Monday, August 21: Slowing and Breathing

BREATHING AND SLOWING
We are in too much of a rush and it is killing us. And on the way to killing us, it is aging us immensely. By packing in too many things to do and then rushing from one to the other we keep ourselves in a state of stress and anxiety. We keep our attention glued to the future. We not only don’t savor the present, we don’t even know that it is existing.

Which is grim news, really, because it means we don’t even realize that we are existing.

In the present we are in a timeless state. We can’t really get too worked up unless there is real danger, a lion is approaching, the house is on fire, someone is trying to hit us. In those situations, we act. But walking down a street, we can’t do anything but walk down a street if we are in the present, because any words to compare this walk with anything else are not there. There are no words on the street, except for street signs and graffiti and things stapled to telephone poles. We are just walking down a street. There is no problem.

When there is no problem we can put our attention on reality, the step on our feet on the ground, the sounds of trees and wind and cars and people and birds and our own footsteps. We can see what we see and we don’t label it or compare it to other things we’ve seen. We just observe and experience. Life is what it is.

One breath at a time, we slow our breathing, we slow our aging, we heal ourselves and begin to get younger because we are timeless again, as we were when we were children, young and happy to be alive and the minute was sufficient unto itself.

Yes.