The Myth Of Unaltered States

Particles pulsing, swirling
In boundless expanse
Forms — fleetingly shaped
Through mind’s ephemeral lens
Tenuously held
In an ever-shifting
State

Sleep
No world, no experience —
A void state

Dreams seen
Worlds behind closed eyes —
Another state

Eyes open
Groggy in morning light —
State changes

Sounds flood
Urgency in head — stomach
Shifting state

Legs swing
Unsure — unsteady feet —
Shifted state

Gravity pulls
Heart races, muscles tense —
Another state

Steps taken
Alertness —
State, of clarity

Bladder empties —
Relieved, state

Face seen
Affection — smile
State, of connection

Day’s thought
Dread of time
Anxious, state

Toe stubs
Pain, then gone
Transient state

Endless flow — of states
Merging, shifting, fading —
Held together
By breath —

Is life —
Experience — anything
But — an unbroken chain
Of shifting, states
Spun — by heartbeat
Filtered — through mind’s lens —
Construing — projecting —
The illusion —
Of fixed — body

Can any being —
God or human
Know a state —
Unfiltered
Unconditioned —
By mind, or body

Is the body
A vessel for states
Or is it — itself
An unrelenting sequence
Of altered states — flowing
Streaming through eyes, ears, skin
Constructing reality —
Transient
Arbitrary

What is — the fixation
Far and wide
Striving endlessly
To attain, maintain
Some fixed phantom —
A healthy state

What is — this myth —
Of an uninduced, unaltered state
Promoted —
By scientists, philosophers, doctors —
Preachers — of clarity
Benchmarking every state
Against —
Phantom

Creating hierarchies —
Expanded, contracted
Mystical, mundane
Pleasure, pain —
Writing fictions —
Normal, disordered
Stable, heretical —

Placing infinity
Underneath — microscopes
Nitpicking it inch by inch
Labelling this, altered
That unaltered —
Distinction
Of states

What could be — an altered state
When never has there
Ever been — nor can be
An unaltered, state

The trusted arbiters — persist
Perpetuating, fiction
Aware — every breath transforms
Every thought shifts
Peddling fixes —

Objectifying —
The unowned
Condemning, incarcerating
Demonising, criminalising
Those who dare — alter their state
Purveyors —

Of sanctioned drugs
Licensed
Peddling falsity —
Fetish — of a normal —
Stable, state

Who maintains lie
Who profits
From the fraud
Who to indict — when

The entire machine
King to commoner
Parents, teachers, neighbours, strangers
Are all — collaborators —
Researchers, taxonomists
Cartographers, of mind
Evangelists — campaigners, advertisers
Mouthpieces, and backers

When all — numbed, conditioned
Wardens —
Of perception
Regulators, of experience —
Joined together
Upholding — flimsy, absurd
Illusion

Violating —murdering
Themselves, others
To maintain —
Mendacity
Gatekeeping — imprisoning
Perception — itself

When
Everyone — is both
Prisoner
And the guard