of an old growth forest (part 8). As I came to the summit, I had to scramble up rocks while grasping frayed ropes and the fear put me into a meditative altered state of mind, similar to what I had experienced at the Grand Canyon, where my internal dialog was momentarily silenced (part 9). At the crowded summit, I was saddened by the absence of reverence as people loudly chatted about meaningless topics. Disappointed and disgusted, I left and found an unkempt path that led to a different summit with no people, however my silence was disrupted by the chatter of my own internal dialog (part 10). Still not feeling anything spiritual, I explored movement and dance as a bridge to silence my internal dialog and inherent the spirits of the Earth to feel a deep sense of connection (part 11). I also contemplated the trajectory of my life where for the last 40 years I have been leading a safe and incremental journey which has allowed me to grow stronger, however there is another part of me that has been growing restless and wants disruptive transformation to bring in new ideas and creations. In my next rebirth ceremony I will have to determine the magnitude of disruption that I will experience (part 12).

On the drive down to the coast (parts 13-16), I found many deforested areas and saw the vast differences in the ecosystems between the protected and not-protected areas (part 13). Within the otherworldly universe of the protected area, I found magnificent and almost reality breaking trees, some of which were a thousand years old and hundreds of feet tall (part 14). Next to these sacred trees, my feeling of divinity was broken again by meaningless human chatter which I felt had the power to create a type of Reality, one which pulled humans away from the divinity of the moment and pushed them into the running looping mundane monolog of our daily lives (part 15). I then answered the question of how can I create heaven on earth by looking at thousand year old trees? I reasoned that I can do this by first learning more about the science of the trees, the ecosystem, and the thousand year history which will fill me with greater appreciation. Then, I can visualize how my identity is interwoven into the trees because my lungs cannot work independently, they need oxygen created by the environment. And then through ceremony, anticipation and practice, I can slowly develop a deep spiritual feeling everytime I am near these trees (part 16).

When I reached the coast (parts 17-21), I was becoming better at spending entire days just walking and not being trapped by my internal dialog (part 17). I realized that in order to reach this mild state of meditation, it was essential, for me, to have days of being disconnected from my life of ‘things-to-do’. This led me to realize that perhaps the reason why my five minute meditations failed was because it takes mastery to disconnect from the world that quickly and therefore I need more of these long periods of disconnection to taste real meditation (part 18). However, I also noticed that as I went into these deeper states of solitude where my internal dialog’s looping narrative was diminished, that I was feeling more and more emotionally frozen which was also increasing as I aged because the modern workflow limits emotional expression (part 19). To address this, I came up with several behavioral changes which include exploring dance/movement, empowering my internal dialog and emoting more (part 20). I also share a quick 15 minute meditation that always works to silence my internal dialog and make me appreciate the world around me in a way that evokes awe (part 21).

By the time I reached the rainforest (parts 22-32), I had spent 5 days rhythmically walking and disconnecting from the modern world. Without a pressing things-to-do, the utility of my internal dialog became less important which weakened its grip on my attention and allowed me to understand the other part of my Identity, the Observer, better. While I found beauty in my internal dialog becoming weak, in the long run I realized the need to empower Zzymbrr and teach him to balance and coexist with my other self, the Observer (part 22). One behavior change that I am attempting to make to empower and balance Zzymbrr is using that entire machinery of language to describe the environment around me (as opposed to looping other stale thoughts) and therefore bring me into the present moment and generate a feeling of awe and beauty. Then, while in that feeling of beauty, I am attempting to glide over silence until the next wave of words come (part 23). Another behavioral change that I am exploring is expressing my internal dialog through a different medium, such as hand gestures, I found that this silenced the need for words and also brought me into the present moment (part 24).

On the seventh day, after hours of walking through a thin meandering secluded trail that wove in and around sacred trees in the lush rainforest, I broke away and wandered in a trailless direction that eventually brought me to a riverbed. I felt so divinely alone, the silence and solitude were extraordinary, it was as if all of the invisible connections to the vast human network fell away and I was just myself by myself, an animal pure and true. Everytime my internal dialog would try to grasp my attention and pull it down a looping and spiraling spiderhole, I felt a Presence that would tear that umbilical connection and keep my mind gliding forward. As I walked deeper into the womb of nature, the Presence grew in strength and I felt an undefinable and unsettling eeriness. Everytime my internal dialog would awaken and words, like evaporating whispers would arise, I felt the Presence watching the words and disapproving and judging their need for existence. I felt this nonverbal Observer was disgusted and angry, in a dangerous and threatening way, and wanted to suffocate, suppress and strangle my internal dialog. And then I felt fear, I felt uneasy, I felt panic.

As I spent even more time in solitude, I felt a nonverbal Presence that grew in strength, who observed my internal dialog and was disgusted with it and would try to suffocate my internal dialog everytime a meaningless thought would emerge and that led me to feel fear (part 25). The fear I felt led me to ask questions on my Identity. Was I the internal dialog (Zzymbrr) or was I this Presence/Observer (part 26)? The Observer has been experienced by other meditators and in the scripture it is called Sakshi (Pure Awareness) (part 27) which further made me contemplate the meaning of Divinity, Life and Death (part 28). After reading about Sakshi, it reminded me of when I read the Bhagavad Gita and was overwhelmed (in high school) with the idea that our sense of Identity is an illusion and that beyond it is the one ultimate truth/identity with which we will mix when we die. However, from my perspective, this “illusion” of self are inheren parts of a unique identity that is diluted and lost after death. That is, our Identity may be intrinsically connected to our bodies and our cause-and-effect reactions to the world (part 29)

After introspection, I felt that my experience with the Observer was different than Sakshi and instead my Observer felt like a primal and ancient expression of myself. He felt angry and like he wanted to suffocate my internal dialog. Later, I realized that his/my hostility was understandable because in normal life there is almost no time for him to express and it took 7 days of walking before my internal dialog was weak enough to let him have one true breath of expression (part 30). I hypothesized that this imbalance where my internal dialog (Zzymbrr) has overtaken my Observer is because of the structure of modern society which has replaced most slow sustained rhythmic tasks (such as basket weaving or grinding grain) and replaced it with a bombardment of hyper-productivity and an endless things-to-do. To survive in this environment, I hypothesize, one has to rely on a perpetually active internal dialog that obscures and hides the expression of the Observer (part 31). To restore balance, I have resolved to make several behavior changes which I also list below (part 32). On the final day, I returned back to the mountains and experienced a profound and deep feeling of connection with nature while nude in the sunshine (part 33).

2. Behavior Changes

For me, making a behavior change is all about convincing my subconscious. Once I make a determination to make a change, if I fail, it can have bad consequences such as lower self confidence and less motivation to tackle other problems. Therefore, anytime I decide to make a behavior change, it really has to be serious and well thought out. That is why I have spent months working on this webpage. For me, making a behavior change success requires a huge amount of motivation (which has been growing after putting in so much effort for this webpage) and also incremental easily achievable steps that give me a sense of accomplishment.

