Chapter 11 - Return on Investment
Coincidence Speaks
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Happy Friday friends!
Each week I share pieces from Substackia and the greater internet Void that I find especially moving, to an italicized degree.
This week’s iteration of that commitment is this personal essay by
, in which he shares his changing perspective on marriage and children. While the works I’ve shared in weeks past hit a direct emotional chord, this one is a little different in that I found the author’s intellectual openness so profound that it catalyzed those same italicized levels of emotion in me. The courage to be open towards the truth that everyone is living out their own is becoming an increasingly rare thing, especially in this noisy world.
We now return to the latest installment of Coincidence Speaks. Chapters are crafted so they can be read on a standalone basis. For the full experience head this way to start at the beginning!↩️
Chapter 11 finds Paul embarking on a new journey.
Chapter 11
Return on Investment
Paul resolved to keep his new Awareness Expansion™️ practice to himself, not wanting anyone—Clara included—to think he was a total weirdo wasting his time on such impractical nonsense. Plus, in the surreptitious depths of his ego, Paul now fashioned himself an undercover Guerrilla Meditator who, all on his own, was going to solve all the deepest most unfathomable mysteries of the universe.
He was in for quite a rude awakening.
The moment Paul sat down for his first practice session was the moment eight thousand better things he needed to do flooded his mind. Tick Tick Tick his watch launched artillery shells, its second hand assaulting his ears.
“Holy crap when did time get to be so F-ing LOUD?”
He spent the entire ten minutes squirming around, constantly checking the time, judging himself for how awful he was at doing something so terribly simple.
This was absolutely nowhere near the serene buddha with pretzeled-up legs he’d been envisioning, levitating serenely in lotus position. This was an inflexible thirty-something dad sitting awkwardly in a chair, back aching, throat clearing, limbs fidgeting, half worrying someone might walk in. Heck, Paul hadn’t even been able to sit Indian-style for more than a couple minutes since elementary school anyways. What was he thinking?
But knowing the power of neuroplasticity and the requirement for frequent repetition in shifting ingrained neural pathways, Paul kept at it for several weeks, finding the patience to sit his butt in a chair twice a day for ten minutes. Part of him felt like a parent, sending an unruly child to sit in Time Out, the other part of him felt like that same rebellious child who had much better things to do.
And yet another part of him, a subtle presence in the background of it all, was somehow content to watch the whole thing unfold, amused.
Paul was on the verge of giving up when the first breakthrough happened.
For the first several weeks of practice, the blankness behind his eyes only served to magnify every little physical ache and pain. Unless he intentionally imagined something like he’d learned to with RSD, he saw nothing but darkness. He felt nothing but mental agitation and constant body aches. He heard nothing but the sound of his own breathing—that, and a neverending internal dialogue.
The noise and the sheer tenacity of the inner commentary really took him by surprise. It was nonstop. With some potent parental-level patience, he gradually came to realize that pretty much all of his vaunted, highly “intelligent” thoughts were really just a continuous stream of audible words cascading through his head space—an incessant inner narrative babbling on and on that had an opinion on God blessed everything. And the thoughts just kept on coming, wave after wave, line by line, mostly in rambling sentences. Like a narrator citing endless movie quotes—and Paul’s life was the movie.
As he kept tuning into this endless thoughtstream day after day—with objective curiosity, and less and less emotional charge—he came to realize that this same invisible voice had actually been keeping a narrative monologue going on in the background of just about every single moment of every single day of his life—and it never shut up, and never got to the point. It really wasn’t even all that coherent… yet it was running his life!
For his entire life, Paul had always thought that the inner narrator doing all that thinking was him. NOPE—all at once the realization struck, hard, that he was the one hearing the narration! He was the space in which thoughts were happening, not the thoughts themselves!
He pulled out his journal to document the mind-bending realization. He watched with fascination as words poured through him onto the page, seemingly all on their own power:
“Descartes didn’t have it totally right—I don’t just exist because of my capacity to think; I am the infinite potential within which thought itself arises.”
Regardless of any such personal revelation, from a business world perspective, the up front investment in sitting around trying to be still and breathe seemed absolutely absurd relative to the lack of tangible return. Especially when that initial “return” consisted of intensifying the feelings of physical, emotional, and mental agitation that were the natural result of the constant stressful busy-ness of everyday American life.
But every now and again, every once in a while, there were little spaces when there wasn’t quite so much internal monologue, and it was nice. Peaceful.
Not nice because Paul had finally made a glorious entrance into heaven or nirvana or anything like that.
Nice because he’d finally shut up for a second, and the silence was such a welcome respite.
Paul’s outer life continued to stay superlatively busy, but he still found creative ways to carve out time for his new awareness expansion project. Instead of taking five-minute work breaks to socialize or ten minutes on the porcelain throne catching up on social media like he used to, he’d do shortened practice sessions instead. And rather than rushing back to the office straightaway after offsite business meetings, he would sit and breathe in his car first, taking a few precious moments to re-center and recalibrate.
The breath. Always returning to the breath—it was like an anchor into reality. It was like the feeling of waking up from a dream. Remembering himself. Coming back into self-awareness. To presence. Such a strange thing to ever forget in the first place!
After a few more months of practice, Paul slowly and surely began to equalize with the physical body aches, the emotional agitation began to even out even more, and his capacity for focus kept improving. He noticed much of the old post-RSD timeless equanimity returning, even in the midst of the endless distractions and demands of the business world.
While society around him still moved at the same breakneck pace, Paul had learned he had his own personal time capsule in the center of it all—one that he could access any time he wanted.
“This is actually freakin’ awesome!” Paul thought. “If just twenty minutes a day has this kind of effect, then maybe it’s time to double down and turn things up a bit!”
Paul began experimenting with new techniques, increasing the volume and frequency of his practice, adding visualization to match his breathing. A typical session still lasted no more than ten to fifteen minutes, but now he was finding time for several sessions spread around at different times throughout the day. He reckoned that if people spent an hour or more a day on physical fitness, why the heck wouldn’t anyone spend an hour a day on inner fitness?
All of a sudden, the inner work he was doing began to add up. At a very fast rate of speed.
End Chapter 11
Chapter 12 - Coincidence Rising will post Friday, April 26th. Thanks for being here in interactive real time! Comments and feedback always welcome.
In gratitude,
E.T. Allen
Some valuable insights in this chapter stood out for me e.g.:
“It really wasn’t even all that coherent… yet it was running his life!”
“Descartes didn’t have it totally right - I don’t just exist because of my capacity to think; I am the infinite potential within which thought itself arises.”
“The breath. Always returning to the breath – it was like an anchor into reality. It was a lot like the feeling of waking up from a dream. Remembering himself. Coming back into self-awareness. To presence. Such a strange thing to ever forget in the first place!”
Also how you interweave Paul's new 'spiritual practice' with his busy busyness-life (and awkwardness about mentioning this new 'hobby' to others) is very relatable.
“He was the space in which thoughts were happening, not the thoughts themselves!” 👏