Hello,
My name is Nicho and this is,
From Dust and Breath,
A meditation on elemental belonging,
An embodied practice of sacred non-duality,
Remembering we are not apart from the earth,
But of it.
Let us begin.
As we move forth in this practice,
Know that this is a meditation on elemental belonging,
A quiet turning towards the truth that you are not separate from nature,
You are nature.
We begin not with theory,
But with presence,
Not with the abstract,
But with the breath,
With the body,
With the ground beneath you.
So find a comfortable place to rest,
Let your spine settle,
Let your weight drop into the earth,
And let your breath begin to slow.
You do not need to do anything.
You are already part of this world.
You are of this world.
You are the world.
In Genesis 3.
19,
God reminds us that we came from the dust upon which we walk,
And at the end of our lives we return to that dust.
This is a potent reminder of interconnectivity,
And I propose that this verse becomes the prayer that acts as the ground of this practice.
For dust thou art,
And unto dust shalt thou return.
For dust thou art,
And unto dust shalt thou return.
For dust thou art,
And unto dust shalt thou return.
Let those words be a blessing,
Not an ending,
But a remembering.
Begin now to notice your breath.
Inhale and exhale.
Feel how the air moves through you,
How breath is not yours but shared.
You are breathing with the trees,
With the oceans,
With the animals.
There is no line between you and the world.
You are of this world,
Formed by her soil,
Shaped by her waters,
Sustained by her light.
Now,
Let your imagination open.
Feel the earth holding you,
Beneath you,
Within you.
Visualize your body as made of the elements.
Your bones,
Ancient stone.
Your blood,
Flowing river.
Your breath,
Wild wind.
Your warmth,
Sacred fire.
Your skin,
The skin of the earth itself.
There is no humanity versus nature.
There is only life,
Moving through different forms,
And you are one of those forms.
I am dust and breath.
I am earth and spirit.
I belong here.
Let those words settle into the cells of your body.
I am dust and breath.
I am earth and spirit.
I belong here.
Why do we love the world so deeply?
Why do we grieve when earth suffers?
Because we are not strangers to it.
We are not caretakers watching from above.
We are it.
When a tree burns,
Something in us aches.
When an animal starves,
We feel it in our chest.
Not out of charity,
But because we are kin.
Love is recognition.
And we love the earth because it is us.
This is not poetry.
This is a truth of being.
This is the truth of what we are.
Now release these words.
Let go of the images.
Rest in stillness.
Let breath continue.
Let earth continue holding you.
Let yourself be without edges,
Without story,
Without separation.
Feel your body again.
Your breath.
The ground beneath you.
Wiggle your fingers and toes.
Stretch if you need.
And when you open your eyes,
Carry this knowing with you.
I am of the earth.
I am made of dust and breath.
And I am not alone.
Carrying with you this deeply emotional experience of non-duality with earth.
I invite you to listen to the following words from David Hinton's Wild Mind Wild Earth with a wide open heart.
Before intention and choice.
Before ideas and understanding and everything we think we know about ourselves.
We love this world around us.
How can that be?
How can we love all this when our cultural assumptions tell us in so many ways that we humans are fundamentally other than nature?
And that nature's only real value is how it supports our well-being?
There's no love in that.
Doesn't love require kindred natures?
And what is kinship with wild earth but wild mind?
How else could we feel the exhilarating awe when a majestic orca whale leaps joyfully?
Yes,
Leaps joyfully out of the water.
Twisting spectacularly as it crashes back down.
Playing or celebrating or defiantly shouting,
I'm here.
I'm me.
To the world.
To rivals.
To family.
And how could we feel delight at orcas birthing and nurturing their young?
Or grief that southern resident orcas of the northwest coast are slowly starving to death.
Anger and guilt.
That it's because of us.
The noise of industrial ship traffic disrupting the echolocation they need to locate prey.
Polluted seawater.
Chinook salmon.
Their traditional prey decimated by dammed rivers and overfishing and environmental toxins.
We feel despair that because so much stress those orcas rarely give birth anymore.
That the first baby in years died soon after birth and the mother carried it on her nose for 17 days above water.
Hoping it would breathe.
Hoping it would somehow come back to life.
Others sometimes took over the task to let the mother rest.
But eventually,
Mother and child both vanished.
Heartbreaking.
Devastating.
We love this world.
This living planet.
We feel joy when it thrives.
And grief when it suffers and dies.
I am of the earth.
I am made of dust and breath.
And I am not alone.
May this awareness soften how you walk.
May it deepen how you care.
And may it remind you.
The earth is not outside of you.
You are earth remembering itself.