1. Empowering Zzymbrr (my Internal Dialog):

• How do I empower Zzymbrr, my internal dialog, so that I feel deep moments of meditative presence without overpowering him which would lead to my mind becoming overrun with words and meaningless looping thoughts? One idea is that Zzymbrr is a powerful ally and the machinery of my words are a way for me to process the world deeply. Instead of suffocating my internal dialog and forcing it into complete silence, perhaps I can use the massive machinery of language to descriptively explore layered patterns around me that then tether me in the present moment and give me a sense of awe and beauty. One of the actions that I am currently implementing is encouraging Zzymbrr to talk and highlight things of beauty around me, especially when he is tumbling down a boring and meaningless flow of thoughts. For example, when stuck at a red light, I may have Zzymbrr highlight everything that is glittering in red or I may have him describe the intricate patterns of black and white that dried salt makes on a winter road. Then, once I have used words to descriptively push myself into the present moment, I try to momentarily glide over an oasis of silence as the waves of beauty reverberate until the next wave of words come. In time, I hope that I will be able to island hop and glide for longer and longer before having to touchdown on the bedrock of words. Surprisingly, I am finding that this technique is working for me. To prevent the emotional freezing I have discussed previously, I am putting effort into awakening emotions of awe, beauty, happiness and even playful joking as Zzymbrr describes what he sees in the present moment.

• Practice having a more descriptive inner monologue that highlights patterns and beauty

• Practice, after having identified, using words, the beauty, to then have brief (eg initially only ~30 seconds) moments of silence where that beauty reverberates.

• Practice having a more playful interplay rather than just suppression

• Practice nonverbal communication, such as using hand gestures instead as being a bridge into the observer

2. Empowering the Observer: these are activities that already help me diminish my running internal dialog and help me focus when merging with the present moment

Exercise:

• My running is one of the only places where my Observer expresses himself. In an hour long run, I may only have a few seconds of pure thoughtless feelings of merging. My goal is to extend this. When running, I focus on my breath, on the sounds around me, on the feeling of the wind, on the fluidity of my movements. Sometimes I do a body scan where I try to relax every muscle that is not needed. I also try to imagine my body in unison and in concert with the surrounding environment…where I am the environment. As I am running, I try to open my mind’s eye and absorb every detail, which I then use in the post-run meditation.

• Once I finish a run, I like laying on the floor and sweating and I try to let my mind spontaneously bring up images of my run. Sometimes my mind will spontaneously bring up the sky, or trees or the earth. These days I have also been trying to recall the non-visual elements. Such as tactile and the proprioceptive feel of my body. Additionally, during this postrun meditation, I try to just focus on my body in the current moment. Because my heart is still beating fast and I am still sweating, it is a unique sensation.

• I also try to activate the Observer when lifting weights. The vibe is very different than running. When lifting, I try to merge with nonverbal aggression. During the rest period, I try my best to nonverbally stew in the intensity.

Movement:

• As described above, I am exploring using dance and movement as a way to channel pure emotion in the absence of words. The hope is to create a direct connection with the subconscious Observer.

• Similarly, I am exploring using hand gestures as a way to express differently my internal dialog and therefore keep my mind nonverbal.

Sustained Attention

• It took about 7 days in nature, away from people and computers, to awaken the Observer. I need to plan more 7-10 day trips in solitude.

• I am making the resolution to have more sustained time without punctured attention which includes reducing how many times I check my emails and social media throughout the day.

• Similarly I want to practice having sustained attention with my nonverbal Observer in activities such as driving, making artwork, spending time with others. One way to nucleate this moments may be by planting anchors, which are physical objects that draw me into a meditative mindset.

• Sometimes I try to create pockets of attention when in nature, by visualizing myself as a chipmunk or squirrel or bird, who sometimes just freeze for several minutes.

Sitting Meditation

• Listening to music, I can dissolve away for a few minutes

• As described above, my only effective form of meditation is where I observe a scene for 5 minutes, then close my eyes for 5 minutes to recreate it, and then look again at the scene. I aim to increase this type of meditation more.

• I also see the utility of the 10 day Vipassana which I hope to do someday.

Emotion: in all of these activities to enhance the presence of the Observer, I need to be careful not to go down the path of emotional freezing. So, with every activity I need to deliberately think of which emotions I am trying to awaken. My focus should be to feel a sense of deep connection, universal love, and psychedelic-like fluidity in my thoughts.

Empowering my internal dialog to become a bridge into the Observer: As discussed previously, I am trying to empower my internal dialog to become a bridge to the Observer by refocusing the machinery of my internal dialog (language) from endless meaningless chatter to describing the beauty in the present moment which aligns more closely with the theme of the Observer. Then, the goal is after my internal dialog identifies something beautiful, I stop the words and glide across an oasis of silence on feelings of beauty, happiness, appreciation and connection until I hit the next landscape of language.

3. Prevent Emotional Freezing Recognizing the need to thaw my freezing emotional expression, I have a small list of behavioral changes that I want to make. Making changes to one’s habits and routines can be very difficult and should never be taken lightly. In the past, my half ass efforts inevitably led to failure which made me lose confidence in myself and eventually led to action-paralysis. Therefore, in my opinion, a behavioral change should only be attempted when a person has a huge amount of motivation and has also carefully paved a path of reachable incremental steps. For me, I create that motivation by spending months digesting this journey and then countless hours writing about it, which then convinces my subconscious that it is worth investing its effort. Here are some of the changes I am implementing:

• Ever since my journey through the Grand Canyon, I have been exploring movement and dance as a way to connect to my primal self. This primal self, who I will discuss in greater detail in future posts, exists beyond words and language. My goal is to use movement and dance as a way to not only reflect the emotions that I am feeling at that moment, but perhaps more importantly, be a tool to generate and awaken pure emotions. For example, there are many cultures and dance forms where spirituality is woven into the dance. The purpose of the dance is to act as a bridge to put the person into a sacred mindset to connect with the Earth and Nature. Some communicate this by saying that the dancer enters into a state of trance or inherits certain spirits.

• In my exploration of movement, I do very basic things such as sitting in a squat or standing while swaying. I am often in my underwear because it feels more transformative, as if I am shedding all of my societal conditioning. As mentioned above, in a full day of walking, my emotional self starts to freeze and so I call upon movement and dance to bring a flush of expression and emotion. Overtime, I want to amass a vocabulary of movements that sample experiences from my life that resonate with my journey and personality. I also want to use this vocabulary of movements to momentarily replace the need for the words used by my incessant inner dialog and therefore allow me to merge with the moment and silence my mind. Later, I will share how I am exploring using gesticulating as a way to build a nonverbal vocabulary.

1. Another change which I will discuss later is investing in a better internal dialog (who I call Zzymbrr). This means having an internal dialog who is much more playful and joking and therefore causes me to emote more. Part of the frozen feeling comes from continuously suffocating my incessant internal chatter and feeling disappointed that it even exists.

