The 9 Breaths: Breath 2

Main points from Introduction: https://niume.com/post/264747; and Breath 1: https://niume.com/post/265632

* Shiva is the Indian God of ‘transformation.’ His techniques were inspiration for the Buddha’s enlightenment, and they can be for you too.

*Tantra = unconscious transformation. No so not need to do any changing. be exactly as you are.

* Your breath is the bridge between your body and the universe. ‘You’ are not required to breathe – it happens in spite of you – so simply watch it as if you are watching the breath of someone else.

*Noticing the gap between the down (in) breath and the up (out) breath will open the doors to the ‘Kingdom of the Spirit.’

 



In Breath 1, you noticed by watching that your breath moves in a perfect circle and the down (in) and up (out) breaths are two halves of one complete breath.

You also noticed by watching and staying exactly with the movement of the breath, neither ahead or behind it, that within that circular movement there is a ‘gap’ or ‘turn’ from down to up at the bottom of the breath, and from up to down at the top of the breath.

In Breath 2, we will watch this ‘turn’ more closely.

 

 



 

The Earth’s breath becomes part of the body when it is entering you and leaving you, but when it turns from down to up and up to down then it is no-body, no-mind.

A good analogy for this turning is a car, motorbike or electric bicycle. A motor-driven vehicle has gears, low and high, hill-climbing-hill-descending, etc. The turning point of your breath is like neutral on your gear stick. Neutral has to be passed through to reach all the gears.

 



The human mechanism is extraordinary, cutting edge, miraculous, at its peak. It is composed of many gears: sleep gear, anger gear, smiling gear, laughing gear, etc.

As you change into a new gear, your transmission must pass through neutral. Perhaps the best example is sleeping. As you prepare to sleep, there is a gap between waking and falling into sleep. There is a turning point which you can never catch – you are awake and then suddenly you are asleep and watching your dreams!

In this gap, you are neither body, nor mind, nor mechanism. You are pure energy or existence – the energy of the Universe.

 



 

As you experiment with this type of awareness of your breathing, you will notice that moving breath is connected to mind, and if your breath stops for some reason, then your mind stops.

Our breathing is conditioned to be plugged into the electric current of mind, so breathing and thinking have become connected. But if you unplug from that habitual connection, then the thinking ‘monkey’ mind stops.

 


Shiva says:

As breath turns from down to up, and again as breath curves from up to down – through both these turns, realize!



 

 

You can take complete control of your car with these moments of awareness! You can take control of your 70 million cells, your 70 million connectors to the universe. You can realize 100% of your potential in this way!

You have opened the door to the Kingdom of Spirit if only a crack, for a split second!

 

Inspiration: Please let this notion swim around you during the day ahead to prepare you for Breath 3 tomorrow.

Your body is divided into two: the periphery which we know well because we are always looking outside through our physical eyes; and the centre or core which we do not know well. To touch our core we need to close our physical eyes and open our spiritual eyes inside.

 

 

Images courtesy of megapixyl.com and Linden Thorp