The Watery Part of the World

Dear All,

We are approaching Earth, realizing ourselves as earth (human, humus, humble, exhume) beings.  We are light in light, air in air, water in water......

On Tuesday, we talked a bit less and breathed a bit more. 

In Vipassana style meditation, which is a complete path in itself, one focuses on the ever-varying touch-sensation aspects of breath.  Nanosecond by nanosecond, or rather much more frequently, the breath is changing in three ways.  The sensations vary as to location (where in the nose or body they are felt), as to intensity (now faint, now middling, now painfully strong), and as to quality (itching, pressure, heat or cool for instance).  We practiced this for a bit to establish a base of attention and begin to enter the theme.

Then we allowed ourselves centrally to welcome and produce the meanings of breath and air, to know ourselves as air beings in the world's air.  We nodded at John 20:22, when the risen Christ breathes on the disciples, and brought to mind spirit and pneuma, both of them breath in their Latin and Greek origins.  We nodded at the subtly subversive invocation of Emily Dickinson:

In the name of the bee and the butterfly and the breeze, Amen!

She is re-writing the Gloriat, here:  bee for the BEing of the Father; the butterfly with its death-and-rebirth chrysalis moves for the Son's athleticism; and the breeze as the invisible prompting of the Holy Spirit.

But these spiritual metaphors only aim to intensify our respect for the air on earth.  The air is a sacred thing.  By loving it, it opens to us.  "You resemble the spirit that you understand." -- Goethe.

For each aspect, we will try to find it in ourselves and link to its global reality.  Both in ourselves as apparently distinct entities and in the world as a whole, each aspect of earth has both a physical (whatever that is!) part and a subtle or energetic part.  We are opening to all these conversations.

Next Tuesday, we'll recall our aquatic mother tongue to converse with the watery part of the world.

all blessings to all,

Michael