2. A final change I am trying to implement is to actively encourage myself to emote when by myself. For example, if I have been hiking for days and I find something beautiful, instead of just taking a picture of it, I actually say out loud ‘Wow!’ and focus on genuinely feeling that moment of excitement, wonder, beauty, and enthrallment.

Looking at Nature and just sitting and watching the day go by

Anchors

Squirrel/Chimpunk moments of silence and stillness

NG

Dance

(Part 20)

• experience the world through other sensory systems...I am too heavy on the visual system and then words

• meditation that leads to spontaneous patterns/memories/psychedelic

3. Pictures and Detailed Descriptions

(Part 1) For more than 2 years, my shattered mind bled, held within the salivating jaws of my computer where eddying attractors, dipped in the unforgiving opiate of work and social media, fractured the purity and continuity of my attention and broke and lay strewn all of my thoughts into small often unconnected shards of shit. As time descended into every ventricle of my subconscious, parched desperation sunk deeper than the deepest prairie grass roots of my mind, and time had come for me to be consumed by a fire of disruption; and so, I spent eight days swaddled in solitude in Olympic National Park where that fire ate my pyrophitic identity whose resin melted and released the dissociated shards of my identities. This was my journey to understand my inner voice and my internal dialog.

(Part 2) For six and a half hours I flew through the air in a plane and then for four hours I rode in a bus that rode on a ferry until I reached Port Angeles where my body was finally free from a prison of circulated air and seatbelt-held immobility. A deep aged insatiable lust for the serenity of nature cascaded through my body. Having only 30 minutes before the rental car office closed, I powerwalked along a maddening highway that carried huge thundering trucks filled with the stacked bodies of entire trees and along the side I saw thick hairy plush bushes of ripe, fertile, voluptuous blackberries. And I could not resist, I just could not resist. I was lost in an irrepressible passion, the type that births its own desires and I consumed handfuls and handfuls and handfuls of blackberries. And when I had satiated myself and my conscious mind returned, I wondered what type of destiny I had impregnated myself with.

(Part 3) The next day before sunrise I drove up snaking roads, dotted in darkness, to Hurricane Ridge as light spilled through the moving clouds and, with every passing mile, I so desperately hoped that I would find some redemption, some peace, some beauty, some continuity within the embrace of nature. Over the last 2 years, that desperation had festered and puss-filled blistered until it suppurated as the computer screen clawed daily at my spirit and tore open a never-healing wound littered with pieces of my shattered and fragmented mind. And though I needed it and I suckled from it everything that I had, I was polluted and sick from my technology infested Humanity. If only even for just a moment, I wanted to be a child of the Earth; an animal once again floating in the fine liquid of the present moment...I wanted to feel whole and continuous where my existence wasn’t punctured every five minutes by technology, the computer, my emails and social media.

(Part 4) But with every passing hour, a hatched fatigue drank my blood and grew stronger and, I, like an animal falling underneath the suffocating fangs of a predator, lost the will to explore and lay upon the sacred mountain earth resting as hours passed by. In that lethargic meditation, I heard waves of wind flowing through pine needles and I saw the sky changing emotions, and yet, I discovered that my emotions grew unchanging and uncaring. And though I had lost the ability and desire to see beauty, it was beautiful that I could just lay in my pool of illness for hours with a type of uninterrupted continuity that I never experienced at home underneath the unholy god of technology that I nursed with the milk of my mind.

(Part 5) Hours later, the sun fell and the fog rose like slow moving giants crawling across the landscape and while everything was the same, everything felt different. I was the same person and had the same brain and yet a small amount of illness that grew over just a few hours fundamentally switched how I perceived and interacted with the world. Just as the moving clouds of fog completely changed the landscape, my personality changed and I was drained of any ability to appreciate or understand beauty. As I zombie-lumbered and revenant-rambled down delicate trails draped in surreal ethereal fog, I thought of my grandmother who has been bed-bound for nearly the last decade. In her journey, she has somehow found a meditative peace.

The growing night was unfriendly and its fangs pierced into all of my appetites and by morning my hunger was completely shut off and for the rest of the day I ate almost nothing. Intoxicated by fatigue, hours went by and I was neither asleep nor awake, my mind existed in a purgatory of nonessence. I existed between consciousness and the juncture from where thoughts emerge, and as faint wisps of thoughts evaporated upward from my subconscious they were dispelled by waves of sickness. At the height of it, I no longer could form long thoughts, there were only fragments of thoughts that appeared and disappeared like ephemeral ghosts in a blanket of fog, and because the thoughts were unable to adhere to one another to create long looping chains of storyline, it was oddly beautiful; my mind was unensnarable.

(Part 6) However, the enervating encroachment of illness wasn't bad, it had meaning and purpose that was thematically relevant to the entire journey because it brought bittersweet sweet-and-sour meditative vibes. While my thoughts were not beautiful, just bland, boring and banal, the fact that I was not completely captured by them was extraordinary because usually each of these thoughts would grab me and drag me down a long spiraling looping string of relentless internal dialog. My momentary illness decoagulated my internal dialog and prevented me from congealing long sentences and so I just drifted over fragments of thoughts. The journey through Olympic National Park was one where my internal dialog's monopoly over my Identity was weakened and where another expression of my subconscious was given a few moments of desperate breath, of expressive life, of precious time to exist.

(Part 7) As the day progressed, while my hunger remained completely dormant, the sickness that inhabited my head clawed and crawled down my body and by nightfall my head felt normal and then came a true catharsis. I forced myself to drink MuscleMilk, thinking that it would have simple sugars and protein that would be quickly absorbed by my body, however that unnatural and unholy concoction awakened an intestinal demon that led to a passionate and percussive romance of mostly gas and bits of poop that acted as plugs for each of the chambers of gas that were exorcised when sitting upon the motel toilet. By the next day, the storm had passed and little did I know that I would hike the Storm King. Originally I had planned on nursing my strength back on the rich, gentle and sensual milk of Lake Crescent, however when I saw the sign for Mount Storm King, the seduction was too great and I could not resist.

(Part 8) Even with a weakened body, the first leg of the journey was not too difficult, it was a rapid ascension to the 4534ft peak along meandering zigzagging paths through rich dense forests carpeted in ferns and draped in the crisp morning air that carried the fresh aromatic breath of the forest that permeated through the gentle pitterpatter of scurrying creatures and occasionally falling leaves. I love the feeling of disappearing away into the lullaby of solitude, forgotten by Humanity and released from the shackles of society, walking in complete freedom with a rhythmic sluggishly slow cadence punctuated often by moments where I just stand still and deeply steep and gently explore every curve and hole.

(Part 9) As I went higher and higher, I opened all of my senses of exploration, such as running my fingers over the hillside landscape of some trees adorned by a river of mountainous bumps and across other trees who felt smooth and glistened and gleamed like red polished metal. After the official trail finished, the path became unkempt often with a narrow waist with near plunging heights that required holding onto thin ropes that were sometimes frayed while scrambling up rocks that were littered with loose soil and pebbles. This too was a type of meditation where mild to moderate fear singularly focused my attention and seared my inner voice into momentary silence. I had experienced a much more extreme survival-based meditation when visiting the Grand Canyon.

