Thursday, September 17, 2020

The sweetness of breath and the wrong doing...

 















Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
 and rightdoing is a field.
 I will meet you there. 

When the soul lies down in that grass, 
the world is too full to talk about.
                                                         ~ Rumi

In my case, Rumi's "wrongdoing" was my body, the shingles ached, the rash burned, and the body dominated as I was driving to an appointment.  The clinic doctor called it, in a two-second look, "shingles." It was drowning me and drowning the moment. I keep writing about how we are not our bodies. Yet, not that day. My body was me and certainly was keeping me from experiencing "the field." Gratitudes, enjoying the beauty of the trees and lakes I was passing was lost. 

The body ached -- breathing was thin air going in and thin air going out. Everything else was an effort. Then, a thought, I have a choice -- let the body do me in or just breathe, which takes no effort I was doing it unconsciously, anyway. I decided on the latter. (By that time, I was parked outside the office waiting for the receptionist to call me in.)

After a few minutes, I began to wake up to the fact, I was beginning to feel a little more than thin air. My breath contained an aliveness. I searched for a word, oh yes, sweetness, a seemingly funny little word for what I was feeling. Then drawing the air in slower, with a long draw as if I was pulling a thick liquid of magic up through a straw -- yes, this is the sweetness.  Then I let it out slowly savoring this soul-ness moving in and out of my chest. And the more I breathed the sweeter it became. Then my mind went back to my body of aches and burn, my discomforts were all still there but I wasn't. I was escaping into Rumi's "field."

A thought flickered, "Oh, this is how I would like to take my last breaths, as breathing is the last thing I will do on this earth plane when making my transition. 

I reflected later, this sweetness of breath goes into my body, nurtures the sweetness in myself (which I can hardly call mine,) and renders a quietness. This breathing maintains me, does something inside me. I know what I am seeking is seeking me. This intake of air is not an object or a thing I do. This breath is breathing me as I am breathing it. It is more than me. It comes to me. I give it back. It is not what it is, but who it is. 
 
Indeed, breathing does take one out beyond "rightdoing and wrongdoing", beyond the ache and the burn to the field of love and loveliness. My soul-self says, "In this place that's where I want to meet, My Darling. I want to meet You there -- beyond perception, death, beyond this reality of flesh and bone -- out there..."