“The winds of Grace are always blowing. We just need to raise our sails to catch it. How do we raise our sails? By daily spiritual practice. – Bhagavan Das
Commitment to a daily spiritual practice, and the fruits that are bountifully yielded, is one of the greatest gifts I have and continue to experience in my life. We practice to learn, to always remain as a humble and reverent student of Life. This body that we inhabit is our ship that floats us along in this vast Ocean of Existence, Life, and Reality. It truly is the Heart, Love, and the Breath of Spirit that fills our sails to move us along, further out to Sea, into new growth experiences. This is pure Grace!
Grace is the Life-giving breath that sustains and remains with Us through all changes phases and experiences of Life. We breathe to be still, to listen, to remember. We breathe in thanksgiving, in awe and humbleness, slowly cultivating a deep knowing and trust that Life and Love remain always as our greatest Ally. No matter what the conditions and circumstances of life may be.
Our constant companion and Friend, the Great Comforter, the Beloved, the Giver of Life, can be found when we open to the reality that Breath is Love. Life giving breath so freely given to us, in my growing experience, is a way we can know Unconditional Love. The Breath of Life, this Unconditional Love, is the prayer of the present Moment, its the prayer that brings us back to our Home, our Self, our body mind temple. Conscious Sacred Breathing is also the rudder of our Ship, which helps to keep us from being blown off course and steers us back to calmer waters.
Where there is breath there is Life, where there is Life there is Love, Love beyond form and conditions, and where there is Pure Love, there is the the Creator, the Absolute Source of All Life and Love, and the subtlest state of everything. Embodied Presence and Love can teach us, often times slowly as we grow, that we are completely integral to the Wholeness of Life. We are never separate from Source, the essence of Love itself.
This Love is always with Us and is there for Us when we go out into the world and often times stumble. The benevolent aspect of Love leads us along our path of life to root out hidden parts of our unconsciousness, unprocessed hurts, and even more deeply the parts of our past we haven’t forgiven.
Thankfully, we have our Home, our Sacred Heart; a place of rest refuge and renewal. We are blessed to have a place within to return to and be at ease and experience the joy of Being. As Christ offered to us, “the Kingdom of Heaven is within.” It is within we can return to over and over again to touch upon the essence of who we truly are. A place where we lovingly surrender and begin again. Within the Silent Wisdom of the heart, we have full access the Highest attributes of Love; knowledge, wisdom, creativity, inspiration, enthusiasm, kindness, compassion and understanding.
Resting in the silence of the breath, in the silence of the moment, we can learn to befriend ourselves. To accept ourselves and our earthly body, exactly as we are. It is within this Silence we can practice letting go of the past, and in doing so we open to the healing capacity of Self-love which can then be offered to others. When we turn within, immersing in Silence, we open to the vast spaciousness of our own infinite awareness. All of our outside world experiences are processed here in our inner landscape. Here, within, we tend to the garden of our heart, watering the seeds of devotion and Self-love. Within our inner Temple we dust off the furniture in the room of our Soul, polishing here and there, decluttering. It is here within that we can discover the amazing boundless possibility of our human heart to be with it all, at times to even bear the unbearable. We experience our capacity to rest in Loving acceptance with ourselves and the world as it is, in every moment.
A wise man once told me that Unconditional Love is the song that renews itself from age to age, from moment to moment, breath to breath, person to person.
Consider from a place of wonderment, that we breathe and participate in the sustainment of Life. Our individual life is so important that we get to participate in the constant renewal of life, ultimately expressed as Love. As we understand photosynthesis, the exhale of the trees and plants is our inhale, and our exhale is the in breath of the trees and plants. A subtle dance that often goes unnoticed, the reciprocal exchange of carbon dioxide and oxygen can be another way we glimpse a Love that doesn’t seek to gain or take, it’s a Love that freely shares in the support of each other. We are inter-dependent and interconnected with nature and all of life. We participate literally in the continuum of Life and Love.
The great philosopher Alan Watts said, “Love is existence, and that Love is the unifying and organizing principle of the entire cosmos.” Imagine Love as the in-breath of a star, as it gathers elements from space, forms life, and in its last outbreath, exploding as a supernova, it spreads life creating elements to be gathered and born again as a planet and as our bodies and literally all matter and form on earth. Our bodies are literally made from the stars! All the qualities of the Creative principle of the building blocks of All of life; knowledge wisdom truth goodness beauty and love are truly, deeply, the everlasting essence of who we are. We are part of the ever-renewing pattern of life itself, which is Life emerging from Love.
We all have the capacity to learn to love unconditionally, because that is how you create peace and joy in your life. These are Soul attributes and the more we share unconditional love; the more we willingly participate in the renewal, the greater our capacity grows to receive.
We also practice, especially in times of distress and emotional upheaval, to re-mind our Self that we are more than our circumstances, conditions, and experiences. The Mystery, the Source of our own aliveness and the entire Universe is both transcendent and immanent. As it is often said, we are the microcosm of the macrocosm. From formlessness all matter appears as form, and all form returns to formlessness. Everything rises and falls, ebbs and flows. It is cosmic law.
Breath is the bridge between form and formlessness. Take a moment and breathe that in. We are all at once participants and recipients of Universal Creation and Harmony. The singular intelligence that creates and sustains All of life in the Unfathomable Immeasurable Universe, our planet, all of nature, is the same intelligence found within every atom and elements in our bodies.
The knowledge, wisdom, and perfection of Creation is also found within Presence, the Pure Awareness that inhabits our bodies. Through the act of being still, returning to silence, turning within, breathing in Thanksgiving, We contact this Presence not as something that comes and goes, it is more deeply felt as That which never comes and goes. We immerse in practice to experience this Presence as a state of Being, a steady state of constancy and equanimity.
Our daily practice can teach us patience, not a patience that implies waiting for an outcome, but a patience of learning to rest in this constancy, this singular creative intelligence we can experience as timeless and infinite Unconditional Love.
Each time we immerse in sacred breathing and meditation, we are extending love to our Self. We can choose to align with the attributes of Love internally, and allow our actions in the world to come from this embodied presence and love. Our practice of prayer and meditation is not a means to an end, its a way of life, it is the gift of participating in the Eternal now, joyously resting in our connectedness to All of Life.
Steadying ourselves patiently in this Loving constancy, can open us up to even deeper dimensions of Life itself.
Shaik Kabir Helminski writes “Through learning to Love we come to a perception of the deeper dimensions present in the real world. Love is no longer merely a form of attraction, nor is it some virtuous sentiment that improves the character. It is the cause of everything and the foundational essence of all of Life. And this includes Us. Wherever we find Love, it will lead us farther along the path of Return to the Source of Love.”
To close I offer a simple reminder. That with all the wonderful insights and contemplations that unfolded in this writing, for all the truths we consider and ponder, all of our evolutions in consciousness, remember, without breath none of this can occur. The eyes that see, the ears that hear, the tongue that tastes, the hands that feel and touch. The body to sit comfortably in a chair. Our entire life experiences, all of our aliveness, is gifted to us, and all of this occurs because of Life Giving Breath. Without it, there is no You or me. Honor your breath and the life it offers. Take time to be still and breathe joyfully in Thanksgiving. Breathe in Celebration, for Breath is your connection to the Whole, the All that Is, the One, the Source of all of Life.
Breathing Gratefully is sufficient enough. Silently inhale Thank you, exhale silently I love you. I assure you, if done wholeheartedly, your gratefulness will be felt and noticed.
It’s good to be in awe and gratefulness. Life is a Gift.
