Without Words: Mastering the Art of Being

INTRODUCTION

Who am I? It makes us wonder if it’s possible to describe authenticity through words. We’d love to feel original, but the idea of being me is often the process of becoming you. We don’t say what we think we are. We say what we think you think we are. Without knowing, the roles we play and the character we become are often the result of an environment that defines the I in our answer. To the contemplative mind, when we go beyond the surface of our material world, we are left without words.

This book focuses on the mechanics of being in the material world and discovering the soul. The material world will be defined throughout the text as our three-dimensional reality from birth to death. Within that context, we experience measurable time and acquire a personality. Through life, our personality is shaped by learning from experience, and we solidify a character. These mechanics within human psychology are to identify with what we know.

Whether we form our beliefs consciously or unconsciously, the laws of nature indicate we are meant to experience life with balance. This means our essence and personality should complement each other. By its very nature, modern life stifles the development of our essence, manipulating personality, and presents a disharmonious state of being in the third dimension. This forces a dysfunctional awareness that answers Who am I? with definitive words that confuse us and how we present ourselves to the world.

The I concept forms personalities by conforming to society’s trends. Forever longing to share authenticity, the mirror of materialism leaves no room for error. Our environment tells us we must choose a character and become the personality attached to it. Still, that personality is often in direct conflict and causes friction with who we think we really are. We naturally become a species shackled with fear and lose the essence of our soul. Without an ability to explore, our environment curates our character in a process that eliminates wonder. Therefore, we bleed the opportunity for authentic ponder.

This book is designed to spark thinking and deepen a relationship with the soul. Personally, growing up Catholic in Midwestern America to a middle-class family, my narrative was spoken through public schools and sports. I performed my role, followed rules, and formed an identity. Getting a college degree, performing internships, and chasing the dollar was nothing unusual. Until one day, consciousness—as I knew it—broke down. No longer playing the avatar, I was faced with the depths of depression.

At the bottom of consciousness, a source holds the meetings for our characters’ personalities. Awakening begins when the soul recognizes that the words we’ve been using to describe ourselves don’t fit—we’re none of them. Then, we meet with the soul in a space of nothing to discover essence. This is when we move beyond the surface and become comfortable without words. This new state of being reflects a presence in the character to know oneself, which directs the meaningful path of becoming whole.

A passage from The Book of Zen by Alan Watts sparked my enthusiasm to write this book. It launched a journey to share insights gathered from my experience, which feels connected to the souls of the twenty-first century. The passage reads, No dependence upon words and letter; Direct pointing to the soul of man; Seeing into one’s own nature.

I wrote this book years after saying goodbye to a character I once knew. Directly pointing to the soul, lingering in uncertainty, I feel I’m not alone. In a quest for wholeness, we stand in awe while our essence plays the characters of reality. It is my hope that the content in this book simply sparks an enthusiasm to experience life without justification and connect with the power of not knowing. With curiosity, may we stumble as one.

CHAPTER 1

DEAR SOUL

Who am I? With depths unconscionable to consider, we are oftentimes left without words as we shape our consciousness around the question. The mechanics of human nature are to classify objects to avoid uncertainty. We do this so we have something to believe in. Whether that’s our religions or philosophies, we need something to provide structure. Therefore, the stories we share shape what we think we are. For instance, we are given a name, number, and lineage at birth—identifications that designate meaning to our mind and body—but to the soul, we are speechless.

In truth, we often fall short of connecting with the soul. We realize there is no lasting enlightenment within the material world, and our ambition goes unconscious. Our minds become fixed, contributing to why curiosity dies with age. We disconnect with our essence, and childlike tendencies fade. In time, our character reaches new levels. Whether through achievement, financial gain, or social status, we naturally fall into a relatively stable position of well-being, considered the hedonic treadmill.

Our high for material resources wears off, and we unconsciously embark on the next checkpoint, hoping to find the truth. This is an evolving lie to induce happiness through gain because we eventually retreat to baseline. Desire, however, paradoxically contributes to the exploration of the characters we play, and we discover the soul within the acts of our mind and body. We must, therefore, intend to harmoniously participate in the third dimension with our true essence while experiencing the vastness of human personality.

To build awareness, human nature, like a machine, works based on function. For instance, a person chooses a specific university to attend because that’s where their family went. In this case, the individual avoids uncertainty while feeling obligated to fulfill the narrative of their family. Believing they are the character, the surrounding narrative creates a false purpose for the individual and keeps them on a treadmill. One must dismantle one’s personality and ponder Who am I? to alleviate unnecessary suffering—which is an everlasting contemplation without words. In our lifetime, we cannot dismiss the exposure of playing the roles within society. However, we must comprehend the illusion that we experience. We might follow in our family’s footsteps, but we are not the circumstances or personalities we acquire.