(Part 10) For the Native Americans, Mount Storm King used to be a place of divinity, a place of awe and transformation and breathtaking beauty meant to birth a feeling of deep connection with the Earth and the lore of the past. When I reached the summit, it was crammed and constipated by humans, many of whom polluted the air with incessant chatter about the most mundane and routine topics. I felt angry and so disgusted. There was no divinity, no serenity, no awe, no poetry, no reverence for the mountains and rivers and lakes and forests, only the poison of human words whose talons tore into the fabric of my consciousness and helplessly dragged my crying mind away from the promise of a deep and profound feeling of connection.

Disgusted, poisoned, diseased and afflicted by meaningless human chatter, I boiled in mute rage and could barely stay at the summit for even a few moments. So, I abandoned the summit and found a small unkempt path hidden by vegetation that eventually led to another peak. When I reached that peak, there were no humans but the maddening pollution of human sounds still penetrated the thin bare mountain air! I stuffed earplugs deep into my ear shaft and only then I began feeling some relief, until my internal dialogue awakened and once again my mind was polluted with words. Perhaps, Nature's internal dialog is the incessant chatter of Humanity as my internal dialog are my own thoughts. Nevertheless, hours dripped by and while I had no deep thoughts or profound experiences, I found beauty in being able to idly sit as I occasionally gently teased the soil with my fingers or watched a loose piece of lichen wiggle in the wind.

(Part 11) Wounded by the hypodermic fangs of my internal dialog that dug deep into my subconscious and infected it with a festering disappointment that I could not escape, I explored primitive movements as a way to approach the divine and profound, and immerse myself into the meditative breath where my mind would be finally silent. Exploring subtle movement with the hope of becoming an antenna for something profound was a practice that I had started when exploring the Grand Canyon and later on when designing the Rebirth ceremony of 2020 and then the Cock Revealing Ceremony of 2022. In my underwear, on top of Mount Storm King, I stood and gently swayed, feeling the breeze and the sunshine and then I squat and slowly shifted my balance as I felt the Earth and throughout this experiment I tried to absorb the spirits of Nature and awaken an ancient primality that connects all living creatures together.

There was nothing 'beautiful' or 'refined' or 'impressive' in my movements. In my opinion, the first step of becoming an antenna for genuine emotions is liberation from what is considered 'good' and 'beautiful'. Let it be ugly, let it be unrefined, let it be gross...but let it be free in the embrace of the moment in the movement. And while my mind was distracted and I did not feel anything transformative, the exploration was not meaningless because fluidity and expression only come with practice.

(Part 12) The main analysis of my journey through Olympic National Park is about the exploration of the two parts of my identity: the internal dialog and the nonverbal ‘observer’ who I will describe in greater detail later. In this journey I also explored the purpose and trajectory of the rest of my life. My next rebirth, in the summer of 2023 will be a complete rebirth, which is where I give myself the opportunity to make vast and disruptive changes to my life....however only if I want to.

The last 40 years have consisted of very cautious, safe, incremental decision making which has allowed me to grow stronger, build confidence, create SOMDEland, learn to love myself, overcome my traumas, pay off my loans and even amass a small surplus. However, throughout those years, there has been another part of me, a salivating restless beast whose desperation and angst have also been growing and who hungers for a primal rupture that spills the blood of stability and forces me into the full-stride tumbling gallop of a feral animal. Why not cleave, severe and rupture my predictable, safe, bound life and do something completely unexpected, chaotic, wild, free, exploratory, and creative?

As my next rebirth arrives, I will finally be strong enough and capable enough to welcome this tidal rupture and sustain its waves of havoc. Maybe I have over-romanticized the ideas of unpredictable destiny, instability and uncertainty. My best work of profound beauty is created in the cradle of sustained stability. I am my worst during change, I cannot handle it, but often that is where I forge my germinating seeds of creativity. I am sure the answer is a mixture of the two, where vastly new experiences force the creation of new destinies and new ideas, and where stability then allows for the growth and crystallization of a new civilization of expression. Is my salivating beast's creshendoing howl a mark of self destruction or an opportunity to evolve my expression, my journey, my artwork? Soon I will have to decide the magnitude and nature of change my life will take.

(Part 13) Torn trees, twisted and thrown, bleached by the sun, scattered and splintered across ruptured and cracked earth. A savage death and a wounded earth left in hasty disarray. I understand the need to harvest wood and I recognize that I benefit from that harvest. However, messes like these which I found littered across the boundary of the national park, made me feel as if humanity has lost an important devotional reverence of nature and the earth. I cannot express the vast night and day differences just a few hundred feet from the boundaries. Within the park was a magical, surreal, powerful, complex and dynamic ecosystem of mammoth ancient trees, ferns and lichen and outside was a banal homogenous ecosystem which felt no different than other forests. I feel such a great depth of appreciation and gratitude for those who have helped develop, implement and now maintain the national parks.

After spending 3 days at Hurrician Ridge and a day exploring Lake Crescent and Mount Storm King, I drove down to explore the coastline. On the drive, I met many beautiful trees.

(Part 14) And then the majesty of thousand year old trees: nests of venous interwoven muscles dripping, oozing, bubbling, climbing, growing like deep vein thrombosis, sensually arching, twisting, tumbling, grasping, contorting like frozen dancers; prehistorically gargantuan, incomprehensibly tall with mindmelting grain structure both vertical and horizontal, mythologically-reality-breaking and mystically divine. Trees a thousand years old! A thousand years old!

Broken by a storm in 2014, sadly this tree passed away in Kalaloch. It was one of the largest Western Red Cedar with a height of 175 feet, a diameter of 19.8 feet, and an age of 1000 years! These trees have natural fungicides which prevent them from rotting sometimes even a century after the tree has fallen! The native americans used the Western Red Cedar "for constructing housing and totem poles, and crafted into many objects, including masks, utensils, boxes, boards, instruments, canoes, vessels, houses, and ceremonial objects. Western Red Cedar is also associated with a long tradition of curing and cooking fish over the open fire. Roots and bark are used for baskets, bowls, ropes, clothing, blankets, and rings. Harvesting redcedars required some ceremony and included propitiation of the tree's spirits as well as those of the surrounding trees. In particular, many people specifically requested the tree and its brethren not to fall or drop heavy branches on the harvester" (info from Wikipedia)

(Part 15) And as I stood infront of the family of ancient Western Red Cedar, I was afforded only a few brief hidden wafts of breathtaking awe where I was lost in the mesmerization of meditation: bubbling wooden flesh like plumes of smoke and twisting trunks like the twirling fabric of spinning dancers. And then, only seconds later, over and over again, waves of disruption that crashed upon my consciousness, first, caused by my own internal dialog and then by humans and human voices and the human vomiting of chunks of words whose purpose was to drag me and them out of the providence of Divinity and into the mundanity of our human reality. Human words are powerful and sticky and weave our perception of Reality, they help us create a model of reality but they also deprive us from experiencing other Realities because they force us to repeat the same narrative. Underneath the umbrellic majesty of these trees, I would hear things like “Im hungry, where should we go and eat?”, “Bro, I cant believe she went out with you”, “The motel really stank”, and these mantric phrases were like an incantation that obscured the surrounding sacred transcendent beauty and instead fixated our mind’s eye onto the same river of thoughts we have anywhere, and many of us (including myself) are entrenched in that stale river of thoughts. I believe, many of us have all of the building blocks needed to create a momentary Heaven on Earth but most of us (especially myself) drown in our own selfmade stagnant purgatory.

