By Michael Doko Hatchett
How do you feel when you are sitting on the beach looking out over the ocean? What is stirred within you when you see that eagle gliding high in the empty cloudless sky? How about that time when you sat very quietly and wordlessly and took in the view of the mountain ranges from up high?
Maybe Thich Nhat Hanh has got it just right when he says:
"I have arrived. I am home. In the here. In the now. I am solid. I am free. In the ultimate I dwell."
Feeling connected to 'Big Stuff' is crucial for our mental, emotional and physical health. Slowly breathing in the big beautiful stuff of life aligns us and puts us back in touch with what we sense is not only 'inconceivably large' within us, but also with what is 'unbreakable'. Anyone who knows me knows I have a love of talking about how within us we have not only broken bits, but also unbroken bits, but also something hard to put into words, something that is sensed as being unbreakable. It is a sense of something timeless and so vast that it cannot be taken in by the intellect. It is like the element of space that surrounds us and moves through us; it cannot be shattered, shaken, broken, or made small by the vicissitudes of life. Truly sensing this is the beginning of an extraordinary healing journey. But despite this grand nature, what we sense within us as we are looking out over the ocean, is intimate, so intimate in fact that it feels more like 'me' than anything else ever has. So this is not some airy-fairy wishful thinking. Once sensed, we may in fact feel more 'down-to-Earth' than we ever have! Once sensed it brings this same feeling of 'at-home-ness' to the energies that orchestrate our wellbeing. The Pranas within are soothed and calmed and centred upon a clear purpose of ongoing deepening into their key places.
So yes, skies and oceans are great! But we can't always take them in on the train, or lie under them or upon them as we take care of our daily emails. So what is always available? Can you guess...? It's your breath of course. More precisely it is the breath free from ideas, concepts and fixations, that embodies all the oceans and skies in the world. Do you know your breath? Would you like to? Would you like to see how it can care for you? Please know, within the breath lies the biggest and most caring space of all.
Take care,
Doko
