Quite a few ‘being-breathers’ have experienced the ah-ha moment of yes, actually I am being breathed.
Even without experiencing it, the mind can accept that there is indeed something that breathes me, and the most easily accepted identity of it is the autonomic nervous system. On the other hand, there seems to be some uncertainty about the ‘breathe me’ command. Although it is explained in fussy detail in the Broody book, it is not easy to wrap one’s mind around it… quite rightly, because it doesn’t belong with the mind.
It really makes no sense logically - if I am being-breathed why should I simultaneously be telling that-which-breathes-me to ‘breathe me’? But if I want to experience more of my subtle reality, I have to accept that the subtle operates by a different kind of logic. To touch it requires suspension of ‘normal’ logic…
I feel it is necessary to revisit this point in our present context of godtrix intensification, of the creeping sense of uncertainty. More of us need to keep ourselves in ‘certainty’ of a different kind, more rooted in our subtle self, as waves of intense challenge and change, loss and grief, crash around and upon us. That certainty dwells in the true self that expresses itself through and in the physical. In other words, we humans can re-train our ability to inhabit two ‘places’ that have been made artificially dissociated.
What I call the natural human mystic and the natural human esoteric are intrinsic ‘parts’ of us - our subtle self, so much ‘larger’ than our perceived self, and so intimately inhabiting our perceived self. Dumbed down, buried, repressed, forgotten… but still there, waiting to be taken out of dormancy.
The non-doing way that is not ‘just being’ or ‘just being breathed’ is the most potent fast-track path I have encountered, to experience the subtle greater self that actually runs the show. To experience it without leaving the physical behind, but in the harmonized complementarity of physical and non-physical. That experience, regularly cultivated, banishes the kind of loneliness that afflicts so many souls living in the status quo. It also cuts across all the simplistically complicated notions about this planet being an illusion, a simulation, a prison, about these bodies as brutish impositions on our glorious souls (of which most people seem to have only a rather abstract idea).
The realization that we are being breathed is an essential first step, but no more than a first step. The big nuance is in the non-doing cultivation of being breathed, which is a seemingly ‘passive’ thing, in a non-passive flavor of receptivity (what Broody calls the cultivation of ‘awareness-presence’). Such cultivation leads to the experience of breath as both physical and beyond physical, as is expressed openly by the word ‘spirit’ that shares its etymology with ‘respiration’.
The command ‘breathe me’ is the key that activates the forgotten bond between physical breath and its origin in the non-physical. It puts you in charge of the non-doing (paradoxical though this may seem), simply by being fully present in being-breathed.
‘Breathe me’ is to acknowledge the action of a force that is not you yet is vital to you, physically of course but also in the underlying non-physical. Not only that, it is you taking ownership of being breathed. Ownership, and thus responsibility, in a subtle way. Not ownership in terms of controlling or manipulating the breath, since being-breathed is the opposite of controlling it. Not ownership of what-breathes-you, since none of us can own a beyond-human spirit-force. Ownership of your side of the partnership that this force has always been upholding with you ever so loyally, throughout your life. Responsibility for the human side of the partnership involves the ability to respond to the invitations that the spirit-force extends, into the unseen realms beyond the physical breath (those invitations take you far beyond what your imagination can offer, by the way).
It breathes you whether you tell it to do so or not - of course. But it is activated, making its presence as reality perceptible, by the soft command ‘breathe me’. Indeed while it unfailingly supports your physical life, it also responds to ‘the boss’, a.k.a. you, whose life you are living.
The paradox, perhaps, is that you have to let it take charge for you to have ownership… by commanding it (not asking it) to take charge! Somehow this reminds me of how things can harmonize in the mutual adjustments of a human couple (not fortuitously, the cultivation of being-breathed can also balance the dynamics of a human couple).
Broody specifies in fastidious detail the style of the command ‘breathe me’ - ever so soft, as subtle as possible, for it to attune ‘vibrationally’ to the subtle force that breathes you. ‘Breathe me’ as an utterance or thought of the ego-mind is useless. ‘Breathe me’ as the subtle thought-form of the command speaks directly to the force that breathes you, in a ‘language’ that it ‘understands’. Cultivating that subtle vibration at the root of words is to cultivate your sensitivity to your own subtle self as experiential reality.
When the subtle becomes a reality as real as the physical, it is life-changing. All it takes is the suspension of ‘normal’ logic and a gentle curiosity for what is already there.
What purr-fect timing enna, as I have just finished broody blue.
In your exposition and expounding of the breathe-me, oh, so soft, command somewhere ‘back there’ , attention and focus has never dwelt so subtly in what feels invisible at my back, between shoulder blades; almost as if I’ve cultivated 360° vision of a gentle, relaxed kind, and not the steamy yogic laser passage of trying to ‘grab’ hold of a new technique.
It is indeed paradoxical in how I have felt a merging of this new command of non-doing life, and further, an indelible anchor amidst the collapsing scenery where not a single person is beyond the bullying death throes of human interference. In breathe-me, you offer an immense mooring to the magic of this human ocean of delight, so historically polluted by regimes, intent on anything other than safe havens amidst the raging storm of transition.
All my hats off to you, the messenger of true human joy within reach of those with eyes, ears and hearts to ponder. Thank you.
Lovely Enna, really. I hope you don't mind me posting my favorite poem, a "Sophianic" poem by Ibn Arabi. I think the experience of this poem relates.
Listen, O dearly Beloved!
I am the reality of the world, the center of the circumference,
I am the parts and the whole.
I am the will established between Heaven and Earth,
I have created perception in you only in order to be the object of my perception.
If then you perceive me, you perceive yourself.
But you cannot perceive me through yourself.
It is through my eyes that you see me and see yourself,
Through your eyes you cannot see me.
Dearly beloved!
I have called you so often and you have not heard me.
I have shown myself to you so often and you have not seen me.
I have made myself fragrance so often, and you have not smelled me.
Savorous food, and you have not tasted me.
Why cannot you reach me through the object you touch
Or breathe me through sweet perfumes?
Why do you not see me? Why do you not hear me?
Why? Why? Why?
For you my delights surpass all other delights,
And the pleasure I procure you surpasses all other pleasures.
For you I am preferable to all other good things,
I am Beauty, I am Grace.
Love me, love me alone.
Love yourself in me, in me alone.
Attach yourself to me,
No one is more inward than I.
Others love you for their own sakes,
I love you for yourself.
And you, you flee from me.
Dearly Beloved!
You cannot treat me fairly,
For if you approach me,
It is because I have approached you.
I am nearer to you than yourself,
Than your soul, than your breath.
Who among creatures
would treat you as I do?
I am jealous of you over you,
I want you to belong to no other,
Not even to yourself.
Be mine, be for me as you are in me,
Though you are not even aware of it.
Dearly beloved!
Let us go toward union.
And if we find the road
That leads to separation,
We will destroy separation.
Let us go hand in hand.
Let us enter the presence of Truth.
Let it be our judge
And imprint its seal upon our union
For ever.
ibn Arabi