(Part 16) And so, I have often questioned myself, "If I really have all of the building blocks to create a heaven on earth, how do I create Heaven from looking at a big old tree?'

Over the years, my response is still, 'I don’t really know…but maybe all types of romance that awaken true emotion have some commonalities. Maybe, first I can deeply steep in the knowledge and science of these trees where I discover their age and reminisce about the history of those thousand years. Maybe I can learn, appreciate and be in absolute awe about the vast ecosystem that lives interwoven into and throughout these trees. I can reflect how my survival and therefore my Identity is intrinsically linked to trees and vegetation that converts my carbon dioxide into oxygen: they complete me, and the hope is that this realization makes me, not only think, but really feeeeeel connected.

Most likely the first time I see trees like these, the experience will just be okay, but with every visit, with every ceremony, with every meditation, I will grow a spiritual practice of deep, deep, spiritually deep appreciation. And then, I can grow an irrepressible anticipation where I so badly want to be graced by the divinity of these trees. And finally, with all of the knowledge, meditation, ceremony, anticipation...when I finally see these trees, I will have a spiritual orgasm richer than any cocaine, alcohol or hallucinogen.'

When I visited the world largest sitka spruce tree, there were no prayer beads, there were no serenades of poetry, no euphoric dancing, no ceremonial adoration, no serene silence, no ambiance of beauty. This thousand year tree was next to a trailer park whose outhouses were nearby giving the smell of stagnant sewage and throughout the air was loud drunken talking, which was actually really entertaining…I would have loved to hang out with them because they seemed really fun…but it shattered and broke the reverence of the place and slathered Human Reality and human escapism.

(Part 17) From the mountains and through the old growth forests, by the time I reached the coast I had spent days bathed in solitude away from the seduction of the computer which weakened the grasping hands of my internal dialog and freed my mind to just exist stretched across an entire day where I walked with slow cadence and then sat down and watched white froth-tipped crashing ocean waves run between volcanic sea stacks and over rocks and across pebbles and underneath the skeletal whale carcasses of titanic trees hundreds of years old. Hours would pass by and like the undulating waves, I walked and then I sat and then I walked again and the loud roar of the water drowned out all of the human verbal pollution and gave me a peace not often found when I am near humans in nature.

(Part 18) I loved the precious slow romance of spending an entire day with the same place while watching it change in the dance of time and light, underneath the roll of the tides and the moving sun. I loved combing my fingers through the rocks and sand as they drank ocean water that percolated throughout their body and left them glistening in the sun as I collected those that I found irresistible. I loved exploring and finding fantastic beached sea plants and peering into the microuniverse of tide pools.

This slight meditative freedom was only granted to me after spending days in diminishing shattered anxiety as the gravitational pull of normal life slowly faded away and I was finally able to partially escape the orbit of looping thoughts. Previously, my mother had shared with me her deep experiences in Vipassana which recommends people first attend their intense 10 day meditations before trying the 1 or 3 day meditation sessions. At the time, I thought it would be better to incrementally increase the meditation duration. It made no sense that a beginner would be recommended to plunge into an intensive 10 day meditation, however now it makes more sense. Before I could experience even a little bit of mental tranquility, I first had to disconnect from the outside world which birthed incessant mental chatter about 'things to do'. It took days of just walking with no other task than to walk before my internal dialog weakened. And so, it makes sense that Vipassana would first recommend the 10 day session where beginners would have enough time to struggle and disconnect and perhaps experience a few precious moments of actual meditation. Then, once they have tasted that, they would be more capable of realizing it in shorter duration such as 3 days or 1 days. Perhaps masters could even experience it in shorter 10 minute meditations. This may also explain why my own meditation sessions that only last for 10 minutes have always ended in frustration. Because they were too short, they were too difficult to reach the meditative state and it is why my mind was always devoured by my thoughts.

Therefore, one resolution from this journey, is to experience much longer meditation sessions with the hope that in that vast time I can taste a single dew drop of meditation.

(Part 19) While I found great beauty spending sustained time in complete solitude in the absence of 'things-to-do' with a weakened internal dialog, I also felt more and more emotionally frozen. Because there was no social component, I had no reason to emote or react and so without expression, I explored and walked and discovered. I have felt this type of emotional freezing increase as I age. When I was younger, everyday was full of emotional expression where I reacted to my friends and classmates and the tyranny of school as it ate my youth, however as I have entered into my forties, nearly all of my time is spent sitting in front of a computer where there is no reason to have a wide range of emotional expression. At most, if I receive a funny message, I may write ‘lol’ with a stoic and frozen face. In a way, this common tragedy of emotional freezing is woven into the very design of the modern workplace. Most workplaces and most workflows limit the need for a dynamic range of emotional expression and slowly it emotionally suffocates and constrains us to become frozen and wintry. During classic-COVID19 times, there were days when I felt like I was in a meditative daze, and it frightened me, because I felt even more frozen. I was neither happy nor unhappy, neither elated nor depressed; I had minimal desires or the will to interact with others. Was this state of glassy detached ripplelessness what I had wanted, was it the final state of meditation? Maybe not? Some practitioners of meditation report feelings of detachment from the physical world but also feelings of bliss, universal love and a deep sense of connection.

When I was walking along the coast with these growing periods of thoughtless time (like stretches of 15-30 seconds) as emotional freezing crept deeper into my expression...with murky vision, I saw something moving in the depths of my subconscious...it surprised me...what was it!? It felt like some ancient feral forgotten reflection of myself that I had not really known had existed. In the following days, I would meet him again...and it would initially instill a bit of fear and confusion within me.

(Part 20) Recognizing the need to thaw my freezing emotional expression, I have a small list of behavioral changes that I want to make. Making changes to one’s habits and routines can be very difficult and should never be taken lightly. In the past, my half ass efforts inevitably led to failure which made me lose confidence in myself and eventually led to action-paralysis. Therefore, in my opinion, a behavioral change should only be attempted when a person has a huge amount of motivation and has also carefully paved a path of reachable incremental steps. For me, I create that motivation by spending months digesting this journey and then countless hours writing about it, which then convinces my subconscious that it is worth investing its effort. Here are some of the changes I am implementing:

1. Ever since my journey through the Grand Canyon, I have been exploring movement and dance as a way to connect to my primal self. This primal self, who I will discuss in greater detail in future posts, exists beyond words and language. My goal is to use movement and dance as a way to not only reflect the emotions that I am feeling at that moment, but perhaps more importantly, be a tool to generate and awaken pure emotions. For example, there are many cultures and dance forms where spirituality is woven into the dance. The purpose of the dance is to act as a bridge to put the person into a sacred mindset to connect with the Earth and Nature. Some communicate this by saying that the dancer enters into a state of trance or inherits certain spirits.

