Take a nice couple of deep breaths in your own rhythm.
Adjust your posture to be comfortable.
And come with me today on a journey to a wisp of smoke.
So imagine if you will that if you're outside and somebody's burning leaves or whatever,
You just happen to notice out of the corner of your eye there's a wisp of smoke.
It's not tiny but it's not large.
And it's by definition ephemeral.
It's just sifting through the air,
Morphing,
Shifting with the wind,
Changing shape,
About to disappear.
Imagine the wisp of smoke you would like to imagine.
Then now get perhaps really,
Really small and dive into that wisp of smoke.
While it's still here,
While it's not quite gone,
Then all of a sudden we're in the middle of the wisp of smoke and it's large because we're small.
In fact it's huge.
It's swirling around more quickly than we thought in some places,
More slowly than we thought in others as it eddies with the wind and the temperature and its substances.
When we reach out,
So to speak,
To touch this wisp of smoke,
And of course it's hard to do,
It swirls around our so-called hand,
Yet even smaller,
And we become a particle in the wisp of smoke,
Unimaginably small.
Go ahead,
If you haven't already,
And dive in.
Be that wisp of smoke.
And breathe it in.
It won't hurt you.
You are it.
And now you're wispy and ephemeral too.
And you're rising up and you're falling down all at the same time.
And yet your substance,
Your essence,
Comes from the earth itself.
Something produced you,
Carbonized you,
And as you eventually fall back to the earth,
Or dissipate into the atmosphere,
You're returning to the everlasting cycle.
Feel your connection now.
Back to the earth,
Into the atmosphere.
You are disappearing,
Not really.
Your changing form.
Let your consciousness drift back to the earth,
Into the air,
Wherever you'd like.
For while your form has changed,
Somehow you,
The observer,
Has not.
And as you settle,
Say,
Back into the earth,
To feed the roots of a hungry tree,
And take on new form,
You're still aware.
You're still breathing.
You're still a part of it all.
And so the cycle continues,
From the most apparently ephemeral,
To being in the ground itself.
Imagine all the wisps of smoke at any one point,
All around the world.
Hundreds of thousands,
Millions.
From a campfire,
From a smokestack,
From a car exhaust,
From a match,
From a volcano.
Thousands upon thousands of wisps of smoke,
Large,
Small,
Briefly,
Longer.
All feeding back into the earth itself,
Into its ecosystem.
Be those wisps of smoke,
Not just one,
But all.
Let your body float,
And disappear and reappear.
And feel the connection to all things,
Through the doorway of a wisp of smoke.
And when you're ready,
Give thanks,
Come back into the room,
And have a wonderful day.
