Another Breath

So much has happened since I last blogged that I'm not sure where to begin. Perhaps with the meditation that I learned while attending Schumacher College in Totnes,
Devon, England. Close your eyes...relax and still your body...quiet your mind...bring your mind and body together by focusing on your breath...know that this breath connects you to all living things...we all share the same breath.

If you've ever watched the movie "The Matrix" you'll remember the scene where you can see all the naked human bodies are linked up to an enormous machine so that their energy can fuel the machine, while their brains are being fed an entirely different reality. Because we can wander and dream at will and believe that we are "free", this image is terrifying to us. It's a rather graphic, painful scene when the lead character is “freed”.

There is nothing I love better than to wander freely in the forest finding tasty berries to fill my pail. The pleasure of drinking water from a cold spring on a hot day tastes like nothing else in the universe. I need only to look at trees and see the pattern of my lungs in the branches to know that I am intimately connected. And it doesn’t matter what style of clothes I wear, how many degrees or how much money I earn, I am as naked as the next in my need for these basic things: food, water, breath.

And so we are plugged in, not by a prong-like extension cord at the back of our neck, but by something as effortless as breathing, tasting, drinking. And because it is effortless we forget that it is important. And as other things become more important: money, power, status symbols, we forget that tenuous connection, perhaps believing that one day, there will be a machine that can save us.

My Love Song to Gaia

It's hard to know exactly where I end and you begin
I try to focus on each breath, and let the light enter in
There's an ebb and flow between us, sometimes we give, sometimes we take
And in the pushing and the pulling, there's a magic we create.

Reaching in, I find your spirit
Reaching out, I touch my heart
I should have known in all this chaos
We never really came apart
It's the comings and the goings
That sometimes make me feel alone
But I'm learning how to find you
Everywhere I go...