What am I learning?  

To allow and to look.

To dive deep under the surface of any experience and allow it to be whatever unfolds while bringing my best self to this moment.  My best self no longer means my “shiny” self or my “clean” self.  But my True Self. The entirety of who I am, the brilliant and radiant parts and also the dark and shadowed.  

To allow and to look.

As a child I experienced the world without fear of wounds or abandonment. My place in the world was as water is to the sea.  It was unfathomable to understand myself as separate. Until I experienced the rift: my tearing from the fabric of the folds within the universe. The separation. The voices who began to say convincingly that who I was, who I didn’t know I was, were not compatible with their world.  The projections of others who saw in me the things they themselves had despised and cut off were harsh reminders of their own separation.  Like an orphan who may hate the observed embrace of a mother for her child, I served as a reminder of their own loss and pain.  So I too began to rent, discard, and separate my true self from the universe.  With time, my actions for survival became methods for success.  I began to be praised and rewarded for the Self mutilation that further divided me from the rest of the infinite.  Until the kind, caring, benevolent Universe would no longer wait.  From love, mercy, and goodness she began to gently poke her fingers into the holes and broken places I had created.  The pain brought awareness.  The suffering that followed awoke desire.  Not a trite desire like that of a boy who wishes for another cookie, but like the desire held by the awakening dawn waiting for the morning sun to arrive.  This awakening desire was a catalyst for misdirected efforts to patch the rifts and fill the holes I had created.  But all the patches were temporary and no matter the effort or the substance used, the holes would not fill.  Despair became my next gift as I unwrapped and embraced the growing reality that no effort and no influence would ever change the wounds others and I had inflicted.  Tomorrow would be no different from today.  This sober resignation finally allowed me to simply look at the places where I had ripped away from my Original way of being. The tears, the holes, the shredded and broken beliefs of who I needed to be.  

And in that stillness I noticed my breath.  

The gentle inhale and quiet exhale.  From where did it come?  And to whom did it go as it exited my body? Ironically, it was through the deep rhythmic breath with my eyes closed that I began to see.  Meditation brought focus to the exchange. The gift of breath, life, received and returned to me from the expanse.  Each breath flowing into me from Her and out again through the very holes and cracked places in my being. 

And so I began to look.

Those shadowed dark holes, those torn places that appeared to be irreparable rents from the universe were the spiracles. Not in spite of or in order to but through them breath came.  For the holes and separations were the very portals for the gift of breath and life.  And so now I sit.  With gratitude and awe. Simply watching our breath.  Amazed how generous and benevolent she is.  Looking deeply into those holes and shadows to see the endless exchange of life.

Without separation.

 

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