In my exploration of movement, I do very basic things such as sitting in a squat or standing while swaying. I am often in my underwear because it feels more transformative, as if I am shedding all of my societal conditioning. As mentioned above, in a full day of walking, my emotional self starts to freeze and so I call upon movement and dance to bring a flush of expression and emotion. Overtime, I want to amass a vocabulary of movements that sample experiences from my life that resonate with my journey and personality. I also want to use this vocabulary of movements to momentarily replace the need for the words used by my incessant inner dialog and therefore allow me to merge with the moment and silence my mind. Later, I will share how I am exploring using gesticulating as a way to build a nonverbal vocabulary.

2. Another change which I will discuss later is investing in a better internal dialog (who I call Zzymbrr). This means having an internal dialog who is much more playful and joking and therefore causes me to emote more. Part of the frozen feeling comes from continuously suffocating my incessant internal chatter and feeling disappointed that it even exists.

3. A final change I am trying to implement is to actively encourage myself to emote when by myself. For example, if I have been hiking for days and I find something beautiful, instead of just taking a picture of it, I actually say out loud ‘Wow!’ and focus on genuinely feeling that moment of excitement, wonder, beauty, and enthrallment.

(Part 21) While I dipped momentarily into the beauty of the national park, like days before, I found my mind perpetually mired and violated by meaningless useless thoughts that spread poison throughout the present moment of my existence. Every moment was punctured and riddled with this chatter and there was almost no relief and it prevented me from deeply absorbing the grandeur infront of me. The chatter almost made it as if I were watching a TV show of what I saw instead of actually experiencing it myself.

In my current state, almost no meditation works for me. However, there is one method that does reliable allow me to diminish my internal dialog, immerse myself in the present moment and feel a sense of awe. First, for 5 minutes I carefully study everything in front of me, I try to absorb every small detail, every leaf, every contour and curve, every variation of color, every expression of nature. Then, I close my eyes for 5 minutes and try to recreate every detail that I can remember. During that time my eyes start to dark adapt. Then, I suddenly open my eyes and a flood of light bursts in and often I am completely overwhelmed, especially when I am on a mountain. First I notice how many things I missed and how many things I disregarded! And then I am in complete awe at the grandeur, complexity and depth of the world. I spend another 5 minutes drinking in all of the details even deeper. These mental snapshots allow me to remember my journey more vividly and if I am lucky, sometimes they bleed into my dreams! Because each of these 5 minute segments have a specific task that is needed for the next segment, my internal dialog is mostly silent.

(Part 22) By the time I reached the rain forest, I had spent hours rhythmically walking in and around huge trees and hours just sitting in the unique aromatic fragrance of the earth as I sifting through fragmented thoughts that slowly lost their powerful hold on my attention. Without a things-to-do list, the utility of a sticky internal dialog became less important and after five days, for the first time, I finally felt a very nuanced and small meditative and spiritual feeling. While I found beauty in those sustained meditative moments of silence (~15-30 seconds) where I merged with nature, it was at the cost of shattering the Shatterer, my internal dialog, whom I call Zzymbrr. My internal dialog is part of my Identity, and so, while it was beneficial in the short term to break its hold on me, in the long run I realized the need to empower Zzymbrr and teach him to coexist with my other self, the Observer, who I will describe soon.

(Part 23) How do I empower Zzymbrr, my internal dialog, so that I feel deep moments of meditative presence without overpowering him which would lead to my mind becoming overrun with words and meaningless looping thoughts? One idea is that Zzymbrr is a powerful ally and the machinery of my words are a way for me to process the world deeply. Instead of suffocating my internal dialog and forcing it into complete silence, perhaps I can use the massive machinery of language to descriptively explore layered patterns around me that then tether me in the present moment and give me a sense of awe and beauty.

One of the actions that I am currently implementing is encouraging Zzymbrr to talk and highlight things of beauty around me, especially when he is tumbling down a boring and meaningless flow of thoughts. For example, when stuck at a red light, I may have Zzymbrr highlight everything that is glittering in red or I may have him describe the intricate patterns of black and white that dried salt makes on a winter road. Then, once I have used words to descriptively push myself into the present moment, I try to momentarily glide over an oasis of silence as the waves of beauty reverberate until the next wave of words come. In time, I hope that I will be able to island hop and glide for longer and longer before having to touchdown on the bedrock of words. Surprisingly, I am finding that this technique is working for me. To prevent the emotional freezing I have discussed previously, I am putting effort into awakening emotions of awe, beauty, happiness and even playful joking as Zzymbrr describes what he sees in the present moment.

(Part 24) As I further explored my internal dialog, Zzymbrr, I thought what if instead of suffocating and silencing Zzymbrr I made him express through a different medium? What if I had an internal dialog but not through words?

When I was a high school teacher, I noticed that when in presentation-mode, I would naturally use hand movements to emphasize and add an extra layer of meaning to what I was saying. Interestingly, as I walked through Olympic National Park, I could gesticulate in the absence of words....in fact, my internal dialog almost didn't have a desire to use words in those moments. For example, one day as I looked upward I felt an angelic sprinkling of pine needles that fell like the light drizzle of rain in the mist of the rainforest. I represented this as my hands flowing and swirling downward and it felt really good and I didn't need words.

One of the actions that I am currently implementing to empower Zzymbrr (my internal dialog) is to revocabularize him by encouraging him to express himself through hand gestures instead of words. What is fascinating is that the medium of self-expression really changes the flavors of emotions and realizations that a person feels. For example, I learned Hindi when I was a child afterwhich English overtook everything. When I visit India and speak Hindi, I feel so childlike and innocent and at times incapable. When I speak in English, I now realize that there is machinery embedded in the language itself! That is, the machinery of my English is like railroad tracks that allows me to lay down one word after another and create a flow that leads to actual idea generation before the idea itself is formed. The language itself is processing, parsing, organizing information to create ideas that I cannot do in other languages. However, the benefit of speaking my childlike Hindi is that it reveals how many of my 'deep' ideas are just bullshit that sound good only when adorned by the flowery language of my English.

Similarly, 'speaking' through my hands is a whole different way of processing information that will lead to unique idea generation and self expression that I wouldn't be able to do through other mediums. In a way, this is the idea behind embodied cognition.

(Part 25) Meeting The Observer

Soaked in solitude, by the seventh day, I had hiked up mountains and alongside the coast and into the rainforests, and the hours of rhythmic walking that faded into and out of hours of sitting and seeing led to a tidal change in the expression of my Identity. In my normal life, my mind is overrun with an internal dialog who has the important role of planning for the future and making sure that I adhere to an endless list of things-to-do, however after spending days where my only task was to walk, the purpose of my internal dialog eroded and with each passing day, a new and yet old presence grew stronger and stronger.

