In this meditation,
You will feel the true extent of our living body,
How it begins in the cells and extends to the whole cosmos.
Let's begin.
Feeling into your posture,
Feeling how the body is supported by the earth.
Where are the contact points?
And allowing the body to settle just a little more deeply,
Dropping down closer to the earth,
Into the embrace of this planet that brought the body into being.
Feeling how the earth is solid,
Supportive,
Stable and reliable.
And how the body appreciates that stability,
That safety,
That support,
Letting go into the embrace of the earth.
With the body settled,
We can feel its living,
Moving experience.
Feel the breath as the body draws in air from the earth's atmosphere and then releases air back to the earth.
We don't need to remember to breathe.
Our body knows how and has always known how.
Deep in its networks of cells and fluids,
There is an intelligence that monitors the levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide,
The whole profile of chemistry.
And it breathes to maintain that chemistry,
That oxygen,
That carbon dioxide at appropriate levels.
Wise body,
Wise cells,
Letting that wisdom breathe.
Feeling how the body adjusts the depth and pace of breathing,
Moment by moment,
Breath by breath.
Throughout the body and within the brain,
There are circuits of cells that are guiding the movements that bring air in and release air out of this dear living body.
Feeling the reliability and supportiveness of that wise breathing.
Feeling the breath.
For the muscles to move the air in and out of this dear body,
There must be sources of energy.
There must have been food eaten and digested.
Part of the wisdom of this body is that very digestion of food.
What we eat,
Grown from the earth,
Broken down in our digestive system into chemicals the body can use for all of its functions,
For breathing,
For knowing.
So the air moving in this wise body comes from the plants and the plankton around the globe.
The oxygen released by photosynthesis is now entering this body with each inhalation.
And the food also from photosynthesis,
Perhaps with other steps along the way.
The whole web of a food chain,
The whole web of life,
Providing the energy for breathing.
The motive force that keeps the muscles active,
The air flowing in and out.
So the oxygen in the breath and the movement of the body with breathing,
Both connecting us to the plants of the earth,
To photosynthesis,
To the sun.
All this life powered by that beautiful star in the sky,
Bright and warm,
We call the sun.
The warmth in the body is the warmth of that star.
Transported across millions of miles of space,
Flowing through the chemistry of life and photosynthesis and the chemistry of digestion.
And all the people that helped along the way to bring the food to this body,
The farmers,
The harvesters,
The packagers and transporters and vendors.
The people that prepared recipes or designed cookware.
The energy that was used to prepare the food for eating,
Perhaps dependent on some utility network,
Organized and maintained by people.
And the rainfall and the soil organisms.
So as this body breathes,
All of those people,
All of those weather patterns,
All of those organisms are contributing,
Have contributed to each breath,
Including this one now.
How much goes into keeping the body at the right temperature,
The warmth of the sun,
The clothing we wear,
The shelters we inhabit.
How much energy from the sun,
Ultimately from the sun,
How much work to prepare the clothing and the shelter,
The work of human hands,
The resources from the earth,
The warm and temperate atmosphere.
All of that is part two of this breath now.
And each of us became this organism that we are,
This human mammalian life form through a process of fertilization where a single sperm cell merged with an egg cell and the cell divided and divided and divided.
And all that complex anatomy,
That beautiful physiology that makes a human mammalian life form occurred within the uterus of our mother,
Her womb.
All that life brought to being.
That is part of this breath right now too.
And all the life forms around us,
Human and non-human,
With their own process of development,
Their own way of coming into being,
Taking shape,
Of growing.
Life is large,
Much larger than this individual body,
Wrapping itself around the earth,
Drawing energy from the sun.
The individual body can be felt.
We think of it as local,
Here and now,
But that's just a thought.
Life is much larger than a thought.
Feeling how large the body seems from the inside.
Noticing how from the inside,
If we're honest,
There's no end to the body.
We just feel aliveness with no beginning and no end right now.
The support of all the people who helped us as we grew as children,
Entered life as young adults and continued.
The people that taught,
Supported,
Guided,
Corrected,
And maybe even challenged us.
So many people that fed us,
Housed us,
Befriended us,
Fell in love with us,
Depended on us,
Enjoyed us.
Easy to forget,
Easy to concentrate on the hardship and the hurt.
But the truth goes beyond the difficulty to a whole web of support from people,
From animals,
From plants,
From stars.
Feeling all that support as a warm fragrance of aliveness.
It doesn't need to make sense to the thinking mind.
Just feeling how the body is large and enwrapped with support.
Somewhere out there are galaxies,
Our own and countless others.
We can't feel them directly.
We've seen photos.
We don't need to form a thought about them or even much of an image.
But that sense of mystery and expanse.
When we feel all of that support going all the way out to the galaxies and all the way down to our human cells and the molecules and energies within them.
When we allow the body to present itself in that way in its true vast intelligence,
Then our daily problems seem rather small.
Even our biggest concerns may shrink a bit when we feel beyond.
Feeling how the body is a web of life,
An ecosphere,
A social network,
A community of cells and organs,
The beneficiary of millions of years of evolution.
So much living preceded and surrounds this moment.
Feeling the support of the earth below,
The warmth of the room or the space,
The clothing,
The movement of breathing,
The energy that breathes.
Feeling it all.
Letting go of our usual idea of a body as a little thing.
Vulnerable.
And allowing the body to speak in this other way of its vastness,
Its interconnectedness and its ancient wisdom.
Letting the body be all of that.
And then there's just a simple breath.
Air moving in from the dear atmosphere of the earth and air moving out.
Each breath a miracle and a cosmos.
And each breath just a breath.
Ordinary and familiar.
Isn't it interesting how something so familiar can be so mysterious?
How something so local can be so infinite?
How something so personal can be so universal?
On and on and on.
And as we come to the end of this time of meditation and as we come to the end of this time of meditation,
We can retain this sense of spaciousness and connection as we wiggle our fingers and toes.
Open our eyes.
Pick up the pace of breathing.
And do whatever comes next.
