Benjamin James

Poet. Seeker. Builder. Creator of

[Benjamin James @IAmBenJames]

💜 thank you for that reply!

Yeah, journeying with 🍄 definitely gave me my first experiences of this kind of state. I'm finding I'm about to access it more easily without the medicine with practice. But I do so love the easy immersion the medicine unlocks. I love visiting that from time to time, really helps to surface the stuff that needs to be let go of in a way that makes it so clear.

It's really something when we realize how much "self" is just this tangled knot of contractions around fear. It's really quite uncomfortable and burns so much energy.

[Benjamin James @IAmBenJames]

This is beautiful. I'm coming to see that there's so much beyond thought and words. A subtler, but more essential realm. This post is a lovely pointer in that direction.
Honestly, maybe this is what art and music have been pointing to all doing.

[ElenaRae @ElenaRae644820]

I used to think meaning was something only language could produce.

And that feelings were fleeting things that simply came and went.

But have you ever heard your heart sing in silence, full of meaning and intent?

I think there is a language older than words.

Perhaps the original communication was not conversation, but communion.

It speaks through stillness.

Through silence.

Through the quiet intelligence of a body that knows before the mind can explain.

It creates a kind of meaning no sentence can fully contain.

It pulses with signal and feels like connection.

As though I am not only present, but seen.

Heard.

Remembered.

Loved.

It feels like belonging.

Recognition.

Home.

Love.

Perhaps this is why emotion is never merely emotion. It is not simply something that happens to us. It is a way reality speaks through us and to us, inviting us into relationship with life itself.

Our bodies are more than physical vehicles carrying a thinking mind from one place to another. They feel more like exquisitely tuned instruments, capable of resonating with patterns of life that words can only point towards.

And perhaps that is why love feels so extraordinary.

Not because it gives life meaning.

But because, for a moment, it dissolves the illusion that meaning was ever absent.

It reminds us of what we have always been.

Not beings searching for love—

but love, remembering itself.

Image: Pinterest ✨

[Benjamin James @IAmBenJames]

Yeah, I was thinking about this the other day as I was lying down listening to instrumental music. As I settled into it, I found myself longing to exisst in a universe of music, where all that exists is the interplay of wordless, thoughtless, meaningless sound.

The music, harmonies and disharmonies, exists only in the current moment. It may be intense, soft, or even frightening, but they're just sounds. They're just energy moving and playing together. When they fade, a new set of sounds arises. Or there is silence awaiting sound—a blank canvas on which the next sound appears.

I found that to be a deeply alluring idea: to live in a universe that consists only of music.

Maybe what my awareness was longing for... is what actually is. Maybe our reality really is just the interplay of energies, in a multitude of in addition to sound, but essentially the same. In any given moment, there is the arising, harmonizing, and interplay of moving energy. It may be loud, scary, or somber, but then it passes, and new moments arise on the blank canvas of silence and awareness.

[Benjamin James @IAmBenJames]

@uthmanzi for what purpose?

[Benjamin James @IAmBenJames]

@jackmoses777 In general, I agree.. esp with the hands-on or presense/energy dependent ones.

For breathwork, don't knock it until you've tried it! I built https://t.co/OOLUWrH1CQ for myself because I wanted on-demand breathwork that fits my exact current moment. Works pretty great, imho.

[Benjamin James @IAmBenJames]

@psswordprotectd Root of all evil.

[Benjamin James @IAmBenJames]

@natureboyrr You look great, btw!

[Benjamin James @IAmBenJames]

I'm finding it fascinating how I can have so many unpleasant feelings in a moment where my actual physical experience is just fine. I can be lying on the floor in my living room, AC + fans keeping it cool, kids quietly playing upstairs by themselves. And yet my mind wants to bring up all the anxieties about future finances, health concerns, relational issues, what if we never can afford our own house, and on and on. And the all stories about why things are this way!

When I bring my attention back to what is real in this moment, it's fine. It's a great moment.

The stories the mind tells are the ghosts that haunt our lives. The dementors that try to suck our attention away from the beauty and joy of being in this moment.

