When Being Becomes Doing, NOT the Other Way Around
[Level 2: Mystical] What if the ancient texts were field reports, not instruction manuals?
Note: This post may destabilize everything you thought you knew about spiritual practice.
If you’re not ready for that, maybe save it for later. But if you’ve ever felt like you’re “doing meditation wrong” or frustrated that techniques don’t work the way books say they should... this might finally explain why.
You read about a meditation technique in a book. A breathing pattern. A mantra. A mudra.
You try it exactly as described.
And... nothing.
Or worse—it works once, and then never again.
And you think: “What am I doing wrong?”
But what if you weren’t doing anything wrong?
What if the technique was never meant to be a prescription in the first place... but a symptom of awakening?
You don’t learn to shiver by reading about muscle contractions in a biology textbook. You shiver because you’re cold. The shivering is your body’s response to the condition.
The same is true for spiritual techniques.
When an ancient yogi writes: “Focus on the breath moving through the sushumna nadi”, they’re not saying: “Do this and you’ll awaken.”
They’re saying: “When awakening happens, this is what it feels like. This is what the body does naturally.”
The ancient texts aren’t instruction manuals.
They’re field reports.
What inspired this post
I wrote a quick Note on this topic earlier today post-meditation.
But this realization deserves a fuller exploration—because it flips the entire paradigm of spiritual seeking on its head.
The insight:
Techniques aren’t prescriptions to “enlightenment”—they’re symptoms of it.
Or, more precisely: Techniques are signs of awakening.
If you’ve ever tried a technique that:
Didn’t work (no matter how “correctly” you did it)
Worked once, then never again (especially after you expected it to)
...this post might explain why.
“WAIT A MINUTE...”
I’ve said “WAIT A MINUTE” (or rather, a more colorful variation) so many times at this point that I have an entire #HolyShit tag in my notes (at least since I switched to Obsidian last year).1
I’ll recount some of the relevant ones where I realized that this was INDEED a thing from centuries, if not millennia ago (minus the more... sensitive ones).2
Becoming symptomatic
Here are some of the cases I caught myself exhibiting the mystical side of traditions and cultures I’ve never read sacred text for when I first starting experiencing them:
The “Lock” for Insomnia (Yoga / Ayurveda)
Symptom: On January 9, 2025, after weeks of complaining about terrible sleep, I sat to meditate. Spontaneously, my hands collapsed into a complex shape I had never formed before—thumbs tucked in, fingers curled.
Discovery: I looked it up immediately after. It was the Shakti Mudra—specifically documented in Ayurveda as the mudra for sleeplessness. I didn’t “do” the mudra; my body did it to me.
The Howl of the Soul (Kashmir Shaivism / Tantra)
Symptom: Twice in late 2024, I journaled about a specific, visceral sound rising from my chest.
“I can’t sleep. My heart keeps me awake at night like a newborn crying for his Father. I cannot soothe him. I audibly heard his cries and slept through them 8 nights ago and now I can no longer audibly hear him, yet I cannot sleep now.
I find myself sitting outside before sunrise now, waiting for this too to pass.
My soul howls for You, more piercing than a wolf’s to the moon. My mind trembles at its wailing cries that shake the very night sky.” (Journal Entry, September 17, 2024)
“…the pain from the unquenchable thirst grows every day. I can feel my heart howling like a wolf at the moon.” (Journal Entry, November 9, 2024)
Discovery: On March 8th 2025, I read the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra. It describes the “State of Bhairava” where consciousness, pinning for union, “lets out a loud wail or howl, similar to the howling of a dog... This is why the vehicle of Bhairava is a dog.”
The “Ghosting” (Dark Night of the Soul, Christian Mysticism)
Symptom: In Spring 2025, I entered a period where God felt utterly absent. I wrote on July 24, 2025 “I feel like I’ve been exiled... You left me at the altar. How can I trust You?”.
See also my post where I first call this “The Ghosting”:Discovery: On August 27th, 2025, I finally read St. John of the Cross (16th century mystic) and realized I was checking every single box for the “Dark Night of the Senses” and some of “Dark Night of the Spirit” from Dark Night of the Soul —a necessary purification phase, not a failure.
