Take a deep breath,
Breathe with the entire surface of your body.
Begin to notice where your body begins.
Notice where your body comes into contact with the atmosphere.
Notice where your body comes into contact with the bed of lichen beneath you.
And then send your breath,
Your energy,
Your consciousness,
Your being down into the surface below you.
And now just send yourself underneath yourself,
Just below the surface.
Feel yourself moving 10 centimeters below the surface of the earth,
Into the damp soil underneath the crust of the earth.
Breathe.
Feel the cool embrace of the soil.
Life pulses with quiet vitality.
Begin to dance a delicate choreography of decomposition and regeneration.
Feel your body expand now,
Like the roots of plants,
Tender and tenacious,
Threading their way through the rich loam,
Seeking sustenance and anchorage.
Notice the hushed cadence of the subterranean rhythm of life.
Take a breath,
And as you exhale,
Send your energy,
Your consciousness,
One meter deeper now,
Below the earth,
Into the dark,
Wet,
Fertile soil.
Feel yourself in this sanctuary of quiet resilience amongst the tumult of the world above.
Why so stiff?
Why so stiff?
Why so stiff?
Like a rock,
Which even eases up and softens once the lichen advances like a blanket.
Eventually,
It softens.
Softens.
Softens.
Soften.
Soften.
Allow the soil to begin to cover.
Seeds begin to germinate.
Plants begin to grow from the surface of your body now.
Become so soft and permeable,
You can no longer distinguish where one ends and the other begins.
Enjoy this great entanglement.
A thallus.
A symbiosis.
Allow a fractal pattern to emerge behind your eyelids now.
Infinitely complex and self-similar across all scales.
Repeat this simple process over and over until scale becomes immeasurable.
Everything wishes to intertwine.
Allow the idea of the individual to dissolve now.
Nothing is ever just one.
Let the number one be erased from your life now.
Take a deep breath,
And as you exhale,
Let the number one be forever erased from your life.
And from your memory.
Begin to remember all of the different ways to say we.
If you listen very carefully now,
You will hear something really very important.
In a moment,
I'm going to ask you to take a deep breath.
And when you do,
You will begin to recall something really very important.
Something that has long been forgotten.
Forgotten.