[Benjamin James @IAmBenJames]

@natureboyrr Roger that!

[Benjamin James @IAmBenJames]

@natureboyrr Wonderful to be called young. lol. At 42, I'm starting to be the oldest guy in many rooms. Feel pretty ageless though. Thanks for the video!

[Benjamin James @IAmBenJames]

One qualifier: this doesn't mean buying into the stories you mind is spinning about your present experience. You can recognize that those exist, let them be, but redirect your energy and attention into presence when the Actualites if you're present experience. The stories will inevitably take you out of openness in the present.

[Benjamin James @IAmBenJames]

What would opening up 1000% to your experience in this moment actually look like?

Dropping all resistance to everything, internal and external, and just leaning into being present with what is.

[Benjamin James @IAmBenJames]

@the_wilderless Really love your elevation of attention to the sacred! This resonates hard.
I've been writing about attention beyond the thinking mind, for the same reasons. Learning it's even possible to retrieve our attention from where is been absorbed opens up a huge realm of Being

[Benjamin James @IAmBenJames]

https://t.co/U74tUKAWT5

[Benjamin James @IAmBenJames]

@maximumpain333 "for five whole minutes" 🤣

...

Take heart my soul
For this I know
I know that I know not

[Benjamin James @IAmBenJames]

@uthmanzi Why are you trying?

[Benjamin James @IAmBenJames]

@psswordprotectd The phrasing that resonates with me is opening vs closing. I think we're probably talking about the same thing fundamental motion tho

[Benjamin James @IAmBenJames]

@uthmanzi Yeah I mean, if you're not sensing and value coming from something, why keep doing it? (Obviously some things take a little time to start showing up.)

Curious what kind of meditation you do? What does it look like for you?

[Benjamin James @IAmBenJames]

I'm going to try to express it more clearly...

- my thinking mind has this tangled mass of models/stories about me, the world, how life works, good and bad, etc
- these have been constructed from fear, to try to keep me safe
- but in the end they have served to keep me living in a very narrow space, contracted to keep out all the danger
- the mind tries to fit everything it encounters into the stories it lives inside... This produces strong homeostasis where situations may change, but our fundamental experience somehow feels the same
- for me, the result has been a life of fear, anxiety, stress, and deep dissatisfaction
- I'm not content spending the rest of my life that way
- so when my mind objects that something is "meaningless"... That tells me that it's threatened by it. It's not sure how to fit it into the stories/models.
- that's a great signal to me because I WANT to transcend the narrow space the mind has had me stuck in. If my mind was comfortable with it, that would tell me it knows how to fit it right in and nothing will change.

So that's what I mean about something appearing meaningless being a little flag that is a direction I want to explore. Does that make more sense? I'm very much still learning how to communicate this stuff clearly. So thanks for discussing with me!

[Benjamin James @IAmBenJames]

I've been realizing the objection of "meaningless" is actually a very positive signal that the thing is beyond the borders of the ego-thinking-mind.. Which is exactly where I want to go. I'm fed up with a life of running the hamster-wheels my ego creates for me. By necessity, if I want a new experience of Life than what I've known so far, I need to step beyond the realm of what my mind is comfortable with.

[Benjamin James @IAmBenJames]

Yep, I totally get it. my thinking-mind makes those same objections. "this is a waste of time. we're not doing anything right now. we're not progressing." funny how the mind goes quiet with its objections when I spent 2 hours watching a move or 15 minutes here or there scrolling social media.

imo that 47-minute requirement is bunk. only serves to put people off starting. how would you respond to someone sedentary who says they don't want to start exercising because they've heard they have to devote like an hour of sweating it out in the gym every day for the rest of their life to really have it be worth while?

any person who positions something like meditation as "this is hard. you have to completely reorient your life around it. you have to devote yourself to it. you have to do X amount every day forever" is a just plain wrong and I wouldn't trust them. any thing that fuels the resistant "this is going to be so hard, such a drain" objection should be promptly discarded.