| Selection - Essentials of Divine Breathing |
The Prayerful Nature of Breathing
(from chapter 2) |
When our breathing stops, our divine life leaves our physical body. Breathing is the ultimate power that allows life to keep streaming through our physical being. Yet very few people are truly aware of this. Most of us go on living and breathing without giving much thought to the profound meaning that our breathing holds.
Breathing is not simply the physical process of inhaling and exhaling a gaseous substance called air. Breathing is the bond that connects our physical body with the great divine universe. It is the prayer of life that keeps this body joined with the universal divine mind.
Just like prayer, breathing keeps us connected with the universal divine. This is why I say that breathing and prayer are one and the same thing, and that all human beings are constantly praying, even though they may not be aware of it. By means of our breathing, we human beings are at all times firmly connected with heaven.
And yet, if we are breathing without an awareness of this divine connection, and without knowing that breathing is prayer, our life is not able to flow with perfect happiness and freedom. In other words, we are not fully alive. We are only half alive. This unawareness of the prayerful nature of our breathing is what keeps us from walking straight ahead along our own true path in life.
Because we are not aware of our own prayer, we become confused and wander this way and that, creating side roads that lead us toward unhappiness.
From now on, as each of us gains a sense of the splendor and sanctity of our own breathing and our own prayer, one by one we will begin to live in freedom, unaffected by illness, unhappiness, worry, or distress. As our breathing merges us with the great divine mind, we experience the reality of our divine nature and can freely draw out our unlimited potential.
During the 21st century, as more and more of us start to consciously experience the wonder of our breathing, we will be able to transcend the various frameworks that we have been living in—frameworks that we created based on our standardized thinking and our cultural, sectarian, and philosophical backgrounds. This is because breathing constitutes our own complete, individual spiritual practice. When we entrust ourselves to the guidance of our breathing and our own true prayer, and breathe in the way that we are originally meant to do, we will be able to evolve and create a truly free, radiant way of living.
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