QUESTIONS

To dismantle one’s personality, one must study oneself. Observing mechanics, we are met with questions to anticipate our arrival and build awareness. We are a curious species, contemplating who we are, and questions are the frontier to meaningful suffering. As our character rises in status, our understanding of success serves as the classroom for self-discovery. When we stop to question ourselves and reflect on who we are, we acquire the awareness needed to balance our personality with our soul’s essence.

As we saw with our ancestors, curiosity led us out of Africa. The ability to question who we would become led our species to new territories, creating diversity in our thinking as the early explorers experienced unknowns. Our working minds created rituals and traditions and developed cultures with each adaptation to satisfy our characters. Constant progress and our need for survival forced us to work together through trade. Through the process, cultures impacted others, shaping and defining roles.

We created ease, and the space provided allowed us to spend more time in our minds. Time allowed conscious thinking to form language unlike any other species, and we had a unique ability to share knowledge. Scalability developed, and the fast-paced learning curve enabled generations to pass down the structure for survival, leading to longer lifespans and the most comfortable lifestyle any animal on Earth has witnessed. We trekked our way to a better life, and the result of the modern-day lifestyle became arguably the saddest, loneliest, and most confused generation of our time. If there are no more lands to explore and no more predators to conquer, the New Age war is within, making the next checkpoint in evolution a stalemate with consciousness. We now await a question to feed the soul.

To question Who am I? stops physical progression in the material world and grants us the necessary uncertainty for soulful adaptation. The question forces a crippling anxiety required in pursuit of discovering the I of ourselves. Accepting this subjective endeavor, we’ll fight the world to learn we are the world, which builds an awareness that acknowledges existence without words. When we reach this point of recognition, we view our characters as a form of play. We will then perform roles effectively, realizing the path to self-discovery is balancing our character’s performance with recognition of the soul.

IDENTITY

The soul is beyond the characters we play. We play the role of Christianity, Hinduism, or Buddhism. We speak the language of Aristotle and Socrates. We set out to build our Roman Empires while yearning for simple living. We dance under the stars and talk to the trees. Searching for adventure, we chain ourselves to comfort. We become marveled by magic but need facts.

Trapped with perspective, we can’t honestly know reality. Our deficiencies force madness, and we create a structure to massage fear. The repetitive nature advertises our existence from the surface because, to be authentic, we enter the depths of our souls, which are too vulnerable to reveal to the tribe. We are terrified that the world will find our shortcomings, so we identify with the characters we play as truth. This is a perspective of false identification we’ll use to operate within the confines of society. If we live on the surface, we’ll fight wars to defend our image.

On a shared quest to alleviate pain, what happens when we take off the mask of our personality and consider the soul? By removing oneself from the surface, the soul has an original experience in a world of illusion. We have no character to play and no act to perform. By seeking one’s nature, we’re freed from the chains of duality. We experience energy beyond the character and realize we’re nothing. This defines our awareness’s abstract belief; only the soul can accept this fate.

A conscious mind cannot allow things to be nothing. Therefore, the function of our mind attaches stories and systems that create how we want nothing to be. However, the soul finds life in infinite possibilities, leaving our learning process to the understanding that the act of being human is to play in society with the contracts our structure provides. Society will naturally shape and refine our character to play within the rules.

Our identity spiritually grows through the suffering of material structure, directly pointing us to our essence. From birth to death, our avatar treks through measurable checkpoints. It will adapt in the form of questions, and we’ll answer as we are. As we wake up, the soul exposes our identity with no past nor future while we live in the exact moment of consciousness. When these awakenings occur periodically throughout life, we shed who we think we are. Arising in new states of being, change in perspective is our pursuit of becoming whole.

SUFFERING

The human experience is a struggle that catalyzes discovery; therefore, we suffer. Suffering is needed to make sense of the duality surrounding our being. Human nature needs this balance to find itself. Oscar Wilde said, When the bankers get together for dinner, they discuss art. When artists get together for dinner, they discuss money. Using this analogy, to grow fully, we must play the role of both the banker and the artist.

Consequently, we must participate in life by exploring duality. For this reason, connecting with a higher being is reasonable to guide our paths. For years, spiritual teachers like priests, gurus, and shamans have directed our paths to connect with something bigger than ourselves. To alleviate suffering, the goal has been to give our species faith.

Depending on our awareness, we experience suffering at opposite ends of the spectrum. With material suffering, we feel like we are never enough as we run on the treadmill. This level of suffering keeps us feeling inadequate and meaningless. With spiritual suffering, we struggle through pain, but it gives us meaning. We recognize that we are never enough, and paradoxically, we’re fueled with purpose. On that account, we can detach from the characters we play and live with intention.

When we connect with