The simplest thing is the hardest thing. That thing? Being with the breath, consistently. Sometimes thoughts are like rapids that carry us along with them — hopes, fears, loneliness, excitement, depression — in short, the ups and downs of life are what our thoughts allot to us.

But they can feel so real. The body can consequently feel so raw, rigid, and constricted, that it’s hard to come up for air and find respite within it and the moment. Despite this, respite is found in the breath and its port of call; the body.

Being with the breath is a balm for our bodies and psyche. The breath mirrors a universal pattern of expansion, abiding, and contraction. Human suffering is caused by one-sidedness; we want the sun but not the rain, we want pleasure and not pain, we want to have something but give nothing. Our thought cycles exert a gravitational pull to them that mirrors and re-cycles these attachments.

Out of this dynamic, humanity has heaped up a considerable lot of debt in the form of inequality, resentment, mental illness, ecological imbalance, wars, and so on. What does the dynamics of the world and universe have to do with the breath as an antidote to suffering? It’s this:

• Being in the breath brings us into our body
• Breathing tends to a natural balance while attached-thought brings imbalance; from this, bodies become dissociated, rigid, and tense; this feeds into physical and mental illnesses.
• These thoughts start to dysregulate our bodies in the form of anxiety, highs and lows, cravings, and so on, as we zip between the past and future through the lenses of attachments. This drives the compulsive thinking that seeps into bodily dysregulation over time.
• By being in the body, we neutralise the effect of thoughts and start bringing ourselves back into balance, our body then begins to respond to the reality of the present rather than the attachments of thought.
• When we’re in balance: our needs feel fulfilled, happiness and connection become more unconditional in nature, and it’s much easier to be open and responsive to the needs of each situation from moment to moment. Reality is met as ‘now’ in its dynamic unfolding, as opposed to being met through through the need to restore a past state or experience.
• Because of this, life also begins to be lived consciously through the most continuous and fundamental gradient of experience; the ever-present but ever-changing now. This then collapses the gap between reality as it is, versus how it is desired to be perceived.

It is a mystery and yet dead-obvious that presence connects us to both the ongoing transmission of reality and peace of mind.

We can understand that while our suffering and hopes are real in the sense of being actual contents of experience, these are created through a deep-seated misalignment with reality. Self-consciousness is a double-edged sword.

That is why Adam and Eve are said to have been banished from the garden of Eden after biting of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil (one sidedness, duality). After eating the fruit, followed their shame and the tribulations of human existence. In a sense, we really are the sons and daughters of the two.

Being with the breath does not just neutralise negativity, it opens a door to an inner space of emotions and experiences that many do not believe are possible. As those doors are opened, one finds they are not separate anymore, that they are more than thought, more than just a material body. They are a multi-levelled aspect within the fluid continuum of existence and on a meaningful journey as a co-creator of their individual and collective life.

As Jesus put it, “the kingdom of god is within”, and there is no exclusion of any person from entry into that inner kingdom. That kingdom is not preserved for Christians.

Guilt, shame, apathy, nihilism, despair, depression, and anxiety are all things that are realities, but they are contracted limitations of what we really are, and what we can be as a cherished expression of life in the cosmos.

If you’re going through a hard time, all of this will pass. Breathe and have faith, protect your flame! You know deep down what’s right and good for you, you just need to listen to yourself.

You just have to breathe. We cant control everything, but we have choices, and choices are founded on awareness. Awareness is gained by presence, and so we return to that simplest thing, making time to breathe.

Make time to focus on meditation and your life will change, however haltingly. You will find it’s enjoyable and does provide that respite from the turbulence that we’ve gotten accustomed to. Don’t set expectations on how well you should do it; like all new habits, the real key is to just do it, and not to dig up the seeds you are planting too soon.

I hope this can be of help. Until next time.

Kyle