POEM: The World’s Shortest Meditation

Exhale
Meditate on Mother
Asking only
What have you done for me lately?

is difficult.  is exponentially more difficult for each additional minute attempted.  The chattering monkeys of the interrupt accessing the offered by deep practice.  Many meditation techniques are based on accepting these interruptions for what they are and moving gently past them.

The meditation offered in this poem is surely not an all-purpose formula for effective meditation practice.  Still, centering on breath as both a process and content of meditation offers quick access to the inherent in our very existence.  The phrase “waiting to exhale” is reversed here, replaced with “waiting to inhale.”  “Waiting to exhale,” in popular usage, can be a long and winding road to either letting go or relaxing into a situation.  “Waiting to inhale,” is grounded in one of the most powerful and immediate forces in our , the need to breathe.  This force will easily overpower us if we somehow feel a desire to resist.  This overwhelming invitation to appreciate such a force is built into our very human existence. Breathing has been a perennial focus in meditation practice because of the somewhat odd that such a basic life function, necessary to sustain our life over the horizon of seconds, is directly subject to our willful .  This interface between conscious and unconscious forces is ripe for fruitful meditation practice, offering a bridge between conscious and unconscious realities.  Why we have direct willful over breathing escapes me.  When is our conscious direction of our breathing superior to the unconscious regulation our bodies provide?  I suppose if you have an infantile desire to seek a terroristic ransom from a parent by threatening to turn blue from lack of oxygen, it may come in handy.  Nevertheless, even in this case, unconscious forces of a more benevolent and enlightened will come to the rescue by robbing the most willful of their and return them to a greater bodily .

Postmodern suffers from chronic disconnection from and experiences of .  This is wrapped up in our physical and technological infrastructure which isolates us from regular immersion in unspoiled nature, and from an ideological infrastructure of a distant or nonexistent , isolating ourselves from the moment by moment and close-to-one's- miracles of life in such experiences as breathing.  Of course, ever-wanting belief and routinely intervene to relegate nature, the of a distant or nonexistent , to a mundane , of which taking for granite, our stoney heads and hearts fail to consciously access ever- life forces which quietly and persistently answer the question: what have you done for me lately?

May you be overwhelmed by wonder and in the presents offered by the of mysteries of life.

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