Blip With a Lip

There is no avoiding it. In the content and vibration of our voice, we take our stand on reality and “sell” it to others. 

That’s right. We’re preachers, by default. 

Every word we speak is drenched with contagious metaphysics. Our existential world-view (however unconscious and ill-defined it may be to ourself) is constantly leaking out of our eyes and mouth onto the “imaginary others” who, parched for a sense of being held, contained and reabsorbed by the One Being, settle for whatever 7-11 Slurpee we’re serving.

But wait, you say. That’s not me. My worldview is self-generated, sovereign. I strongly condemn and disagree, for instance, with that dishonest political talking head. 

Yes, but for a moment, the craving/aversion parameters of their worldview leaked out into you, leaving a saccharine red stain on your holy lips. 

They seduced you into chopping the seamless field of sentience into fleshy fragments of good and bad and, in so doing, a desperately homesick soul got replaced by a oppressively comprehensible meat sack. 

So hungry is the time-bound mind to move in unison with the beat of a greater Being, that it trance dances with whatever conditioned self-story ego is rocking.

Bottom line: we are existential DJ’s learning how to spin the tunes of InterBeing. What does that look like? Read on! 

In this article I will define– and provide playful, user-friendly names for– a variety of mouth-sound impacts, both dark and light. At the end, you can score yourself in each of my newfangled categories so you know where your work is.  

Mouth-sounds poison meditation

So far, I have avoided Buddhist-speak. No longer. Get this: 

Right speech (“Samma Vaca”) is one of the ethical preconditions for meditative attainment. Think of it: random everyday mouth sounds are setting the tone for our numinous inner life.  

The literal meaning of our words, mind you, is not the only poisoner of meditation. The transmissions communicated by our gaze, the shades of meaning embedded into our words: this is where ego become a loose cannon.

Note for fridge: 

Ashramify my relationships! Bury me in the sepulcher of each gaze! Eternity-with-eyes, without you, I am a roaming, opportunistic animal. 

Okay, but how to ashramify? Let’s break it down into three categories:

1) The paradigm from which we speak 
2) The fallout of our speech
3) Techniques to pivot into meditative relating  

Let’s begin by asking ourselves two subtle, but hugely impactful, questions

1. As what am I speaking?

2. Who am I speaking to?

Either one of these, answered humbly and accurately, allows all the Buddhist precepts regarding “right speech” to arise naturally.

As what am I speaking? means:

Are my words dense with personhood and positionality or am I ventilated by the Merciful Witness speaking through me? 

More specifically, am I the Infiltrator or the Knower Knot?

1. The Infiltrator

I speak from a vast, eternal awareness eager to drink the Kool-Aid of personality for a chance to infiltrate the dream of separation, rub elbows with the self-forgetting and spread the contagion of soul-seeing presence.

2. The Knower Knot 

I speak as mind-on-a-countdown, desperate to distract from my slow-motion train wreck with ego-hardening knowership, unconscious archetypal role play and the charming inductionof others into my “solid, separate somebody” cult. 

This polarity continues in the way we answer the question, Who am I speaking to?

Of course, we tend to speak to whatever we think we are! 

1. Storyless Presence

I aim my words at story-less presence, exciting the pristine part of others, untouched by time and too blessed by the Leela of being a sock puppet for the divine hand to take ego’s compulsive “selfing” seriously. 

2. Meat Sack 

I shoot mouth sounds at meat sacks. Each hairdo’d repository of me-stories: a proving ground for my market-tested brand and a chance to taste a quick flicker of union that affirms my me-story and hides my homesickness.

Okay, but is the paradigm from which we speak really this black and white? Well, it may be in our best interest to think so. Yes, we weave through the grey zones in between, but wisdom arises from a humble, concentrated mind. 

The Fallout of Our Speech

How does a time-tethered tongue become more mediumistic and enlightening? 

First we need to name the two basic styles of speaking and their respective impacts on others. Then we can catch ourselves in the act and course correct. 

The choice is simple: EmpireSpeak or DreamSpeak.  

EmpireSpeak

Egoic mouth sounds reify the sharp cut of space by trying to bridge it, conveying a stark Darwinian worldview: We are all, in essence, spark plugs and “love” means firing the synapse between incurably orphaned egos, fated to roam the world’s iron-clad evidence of separation. No matter how “spiritual” orphaned ego speaks, it dense-ifies other’s me-stories, spreads a fragrance of time-boundedness and leaves a wake of mystical parchedness that falls flat in the heart, like an anti-mantra. Let’s call it “EmpireSpeak.” 

DreamSpeak

The Soul, on the other hand, throws mouth sounds like frisbees across a dreamscape. The gap between self and other is recognized as a forgivable mind-made illusion, playfully dissolved through contagious soul-seeing presence. The purpose of mouth sounds is primarily to palpate: How knee-jerk is their separate somebodyness? To what extent is silent seeing having a personality and to what extent has the dream of the separate somebody gone rogue? There. Now we know who we’re talking to. Let’s call it “DreamSpeak.”

The key point here is that all attempts to bridge the gap between self and other only reify the gap! Awareness, on the other hand, playfully subsumes the entire play of separation. 

