Three Breaths

I woke up, again, at 3:30 in the morning. Outside in the Eucalyptus trees a pair of Great Horned Owls called across the chaparral. The stillness wrapped the world like a blanket. But inside my mind there was anything but stillness.
            It’s not that I wasn’t exhausted – it’d been another tough week, and I was only halfway through it. Deadlines, challenges, and a thousand expectations loomed ahead in the darkness. How was little old me going to meet all those lofty goals? Was I even the right guy for the job? Who did I think I was anyway?

Hoo, hoo, hoo?

The Zen Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh writes and teaches about the importance of mindful breathing. In his work he often focuses on the deceptively simple act of breathing in and breathing out, and turning that natural function into a focal point of meaningful transformation. Lying in my bed in the dark, I began to practice a version of his mindful breathing technique – three deep, intentional breaths, each with its own affirmation: letting go, being here, and opening up.

            With the first breath, inhale, paying attention to the way your body instinctively draws in air. As you exhale, silently say the words “letting go,” allowing your exhalation to empty you out. Inhale again, noticing that this inhalation is a little longer, a little deeper than the first. As you exhale, silently say the words “being here,” coming out of your mind and into this present moment. Inhale a third time, feeling the way your body is enlivened by the vital breath the cosmos so willingly provides. Exhale in the consciousness of gratitude, silently saying the words “opening up,” allowing the doors and windows of your small sense of self to swing wide. Feel yourself becoming diaphanous, borderless, unified.

            Letting go. Being here. Opening up. Feel the stillness spread throughout your mind-body system the way ink spreads in water. Witness yourself growing calm as the thoughts that plagued you dissipate like clouds in a clear desert sky. Emptiness. Spaciousness. Boundless awareness.

           

Letting Go

            When you practice letting go, you are relinquishing the illusion of control. You simply drop the pretense that you’re in charge. You affirm the fact that everything is transitory, and that we don’t really own anything – it’s all borrowed, and we have to give it all back, sometimes suddenly and without warning. As we let go we shift from fear and covetousness to love and gratitude – gratitude that we even got to touch, enjoy, or experience any of it. As we let go, we feel a deep sense of freedom and joy welling up from within. We know that our being, our essence, is not defined or supported by outer forms – the things we own, our houses, our cars, or our job titles and reputations. Even the dear loved ones who fill our days and nights with love, laughter, creativity, and surprise don’t belong to us. We walk alongside each other for a while, then we part ways, one by one, until we stand alone again at the precipice. We’re born alone, and we die alone. These sweet lives we’ve been given are a fleeting gift of infinite value, but they are not our private possession. The great paradox: only when we let go do we truly receive. Grasping, clinging, craving, and attachment produce only suffering.

Being Here

            When we mindfully decide to be here now, a great transformation begins. Moving into present moment awareness is a simple shift, but it requires on-going recommitment and affirmation, so tenacious is the old habit of living in the past or living in the future. One of the things we let go with the first breath was our story, that long and laborious narrative we drag around with us where all of our so-called disadvantages and all of the wounds inflicted on us are replayed ad nauseam. We think we need our story, because it is an archive where we store the evidence used to prove our unworthiness. All of the messages we ever received from harried, distracted teachers who didn’t notice us, emotionally distant parents whose self-absorption kept us at arm’s length, or the lovers who retaliated against us, not realizing that the pain they felt was self-inflicted – when we come into this now moment those old messages lose their meaning and power. We are free. And when we let go of fantasies of the future, whether worried anxiousness or utopian escapism, we put both feet in the here and now, the only place there really is.

The past doesn’t exist. What we call the past is a thought that occurs only in the present moment. The future is even less real than the past. There are no memories in the future to cling to, only imaginary projections. Like the past, all future-thoughts occur only in this present moment. Returning to the now moment of pure awareness, we feel a certain groundedness and immediacy, something you just can’t get in the thought-realm. The present moment isn’t a thought, it’s a vibrant, lived experience prior to thought. The present moment is the only place where you stand a chance of coming out of the ethereal world of the thought-stream and into the real world of experiential awareness. Only here can you experience real freedom, real love, and on your best days, glimpses of bliss.

Opening Up

            When we let go and enter fully into the present moment we feel a great unfolding, an opening up. No longer girded like a warrior in battle, we show up vulnerable, full in our faith that the universe is a nurturing, supportive, abundant, and generative place. We are not strangers here – that was part of the illusion we released – we are part and parcel of the totality that arises from its own infinite intelligence. When we open up we commit the final act of absolution. We know that there is nothing left to seek, nothing left to defend, nothing apart from anything else. We are home right where we are, in this skin, in this house, in this town, in this beautiful, miraculous world. We are divested of all notions of hierarchy. We are humbled and proud all at the same time – paradox like that no longer has any hold on us. We see past duality and conflict to a spacious peacefulness and loving-kindness. We know that all work is service, and we show up earnest and cheerful and do the work that is ours to do.