On the seventh day, after hours of walking through a thin meandering secluded trail that wove in and around sacred trees in the lush rainforest, I broke away and wandered in a trailless direction that eventually brought me to a riverbed. I felt so divinely alone, the silence and solitude were extraordinary, it was as if all of the invisible connections to the vast human network fell away and I was just myself by myself, an animal pure and true. Everytime my internal dialog would try to grasp my attention and pull it down a looping and spiraling spiderhole, I felt a Presence that would tear that umbilical connection and keep my mind gliding forward. As I walked deeper into the womb of nature, the Presence grew in strength and I felt an undefinable and unsettling eeriness. Everytime my internal dialog would awaken and words, like evaporating whispers would arise, I felt the Presence watching the words and disapproving and judging their need for existence. I felt this nonverbal Observer was disgusted and angry, in a dangerous and threatening way, and wanted to suffocate, suppress and strangle my internal dialog. And then I felt fear, I felt uneasy, I felt panic.

(Part 26) Questions of my Identity

The fear I felt from sensing the Observer was in part from the uncertainty of knowing my own Identity. As I, the Observer, watched my own thoughts, I felt that the internal dialog was like a chatty annoying companion who would distract me from a universe of experiential beauty and prevent me from diving into the depth of being alive. On the other hand, I, the internal dialog, just wanted to share thoughts that perhaps were important for my wellbeing and happiness. The internal dialog portion of my Identity felt hurt that the Observer found the internal dialog to be stupid and meaningless. As a representative of the internal dialog, I feared and lamented the loss of power of my internal dialog as I watched its civilization crumble from the Observer's realization that he was meaningless. As a representative of the Observer, I feared the unstoppable encroachment of the internal dialog to the point where every moment was desecrated with words that pushed me out of the present moment.

It led me to deeply question, who am I and where does my identity reside? Does my Identity reside in the words of the internal dialog or does the internal dialog distract me from merging with my True Identity in the present moment?

Who is the Observer? Why does he feel similar and yet different than me? Is my meditative goal to diminish Zzymbrr, my internal dialog, and become the Observer? And if so, is Zzymbrr really just a meaningless illusion? What if my internal dialog is that uniqueness and flavor that separates me from others and defines my personality and what if the Observer is just some generic collective consciousness? And if so, would strengthening the Observer bring me into silence where I lose who I am? Is drowning my internal dialog and immersing myself into the silence a form of escapism?

(Part 27) Who is the Observer?

On my journey into meditation, I remember having tried a mindfulness exercise where I was instructed to become an observer of my thoughts. The goal was to remain in the present moment and whenever a thought emerged I would nonjudgmentally observe it and then let it fade away as I immersed myself back into the present moment. However, the texture of the mindfulness induced observer felt very different than what I had experienced in Olympic National Park. The mindfulness exercise felt very 'normal', the observer did not feel like a separate expression of my Identity, it felt as if the 'normal-me' was just being attentive of my emerging flow of thoughts (I am sure with more practice, I would have experienced something deeper). By contrast, the Observer at the riverbed felt primal, feral, frustrated, mysterious, mildly dangerous and while he felt like me, he also felt entirely different than me.

I remembered having heard about the concept of the 'Observer' or the 'Witness' in deep meditation and when I returned home, I searched for a definition:

"In Hindu philosophy, Sakshi, "witness," refers to the 'Pure Awareness' that witnesses the world but does not get affected or involved. Sakshi is beyond time, space and the triad of experiencer, experiencing and experienced; sakshi witnesses all thoughts, words and deeds without interfering with them or being affected by them. Sakshi or Shiva, along with Shakti (will/energy/motion), represents the Brahman, the totality itself in its most fundamental state, the concept of all mighty, revealed in ancient philosophical texts of Hinduism." (from Wikipedia)

(Part 28) The first four pictures are some of my favorite of the entire journey not only because they are so beautiful but also because they have deep metaphorical meaning that encompasses, life and death and transformation. In the rainforest the ground is often very densely covered by vegetation such as ferns which prevent the growth of trees in their infancy that one day could grow to be a thousand years old and hundreds of feet tall. The seedlings of these trees usually only survive when an old tree dies and falls to the earth. Then, on top of the dead body of this massive tree, now called a nurse log, the next generation of trees feasts on the minerals, nutrients, warmth and sunlight which the groundcover can no longer reach. In the first four pictures, you can see a massive fallen tree who has become a nurse log and has exposed its gigantic root ball which looks venous, muscular, mystical and otherwordly and also has the shape of a butterfly which represents metamorphosis. Ontop of this Death is Life, a family of new trees.

Picture 5 shows another nurse log most likely cut by a chainsaw where new life is starting to burgeon. Picture 6 shows vascular roots which most likely snaked through and ate the dead nurselog and are now exposed once the nurse log completely decayed. Picture 7 shows exposed roots that show the outline of the nurselog that used to exist there and Picture 8 shows a colonnade of Sitka spruce and western hemlock that are all in a line because they all grew on a nurse log that has since deteriorated away.

(Part 29) My identity and its relationship to an ultimate truth

The exploration of the Observer and the definition of Sakshi brought me back to a philosophical battle that I would have with myself when in high school on the concept of my Identity and its relationship to the Ultimate Truth. At the time, I was reading the Bhagavad Gita where it is written that there is one ultimate truth, one ultimate flow of energy from which everything manifest, and that everything we see is an illusion that obscures the underlying idea that we are all One. Moksha, Nirvana and related concepts occur when a person realizes this Truth and is liberated from Illusion.

I remember knowing this idea in high school and then reading about it the Introduction written by Eknath Easwaran. At the time, I was horrified by the idea that my Identity is an illusion and that I will be dissolved into the Ultimate Truth which is my true Identity. I had to close the book and did not return to it until years later. To me, my ego, my maya and the illusion that is defined as 'me' is beautiful and it is my Identity and that Identity would be diluted and made featureless once digested by the one Ultimate Truth.

The picture below is of that passage from the book, where it is written "In this state the individual realizes that he is not a physical creature but the Atman, the Self, and thus not separate from God. He sees the world not as pieces but whole, and he sees that whole as a manifestation of God. Once identified with the Self, he knows that although his body will die, he will not die..." and written in pencil when I was in high school, my comment was, "he will die, he is a creation of reality". From my perspective that illusion, that body, are inherent parts of a unique identity. Without the body, the human fundamentally changes and is no longer a human and therefore that Identity dies. Interestingly, years later, I would have similar debates about the future of Humanity. If the human consciousness could be uploaded to a computer, would it be human, would our Identity lose something? Where do we reside? Are we just the brain? Is the brain an antenna and we exist outside of it? Or are we all the collection of cause-and-effects and therefore are intrinsically tied to our bodies? Will Technology allow Humanity to transcend its body or will it cause us to lose something truly fundamental about us?