Reifying The Gap

Is egoic gap-bridging be the reason people are losing interest in the play of relationship? Could the loneliness epidemic be the first stage of a necessary disillusionment with duality, itself: a dark reckoning that leads us out of the dream of “imaginary otherness” into savoring the One Being?

Oh yes. This is why meditative practice is so important. 

Meditation builds up our capacity for “divine pauses:” the “beginner’s mind” interventions we need to pivot prosaic, presence-parched conversations into collaborative self-inquiry.

It takes spiritual courage to step free of ego-arousing repartee and speak from the mystery-drenched InterBeing that activates soul-seeing, on the spot. 

Persons to Pillars

In every conversation, we stand as two pillars of a temple joined overhead by a great arch: the steady gaze of our angel-ancestors. 

Strong pillars ask: 

Is “silence growing a tongue” or am I trotting out a parade of trendy, market-tested preconceptions?

Am I guilty of benevolent violence?

Benevolent Violence 

Am I attempting to change the other to meet my idea of what is best for them? Or am I a genuinely curious and open-minded about their unique style of awakening? If self-realization is guaranteed, over lifetimes, why the anxious push to save or help them?

Note for fridge:

The mountain spring never shouts at the tainted Valley below.

Pit Stop Slop or Church of Full Arrival?

The message of our pacing is, in many ways, more important than what we say. Rapid fire me-stories cram “somebodyness” into the empty spaces between thought. No matter how kind, clever or wise our words, our restless pace is, in effect, saying:

We are surrounded by a cold dead void and we are mere blips with a lip. 

There is no existential continuity to life– no deathless being to slow down and relax into– and our only defense against being swallowed up by this void is strong, continuous identity-assertion.  

Sprinkling our speech with moments of silent not-knowing is, in fact, premature reabsorption– a self-indulgent betrayal of the narrative that keeps the machinery of society and everyday commerce alive and functioning; and even if there is a greater Being saturating our cells, operating as “space with a face” could easily get you ostracized and unemployed.

In short, spirituality is freakish self-absorption.

Ready to call ego’s bluff? Before speaking, ask yourself,

Is this “pit stop slop” or am I inviting them to kneel with me at the church of full arrival?

Tyranny of the Open Eye

Meditative relator’s free themselves of the tyranny of the open eye. Their periodic closed-eyed speech demonstrates that they are not afraid to get caught speaking, first and foremost, as an energy field and invite others to do the same. 

Good to know who grows uneasy in the absense of a flesh-affirming gaze. They are, in effect, declining our implied invitation:

Join me in a moment of embodied soul-savoring.

Cussing and Cursing

“Profane” is derived from the Latin, “profanus,” meaning “outside the temple.” In Buddhist terms, this holy temple is called, “pure view.” Profanity, then, is any mouth sound that fails to arise from the temple of Beginner’s Mind and, in that sense, every mind cusses and curses all day long!

Words are “frequency commands” that alter electromagnetic fields and without the blessed awkwardness of divine pauses that interrupt, humble and purify the compulsive narrative of mind, we are, alas, toxic.

What do souls want most to hear from us? Sounds that celebrate the silence that allows words to exist.

16 Playful Responses to “How are you?”

Admit it. They don’t actually care so much for your story about yourself. They want help making meaning out of their suffering and a spiritual friend who understands: the teacher is the first to vulnerably confess! 

So let’s get started!

Suggestion: Practice one ready-made reply per week for four months to pivot quickly into soulful conversation.

How are you?

Proposed answers:

1) Reporting my coordinates, awaiting extraction.

2) Time poor. Presence rich.

3) I would weep, if it wasn’t so surreal.

4) Born of code, filled with light.

5) I am what’s flowering the flowers.

6) There is a faint conceit, but the direction is irreversible.

7) Looking for a real place to look from.

8) Destroying history.

9) Puffing on God, without inhaling.

10) Gawking at the homeless industrial complex.

11) An apex predator is stirring in the shadows.

12) Binge watching the perishable.

13) Shedding a tear for the swiping industrial complex.

14) Noticing: the angst of wanting and the boredom of having.

15) A mystical black box has been mounted on my shoulders.

16) Part mantra, part death hum.

__________________

Blip With a Lip Quiz

Rate yourself honestly 1-10 for each category.

1= Almost never
10= Basically always

1) I use words to infiltrate the dream of separation

2) I refrain from displays of ego-hardening knowership

3) I use speech to activate Storyless Presence

4) I refrain from activating people’s conditioned me-stories 

5) I notice and release my “anti-mantras”

6) I Practice DreamSpeak

7) I cleanse my eyes of imaginary otherness

8) I throw Frisbees across the dreamscape

9) I see persons as pillars

10) I abstain from Benevolent Violence

11) I refrain from Pit Stop Slop

12) I attend the Church of Full Arrival

13) I freely invite others to join me in closed-eye inquiry

14) I notice confess and apologize for my energetic profanity

15) I practice my weekly answers to “How are you?”

(See following post for scoring results!)

-Hunter Reynolds
linktr.ee/hunterji