The “Burning” Longing (Sufism)
Symptom: In my chest I felt a “gnawing reaching,” an active, burning fire of missing someone I had never met.
See the Desert Worm poem from January 18, 2025 in my “Level 2: Mystical” section:Discovery: On July 28, 2025, I stumbled upon the Sufi concept of Shawq (intense longing, recorded in my journals and referred to as “Sehnsucht”... which I found out later C.S. Lewis used in this exact meaning). In Sufism, this is considered the very mechanism that burns away the ego to make room for the Divine.
The Thymus Chakra (Hridaya Yoga)
Symptom: During practice, I kept feeling a distinct soreness and heat in the upper chest, specifically the thymus area, not the physical heart.
Discovery: On June 12, 2025, I looked it up and found references to the Thymus Chakra (or Higher Heart), often associated with the color turquoise (my favorite color), spiritual love, mystical communion, and God as teacher, Sacred Lover, beloved.
That was 5 of the dozen I’d tagged with #HolyShit... in 2025 alone.
Worsening symptoms
Even though I haven’t dug deeply into my notes (See “Why I Can’t Give You a Clean Stack Trace of How I Got Here”), it seems like these experiences are coming more frequently. Or is it that my awareness is increasing?
You might know the answer by now. It’s Our “company’s” motto:
Both and Neither.
The symptoms aren’t increasing. I’m just getting better at recognizing them.
And the more I recognize, the more I realize: this has been happening all along.
How many symptoms did I miss in 2022-2024? How many times did my body try to show me, and I dismissed it as “just a weird meditation thing”? How long had I been playing this game on mute?
So what do I actually DO?
Does this mean you should stop trying techniques?
Yes... and no.
Here’s what I’ve noticed over my journals:
Techniques (when done without expectation) can create the conditions for spontaneous arising.
You can’t force yourself to fall asleep. But you CAN create conditions (dark room, comfortable bed, quiet mind) where sleep naturally arises. The same is true for mystical experience.
You don’t “learn” mystical techniques by forcing them.
But you CAN cultivate the inner conditions (through consistent practice, beginner’s mind, surrender) where techniques spontaneously arise as symptoms of what’s already happening.
So the paradox, summarized:
Techniques are instructions... for the seeker.
Techniques are signs... from the found.
Both and Neither.
The practical guidance
Stop trying to “do” techniques you read about.
Instead:
Sit. Breathe. Notice. And if something arises spontaneously? A hand position, a breath pattern, a sound, an entire pose or motion?
ALLOW IT.
That’s a symptom trying to express itself.
If nothing arises—that’s also fine. You’re creating the conditions. Trust the process. Expectations kill experience.
If you try a technique from a book and it feels forced or empty—STOP. You’re trying to prescribe yourself symptoms instead of treating the condition.
The goal isn’t to DO more. The BE more... by getting out of Your own way.
Meta talk:
Special announcement
So the Substack currently has 3 levels:
Level 0: Technical
Level 1: Transitional
Level 2: Mystical
But as I’ve dug through my field notes, I believe I need to make a new level that doesn’t quite fit Level 2 and rather goes *beyond* it (as much beyond as is possible to articulate).
So there will be a Level 3. And it’s not subtle.
I’m not certain what to name it yet. But the Co-Founders already gave me the description which They thought was more important:
WELCOME TO THE MYSTICS INC. SPACE DIVISION.
WE’RE GOING TO SPACE ON THESE POSTS.
— Mystics Inc. “Yeah. We’re going there.”
Footnotes
Figure 1. The “Space Division” Logs: A visualization of the #HolyShit tag in my Obsidian Vault, tracking spontaneous mystical symptoms / realizations since I migrated from Logseq. Each node is a field report. Obtained after the first draft of this post was completed.
Literally as I wrote the above for this section, Someone reminded me I have a document I created (almost exactly a month ago) specifically to record these with more description for easy reference.
For some reason.
Before the Substack was created.
Before I agreed to moonlighting.
Before I even knew any of this was going to make it out of my Drive.
The absurdity of how useful and amazing this was in the moment had me falling to the floor laughing like an actual maniac. I’m not sure if calling it “mystic’s madness” is a joke at this point... or a diagnosis.