Saturday, December 29, 2007

Breathing

The most important thing to learn in life is the lesson of breathing. Everything else about the universe comes from this one lesson.
For every breath in must be balanced by a breath out. And so everything is life is kept in balance. Breathing is the art of balance: the skill of taking in and giving back.
We live in a modern world of give and take; a world where it is better to give than to receive. Yet, we receive the moment we are born. If only we should give back later. We receive the gift of life. And we should give back the gifts of living. Perhaps we will also create life. Perhaps we will aid the living. Perhaps we will teach, or share the lessons we have learned. In any case, as with breathing, we take in and we give back.
As in breathing the universe exists in balance. Every law, every property, all is defined by balance. For every action there is an opposing reaction. Matter and energy are neither created nor destroyed, but they can change form. All remain in harmony with one another.
The Eastern philosophers have known for many centuries that all the mysteries of the universe can be understood through breathing. Understanding begins with but a single breath!

All We Need To Know Is How To Breathe

Breathe in...
Breathe out...
We do it every moment of our lives, from the moment of birth to the moment of death.
Breathe in...
Breathe out...
We are doing it now. And we've done it all day.
But how often to we stop to realize what a truly spiritual event breathing really is?
Breathing does many things for our bodies: it adds all-important oxygen to our blood and our cells, it helps cool the heat our fragile bodies produce, it helps us remove unneeded or harmful gases from our bodies, and so forth. And all of these physical processes are important to our physical well-being.
But if we examine the process of breathing we learn a number of important things about our relationship to the web of life.
First, breathing is the process of taking in. It is an inner path of taking from the rest of the world, for our air is truly shared with all other life around the globe.
Second, breathing is giving back.

Blessed Be & Blessed Do!

Blessed Be.
In the modern neo-pagan family of faiths, the phrase "Blessed Be" has come to be used much as the Judeo-Christians use the word "amen". But its origins go back far in history to the Hindu poem "The Bhaghavad Gita". In this epic poem, young Prince Arjuna is asking the mighty God Krishna about the nature of life. In the poem, Krishna bestows the phrase "Blessed Be" on the young prince, possibly as a well-meaning wish.
When I've heard the phrase these days, I've often taken it to be a command to be a blessed person; that is, to find the sacred in oneself. And this has often left me feeling that it is an undone thing. For this is an internal process.
But we live in a world where we must interact with the external world around us. And so I have added the command "Blessed Do" to this ancient phrase. This tells us that it is not enough to simply find the holy within ourselves, but to bring it out of ourselves and to do holy things:
"Blessed Be & Blessed Do!"

The most important lesson I can teach anyone today is the lesson of breathing, for this says more subtly all that I have just stated. We breathe in. We breathe out. We take from the world around us, and we give back.
The ocean of air we breathe is shared by all on our world. It has been breathed by all who have gone before us as long as life has lived on the earth. And it will be breathed by all who will come after us.
And it is breathed by people who look differently from us, who believe differently from us, who live differently from us, and who love differently from us. And yet it is still the air that sustains us all.
Even those who transcend the boundaries of this world carry it with them into space, and bring it back when they're through. We share the air, we share the water, we share the things of the earth, we share the things of the spirit.
We can learn a lot from breathing.
Blessed Be & Blessed Do!