(Part 30) My interpretation of the Observer

To me, my experience with the Observer did not feel like a representation of the ultimate truth. At the time, my observer felt cold and judgmental and like it was trying to suffocate my inner dialog. However, my Observer also brought peace and beauty and a truly deep and primal feeling of connection to the Earth. It was what I was yearning for after spending 2 years behind a computer.

When I returned home, I was disappointingly surprised how quickly I lost that serenity. It was instantaneous, as soon as I was back home, my mental flow was incessantly punctured by emails and the internet. The Observer had completely vanished, as if only a ghost in a dream, and my irrepressible internal dialog surged and thrived. It was then that the angst of the Observer made sense to me, he was desperately suffocating, fighting to breathe, fighting to exist and continuously trampled by my internal dialog. It took seven days for my internal dialog to weaken enough to let the Observer express himself and then, only a few days later, he was back in his prison.

(Part 31) How did this imbalance arise where usually my internal dialog suppresses and suffocates my Observer?

At my current stage of understanding, my Observer reflects an ancient and primal part of my subconscious, one that perhaps connects to the mental state and flow of Humanity before the modern awakening of human history. I imagine (and I could be completely wrong) that back in the day, people had long stretches of time that were repetitive and monotonous, such as walking to another village or grinding grain or getting water from a river or farming. During these long stretches of time created by necessity, there was a unique expression of the Human Self where perhaps the Observer existed, where a person would dip into a long silence beyond the domain of language and simply exist, feel and do.

Then, I imagine (and I could be completely wrong), as technology brought progress over the centuries, it minimized these long stretches of ambient time where we would experience the slow rhythmic chew of time. It replaced the slow sustained rhythmic tasks with the promise of greater free-time but really it caused our every moment to be supersaturated with 'productivity' and the bombardment of things-to-do, all of which led to a more fractured existence. This increase in the density of things-to-do demanded an overactive internal dialog that could string together each of the fractured thoughts in a hyper-efficient manner to be productive.

While the storyline above may be completely wrong, I am certain that my internal dialog is absolutely essential for my ability to survive in this world of productivity. That internal dialog has to be chugging nonstop and, in order to innovate, that internal dialog has to invade my ambient time too. That internal dialog has an important utility in modern life and therefore it suffocates the Observer and so it suffocates a fundamental expression of my Human Existence.

(Part 32) How will I make space for the Observer?

Exercise:

• My running is one of the only places where my Observer expresses himself. In an hour long run, I may only have a few seconds of pure thoughtless feelings of merging. My goal is to extend this. When running, I focus on my breath, on the sounds around me, on the feeling of the wind, on the fluidity of my movements. Sometimes I do a body scan where I try to relax every muscle that is not needed. I also try to imagine my body in unison and in concert with the surrounding environment…where I am the environment. As I am running, I try to open my mind’s eye and absorb every detail, which I then use in the post-run meditation.

• Once I finish a run, I like laying on the floor and sweating and I try to let my mind spontaneously bring up images of my run. Sometimes my mind will spontaneously bring up the sky, or trees or the earth. These days I have also been trying to recall the non-visual elements. Such as tactile and the proprioceptive feel of my body. Additionally, during this postrun meditation, I try to just focus on my body in the current moment. Because my heart is still beating fast and I am still sweating, it is a unique sensation.

• I also try to activate the Observer when lifting weights. The vibe is very different than running. When lifting, I try to merge with nonverbal aggression. During the rest period, I try my best to nonverbally stew in the intensity.

Movement

• As described above, I am exploring using dance and movement as a way to channel pure emotion in the absence of words. The hope is to create a direct connection with the subconscious Observer.

• Similarly, I am exploring using hand gestures as a way to express differently my internal dialog and therefore keep my mind nonverbal.

Sustained Attention

• It took about 7 days in nature, away from people and computers, to awaken the Observer. I need to plan more 7-10 day trips in solitude.

• I am making the resolution to have more sustained time without punctured attention which includes reducing how many times I check my emails and social media throughout the day.

• Similarly I want to practice having sustained attention with my nonverbal Observer in activities such as driving, making artwork, spending time with others. One way to nucleate this moments may be by planting anchors, which are physical objects that draw me into a meditative mindset.

• Sometimes I try to create pockets of attention when in nature, by visualizing myself as a chipmunk or squirrel or bird, who sometimes just freeze for several minutes.

Sitting Meditation

• Listening to music, I can dissolve away for a few minutes

• As described above, my only effective form of meditation is where I observe a scene for 5 minutes, then close my eyes for 5 minutes to recreate it, and then look again at the scene. I aim to increase this type of meditation more.

• I also see the utility of the 10 day Vipassana which I hope to do someday.

Emotion: in all of these activities to enhance the presence of the Observer, I need to be careful not to go down the path of emotional freezing. So, with every activity I need to deliberately think of which emotions I am trying to awaken. My focus should be to feel a sense of deep connection, universal love, and psychedelic-like fluidity in my thoughts.

Empowering my internal dialog to become a bridge into the Observer: As discussed previously, I am trying to empower my internal dialog to become a bridge to the Observer by refocusing the machinery of my internal dialog (language) from endless meaningless chatter to describing the beauty in the present moment which aligns more closely with the theme of the Observer. Then, the goal is after my internal dialog identifies something beautiful, I stop the words and glide across an oasis of silence on feelings of beauty, happiness, appreciation and connection until I hit the next landscape of language.

(Part 33) On my final day, I returned back to the majesty of the mountains and hiked along Hurricane Ridge. I wanted my concluding day to be an experiential culmination of the ideas that I had been digesting on the roles of my internal dialog (Zzymbrr) and my Observer. I found a long, secluded, and mildly trampled path and after a few hours of hiking, I left the trail and carefully wandered away until I was completely alone, away from the world of humans, as a newborn swaddled in solitude. On the top of the mountain I found fascinating bald spots of grass that punctuated the forest of trees. In the sunlight they magically glistened and looked like sloped amphitheaters that beheld the drama of life, death and destiny.

Like days before, I was able to sit in silence and watch liquefied hours slowly drip into the vastness of the Earth, and, I was able to explore movement and dance as a way to further enter into a meditative state while also unfreezing my expression. My internal dialog still invaded the serenity of the Observer but that conflict did not arouse fear in me as it had done the day before. Now that the Observer had been heard, he felt more balanced.

The mountain sun was so extraordinary and in the solitude I drank sunshine and my skin scintillated and I was naked in nature and bathed in the heat of the sunshine and the chill of the mountain air while immersed in a human silence that only carried the flapping sounds of grasshoppers. I have been naked many times before when taking showers and when lounging in motel rooms, however the texture and experience of this nudity was entirely different, it felt beautiful and spiritual. Walking when barefoot and naked felt freeing, primal, and ancient, my muscles felt different, my movements were different, they were lighter and catlike as my feet gently kissed the rocky earth, and, most of all, I felt a deeper awareness and a sense of profound connection.