Sound and Circle of Breath

There are infinite paths to truth. Each one of us has our own direct path.  After decades practicing in the templates of ancient spiritual traditions, I noticed the direct path in my breath.

Anatomically and spiritually my heart is nestled between my lungs. My lungs are like wings with the capacity to carry me directly to center. In any moment the center is where we stand. The center of our essential oneness with everything is a possibility. Each breath moves from micro time and space to the emergence of matter, through to the expansive universe and beyond, then back within. If there was a Big Bang it lives in every breath.

What never ceases to amaze me is that beyond a certain threshold of expanded awareness, beyond the bliss of illuminated presence there is nothing. A radiant, alive and quiet no thing. This “aliveness” is not conceptual. For 20 years I’ve wondered how to write about it. Creating a “concept”, packaging it into words, 1 definition, feels like the quantum field collapsing from the infinite ocean into 1 seashell on the shore. As I have heard a few teachers say, the words are pointers. The sign post on the highway is not the town, the google map is not the people you will meet, the air you will breath, the sights you will see and the feelings that will rearrange your being.

I observe daily three centers of my breathing self: earth/body, heart/mind and heart/spirit. Acupuncture practitioners are trained to listen to at least 3 pulses in the body. I had a teacher who listened to 12. I am not an acupuncturist but I learned from his experience, and the pointers of his words, to recognize these pulses as subtle breaths. Each organ system breathes. Each meridian breathes. Each point on the meridian breathes. He laughed as he said ‘every place is a point’. In my days as a modern dancer, I experienced every cell of my body breathing. I felt the different tissues, the bones, the tendons, the fluids as different flows of breath. Like all of the musicians in a big band, the breaths in our body express the song of us. And through breath we are connected to the song of nature, the song of our culture, the world, the quantum realm, the spirit of life, the breaths of the entire cosmos.

Having learned some ancient original sounds as “mantras” I feel the sound as a vibration. The vibrational waves meet in my breath on many levels. First there is the level of the sound shape in my mouth, tongue, throat, diaphragm. Then there is the word meeting the tissues of this body as they breathe. The meeting is like the waves coming to shore. The sound is a vibrational match, a bridge and a creation to different fields of reality. The English language has it’s unique qualities as mantra. Because our is a “thinking” society, the language has a separating structural sound form. Most of the sounds don’t even penetrate very far back into the tissues of the throat and chest. Our rational minds are educated to break things apart to understand them. This is one kind of knowledge. The sounds of ancient scriptures in their original languages have a different unifying structure. Instead of breaking things apart, many sounds unify inherent qualities of humanness with qualities of nature in many orders of being. Knowledge opens by vibrational connection. Sound moves on breath.

I came to Circle of Breath after years of repetition of ancient sounds (through prayer and mantra) and listening. The moment my awareness opened was a moment of total surrender. It was not a glamorous meditative moment. I was quite ill.  I couldn’t speak, could barely breathe and was in and out of sleep. Through prayer I was connected to the heart of my teacher. While in a half dream state I was shown the circle of my breath from the source to me. Something relaxed into what was breathing me.It felt like angels but they were not personified beings. They were like living wisps of light supporting my life breath. I was just amazed, wonderfully astonished while outwardly being superbly sick. I didn’t laugh but I was aware of my sense of humor and my sense of gratitude.

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