Practice 2

Breath

Congratulations, you have made it to the second practice in the meditative teachings!

As you continue to advance through the practices, I will help gradually prepare you as the expansion of your awareness reveals beautiful new states of perception called awakened presence.

This state is sometimes called Self-Realization and is not just the state of ‘no thought’, it is a completely different perception of reality where one goes beyond the conceptualizations of mind altogether.

In this state, everything has returned to a radiantly clear state of pure egoless awareness that has nothing to do with the dualistic perception that typically panics to judge, analyze, assume, or just be overwhelmed by incessant, needless over-thinking.

It is the state that is spoken about by philosophers, seers, sages, and saints since the dawn of humanity, written about more than any other subject in the world and the single topic that has been consistently perpetuated throughout history; it is that amazing.

Human beings are born with the capacity to delve deep into the undercurrent of the dense physical reality, we have just been looking in the wrong direction for a long time. And when we try to look within, typically we are not really sure what it is we are trying to accomplish so much of our spiritual efforts get wasted in frustration and confusion.

So in order to have a revelation of that magnitude, certain adjustments must be made to the areas of our internal process that we are currently, to some degree, unconscious of. This process, like all authentic paths which are universal in nature, are used for the sole purpose of you discovering more about you, both in the areas you are conscious of and most importantly, the areas you are not.

Those unconscious areas are largely responsible for creating the life you experience, so it is important that we uncover them while we have this fleeting opportunity during our short lives here on Earth.

So now that we have established our ability to sit through the body’s reactionary states while maintaining a comfortable but straight seated posture, we can now begin to focus on our breath, which is vital in influencing the foundation of our meditative states.

Proficiency in breath control is critical to influencing the nervous system, balancing the body’s energies and correcting imperfections within the system that directly impacts one’s state of mind.

In the previous practice we simply sat maintaining awareness of the body, which may seem very simple and somewhat unimportant, but in truth it is absolutely vital to moving on to the breathing phase of the meditative practice.

If one is unable to sit with inward-pointing awareness exclusively on the body itself, noticing the various cycles of rhythms, energies, and conflict it goes through, then turning that focus away from the body and exclusively on the breath in a meaningful way will be impossible.

This is because without already having established themselves in overcoming body’s distractions and habitual corrections, pure concentration on the breath will be limited and ineffective.

Without controlling the breathing process that influences the internal energies that affect our nervous system and its connected mind-stream, it will be near impossible to reach the deepest states of awareness needed to overcome the habitual tendencies that veil our pure state of awakened presence.

The nervous system and its fluctuating states impact our mental undulations causing us to jump all over the place from calm to panic in moments seemingly without reason. This is the cause of much chronic illness and the reason most of us can become so unconscious and reactionary to situations rather than consistently clear and lucid.

In fact later we will call these undulating states Rhythms and pinpoint exactly where our adjustments need to be made in our unconscious process that hinders our clear presence perception.

As these various Rhythms cycle through our day-to-day lives, they cause our physiology, emotional and mental bodies to unconsciously leap from one focus to another.

Now imagine over several months or years of life how this unconscious reactionary process of leaping from one object to another reinforces all kinds of negative habitual patterns. This happens because we simply do not understand our own process and its unconscious tendencies.

To prepare for our next practice, we will examine how the breath influences our nervous system and how our nervous system influences our mental states.

If we can learn to use our breath consciously and deliberately in very specific ways, we can position our nervous system so that it helps reduce the incessant ego mind-stream for the purpose of creating a calm body and calm mind.

This calming of body and mind sets the perfect platform for withdrawing our senses for the sake of maintaining pure focused awareness on whatever aspect of ourselves we wish to unite with and know.

Creating these foundations are critical for our future work where we use energy awareness to illuminate our unconscious habit patterns where desire seems to be originated but somehow never gets fulfilled no matter what we do. All of this lures us closer and closer to realizing our essential nature through direct experience.

Whenever fear or panic strikes, our breathing pattern becomes short and shallow, mostly contained within the chest. This breathing pattern is triggered by the sympathetic nervous system and it is part of the ‘fight or flight’ reaction which stimulates the body to prepare for whatever emergency is happening. It actually draws blood form the stomach and other vital organs and starts dispersing it within the parts of the body that it needs most, like the limbs and the heart, lungs, and parts of the brain.

This type of breathing is not healthy to maintain for long periods of time because it reduces the time we spend in the opposite state, the vital parasympathetic state which helps with the rest and recuperation and other important processes within the body like digestion.

Unfortunately, many people experience this sympathetic state much more than they should in today’s society.

Because of the nature of our lives, our work stress, relationship dramas, societal pressure, family issues, threats of war, scarcity of food and water or other material goods the undercurrents of aggression, frustration, anxiety, fear, panic, depression, and tension sit just under the surface of our moment-to-moment states of being.

These powerful influences prevent the body from fully entering the parasympathetic state where we can relax, heal, and enjoy in a balanced way. In fact, the parasympathetic nervous system is known as the ‘rest and digest’ because it simulates relaxation, digestion, calmness, arousal, peaceful mind, gentle joyful emotions, courage, and more.

By activating this phase of your nervous system, you also activate your body’s endocannabinoid system, which regulates your stress hormones, pain response, inflammation response, immune system, sense of anxiety, and a whole host of whole-body repair and relief.

Living in a focus that unbalances the nervous system is one of the main reasons people repeatedly run to food, drugs, alcohol, marijuana, music, sex, money, control, knowledge, and other pleasures that force their bodies into a state of relaxation temporarily. This focus is what we will term the Outward-Pointed Focus—a focus that neglects the body’s wisdom (intuition) and constant flow of important emotional and energetic states. With outward-pointed focus, we are primarily focused on thinking linearly, solving problems, seeking for external solutions, judging, and clinging to external circumstances to create our happiness. This creates stress and an inner neglectful suffering that desperately wants to be relieved/fulfilled.

Ingrained stresses control and influence our lives, our perceptions, our physiology, and our mental states much more than we really understand, and the society is a constant source for the perpetuation of that state because of the media which drives fears, governments which drive dramas and wars, and the local society which divides people into groups, one against the other.

The good news is that we have the ability to learn how to deliberately take back control of our breathing patterns to help us relax mental thought-stream and calm the body for the sake of overall health and the eventual discovery of our Essential Nature.

This brings us to the practice.