Origins of Horizontology

Read a book or do not read a book

Horizontology as an idea was developed over many years of comparative studies in religion, philosophy, psychology, biology — well, you get the idea. How can all the different belief systems and conflicting ideas about life be correct? Is there something true and something false in each concept? Most likely.  Can they coexist?  How?

It began as an idea: a church for everyone. Everyone can fit into this church because it is not a church as in structure, dogma, schema, mores, high priests. You create the church in the act of lying down. Church then is everywhere and everywhere accessible to all.

Once horizontal, naturally, you’re looking up. The mind is not fettered by the buzz of the “vertical world.” You’re not looking at others and they’re not looking at you (if you’d like to get existential about it). Vertically, we are Hindu, Christian and so on.  Horizontally, we are all –  Lay Breathen.

Maybe if everyone would spend more time horizontal, the world would get better. Less movement would lower everyone’s statistical odds for accidental death, for example. And there’s the “bed-in” aspect of it. Let’s stop consuming, commuting, committing troops.

Also, there is the leisure movement in there as well. The gentleman who drops off.  Let’s learn “the art of lying in bed” as Lin Yutang describes it, a deliberate stopping of the day to loaf, read or do nothing without schedule, time, wants, frets and so on and find repose in what is left.

Other influences of Horizontology:

Diogenes
Epicurus
Henry David Thoreau
Emily Dickinson
John Lennon

Enjoy the rest of your day or night. Try to stay down.

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