Breathe, Part II

Breath­ing is the clear­est chan­nel on which we can appre­hend God. Breathe (part I) was on Decem­ber 6, 2017—it was reas­sur­ing to find I am on the same path. Breath­ing is the most ele­men­tal thing we do—even more so than eat or drink or any­thing else. We take breath­ing for grant­ed, just like we take God for granted.

George Floyd and Covid-19 have made us stark­ly aware of the ter­ror of not breath­ing. All of us have felt the tremor of it at times in our lives. I remem­ber being caught in the under­tow of a falls. I could see the sky, and the water was pulling me into dark­ness, and all I want­ed was air and light. That was a brief moment, and it was awful. It’s not even a speck com­pared to… We all have to take a final breath, but we should make it as easy as we can for one another.

That’s one of the rea­sons I’m extolling the virtues of breath­ing. Are you enjoy­ing it? Do you pay any atten­tion? Are you real­iz­ing its ben­e­fits? Of course, mys­tics of var­i­ous stripes have real­ized this for ages. It’s free. You can do it any­where in pri­va­cy (unless man or mor­tal­i­ty takes that away from you). It is healthful—your lungs appre­ci­ate the atten­tion. It is calm­ing. No mat­ter the form of anx­i­ety, stop and breathe—it will help. Not cure, just help. I’m not a sci­en­tist, but I also believe it clears your think­ing. You kind of step back and see a big­ger pic­ture. It’s almost indis­pens­able in sit­u­a­tions of anger and frus­tra­tion and hope­less­ness. The hard part is remem­ber­ing to do it and stick­ing with it.

I also think it height­ens your spir­i­tu­al aware­ness. After all, God breathed in us to get us going. I’ve been doing a breath­ing exer­cise to get more in touch. In my Zen youth, I heard of a mantra/koan called the Jesus Prayer. (breathe in) Lord Jesus Christ; (breathe out) have mer­cy on me. I have no idea who start­ed it—I got it from Fran­ny and Zooey by J D Salinger. I don’t drone on with the prayer…that would be mind­less. I go for ten times and then just con­cen­trate on the breathing—then I fall asleep (no joke!) It also works if you’re bored or antsy or uncertain—not the sleep part. 

I go back to my first state­ment: Breath­ing is the clear­est chan­nel on which we can appre­hend God. My phone tells me that appre­hend means: to under­stand or per­ceive. Obvi­ous­ly, under­stand is out of the ques­tion when it comes to God (see Job). But perceive…to me (not using my phone) that means: to get a glimpse of, to see on a deep­er lev­el. When I slow down, when I am still, when I check my breath­ing, my per­cep­tion increas­es. I’ll nev­er appre­hend God, but I’d like to eas­i­er to catch. 

Leave a Reply

* Copy This Password *

* Type Or Paste Password Here *