            Three breaths. Letting go. Being here. Opening up. It’s a practice you can carry with you anywhere you go. It works at the office, in traffic, on the tarmac, at the awkward family gathering, or in the middle of the night when you can’t sleep. Wherever you are, take the opportunity to move into the freedom of your own essential nature. You don’t have to seek it, create it, or understand it; you have only to allow it. And breathe.

Breathe Into It

“Breathe into it,” the yoga instructor said, her arms and legs braided like an unbaked pretzel. On rows of rubber mats students strained into the pose with varying degrees of success. The sinuous sounds of Deuter washed over the room like gentle waves of warm green tea.

Breathe into it, I thought, what the hell does that mean? But instead of arguing, I tried it. At the deepest point of my stretch I felt a sharp knot of tightness that told me I had reached my limit. I could go no further. Then I breathed into the tension. I inhaled as if my breath was going directly into and through the tightness. Something mysterious happened. It loosened. With the next exhalation my pose deepened all on its own, beyond where I thought I could go. What I had failed to accomplish with effort was realized effortlessly.

Like anyone else, I was accustomed to the old idea that if I was ever going to accomplish or achieve anything it would be through persistent and strenuous effort. Only a bold and willful decision followed by vigorous and assertive action could move a mountain. If I didn’t do anything, nothing would get done.

Of course intention, will-power and effort all play a part. But until we allow the larger forces already at work (or is it play) to align with and buoy our efforts, no amount of straining is going to move even a molehill.

When we cut our finger the healing begins immediately and without our consent or intention. There are systems in place of which we are only observers. What if we allowed ourselves to slip gently into the realization that we are partners with larger energies around us? The ancient Indians called this energy prana, the life force within us and all living things. Prana is the Sanskrit word for “breath”.

In the second creation story of Genesis, (yes, there are two), God made Adam “from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living being.” Like scores of other creation stories, Genesis tells us that human beings are a mysterious combination of inanimate matter and the breath of life, an indefinable force rooted in a vast intelligence far beyond human control let alone comprehension.

Speech and song are made of breath. It is through the power of speech that God called the universe into being when he said, “Let there be light.” The Navajo don’t consider a newborn baby fully human until it has taken its first breath, or better still, made its first sound. And if you’ve ever heard Eve Selis sing, let alone stood on stage with her and looked into the eyes of an audience caught in the grip of her powerful voice, you would know – it is through the power of breath that the beauty of life is made manifest.

Now consider all the difficulties and challenges we face. Many of us are caught in overwhelming financial crises. There are daunting health challenges. Some of our relationships seem damaged beyond repair. Or maybe there are dreams unfulfilled, crushing burdens, towering tasks and impossible obstacles. Perhaps it’s something as simple as a general, vague sense of incompletion, dissatisfaction and sadness. We can’t seem to fix all the things that are broken no matter how hard we try. Despite all our good intentions and best efforts we fall short. It might be time to try another way.

There is an old Chinese parable about a rice farmer who was so eager for his crop to grow that every morning he tugged on each tiny shoot. In the end, he uprooted every plant. He didn’t harvest one single grain of rice that year.

“The world is ruled by letting things take their course,” says Laozi in the Daodejing. “It cannot be ruled by interfering. In the universe the difficult things are done as if they are easy. In the universe great acts are made up of small deeds. The sage does not attempt anything very big, and thus achieves greatness.” Letting things take their natural course and come to fruition in their own time is not only effective, it also creates lasting serenity and joy. If we really understood this perennial principle a deep and vibrant humility would well up in us and heal so much of our dissatisfaction and stiff-necked restlessness. We would become lithe and fluid like water. We would accomplish everything without doing anything. Paradoxically, our softness would become our strength. “A tree that is unbending,” says Laozi, “is easily broken.”

The only thing in the way of this new consciousness of allowance is our old pattern of thinking, the one that says life is nothing but struggle and strife. When Jesus counseled his students to be like the lilies of the field he was clearly teaching this same principle. Whether you subscribe to a personified God or prefer your Source less defined and localized, there is a common thread running through all these teachings. This has little to do with theism or atheism. Leave that debate in the college cafeteria. Our mental machinations and busy bee schemes often do little but interfere with the inherently generative course of nature. Something is always trying to grow through us. Are we interfering or allowing? Are we anxious and constricted or breathing easy?

No matter the difficulty, when all our best intentions and efforts seem ineffective, maybe it’s simply time to surrender. Bring yourself into alignment with the inherent intelligence of the universe. The next time you bump up against a problem, lean forward, let go and breathe into it.