Untangling
You are always doing something.
There is no way around that. Existing is active. Your default mode is doing something. Passively experiencing is doing something. Sleeping is doing something.
Right now, focus on your breath. In, out, measured.
Once your awareness is pulled into the action of breathing, you can change how you breathe, but the most comfortable way to breathe is the way that you breathe when you aren’t thinking about it. Unconsciously, we are doing. Being aware of that unconscious doing is powerful. That unconscious doing is powerful. It keeps you living.
Your entire being is focused on keeping you alive at all times.
You are supposed to be. The only justification you need to be is that you are. You are being, and you can choose how to be. Your reality is malleable.
Your limitations are ultimately self-imposed.
You live in a world that strongly suggests that you take certain actions, but the world is made up of people and things that may not have really given things a terrible amount of conscious thought.
Ultimately, humans solve problems to enable more of us to live better. You are an incredibly social animal. You want to connect. You want to be able to share the things that make it easier to live better. You feel misunderstood when you don’t live as you are strongly suggested to. You may prefer it, and that’s fine, but at every moment, you are choosing which world you live in.
It is easier to live as a human when the other humans you encounter live in a similar world.
The gears catch and lose an acceptably low amount of energy. There is very much a recipe that you can follow to exist in the world as other humans do. That is choice you can make. There are benefits to this approach.
However, the solutions humans come up with are predictably short-sighted.
Our brains simulate potential futures with a limited range. We can only simulate so much of our reality at once. The “efficient” route is patchwork compared to what it could be. We can only see a tiny fraction of Everything.
The chain of interactions between everything is beautifully evident in the fact that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed. Here’s a poem:
Tuck
There’s a blanket over everything
It’s stitched with every colour
Folded over edges
Tucked in creases
Draped above us
Wound around our person-hood
We peer from underneath
Eyes too, draped in fabric
And our fingers
And our teeth
So the sun is stitched in yellow
And the grass is stitched in green
The sky in blue
The night in black
The bricks in red
A heart attack-
Arrested by the boundary of it
Curtains cover things we covet
Wool over our eyes
But still our eyes are woven of it
What you see as separation
Really’s only just a crease
The wrinkles time discovers of it
We’ll be relatively pleased
So known by every strumming poet
Heart strings they so pluck with ease
A gentle ripple out through fabric
Weepers falling to their knees
A felt vibration
Pull it back and find there’s nothing underneath
And should you tremble at the nothing
Feel the blanket holding heat
That blanket, woven by all of us as we choose, stretches between our yarn-ball brains. We weave it with glances, smiles, words, breath, movement, thought, being.
We weave it with glances, smiles, words, breath, movement, thought, being.
As you exist, you contribute to the shared story-in-tapestry that we weave for each other. It’s beautiful. There are knots, snarls, cut threads, and all kinds of tangles in it.
When you see those tangles, you make a choice. You either leave them in or try to untangle.
Tangles are inherent. With our patchwork solutions to problems, we often knit haphazardly so as to keep the tapestry flowing, occasionally sacrificing the fineness of the weave. We are human. This is expected. However, the tangles are there, you can see them, and you can choose.
You can untangle.
It’s honest work.
It’s needed.
You are adding to the beauty of our shared narrative tapestry about the world we inhabit together at all times.
That said, those tangles were woven in by people. They feel ownership of those tangles. They know that there are tangles, but they leave the tangles alone because untangling is hard- sometimes even painful- work. If you do their untangling, you might hurt them. After all, your tangles are the stories you tell yourself.
Still, a tangle is a tangle and if you’re an untangler, you must untangle.
Ah, but where to start?
Begin untangling by untangling your contribution to the shared tapestry.
In untangling yourself, you can begin to untangle others, merely because untangling makes untangling easier .Watch how you weave, and look for where you can stop tangles before you weave them in.
Practically, this begins with things like that stitch in your body that you get sometimes.
You might have one now. You might not. If you have a stitch, or a knot, or any kind of discomfort:
Look at it.
Feel it.
Go into it.
Look around it.
Feel around it.
How does it connect to the rest of your body?
Is there tension elsewhere that is adding to the stitch/knot/discomfort?
Can you lessen that tension?
If you can, do that, and repeat whenever you find another stitch. If you can’t find anything, think about breathing.
Let your breath show you how it is most comfortable entering and exiting your body, and that will start you along untangling.
Breathing untangles a lot by itself.
The diaphragm/stomach/chest-bellows/weaving-engine takes care of much of the weaving for you. Let your breath help you. Your breath is trying to help you right now. Thank your lungs. They’re really quite beautiful.
Now, as you untangle (or just breathe! All you need to do is be), you will begin to notice that some of the stitches in your body are also stitches in your brain.
Your mind and your brain and your body are all one in the same.
We have convenient patterns in the tapestry for telling them apart, but they’re ultimately woven together.
Think of your brain as a tangle of yarn that is woven into your body.
Your body does its part to weave, and your brain does its part to weave, and if you listen to your breath and your body, as you untangle it, your brain will do the same as a result of untangling making it easier to untangle.
On a cellular level, neurons are a lot like a woven tapestry. They are the weave that is us.
Neurons will strengthen connections that are used and trim connections that aren’t. That process is influenced by how they’re already woven together.
All your brain is trying to do is get a nice, consistent weave. Everything is easier that way. Your brain takes the path of least resistance.
But your neurons are single cells. They act in ways that make sense for them in the moment, with no foresight.
It is only the full weave of your brain, body, and the world you weave coming together that allows for foresight.
Humans are notoriously bad at foresight, so if a single neuron is just trying to find the easiest way to weave itself to match the tapestry of everything, why not help it along?
Now, you can’t directly untangle your brain (don’t try, it will hurt and probably kill you), but you can choose to do things that encourage your brain to weave itself more accurately.
Then, as you untangle your body, you untangle your brain, and each tangle you untangle will let you untangle another tangle, along the whole length of the thread that runs through you.
Think of it like this: your senses are weaving into your brain.
The things they are weaving are other threads that have been woven into the world. Through your brain-body weaving apparatus, you tweak the weave. You spread the threads out, look at them, weave, tangle, and untangle.
Then, with your brain-body weaving apparatus, you spin the threads back out into the world.
If you untangle more than you tangle, even by a little bit, you will begin to feel the smoothness of the tapestry.
As you learn the difference between tangles and careful stitching, you will learn more about tangles and careful stitching.
Your untangling will get better.
Your stitching will get better.
With each untangling and careful stitch, you increase the beauty of the world and the ease with which anyone can tangle, untangle, and weave.
You will see more tangles, yes, but you will also grow to be able to untangle them.
If you’re an untangler, come chat!
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