Breath
June 9th, 2010 → 3:55 pm @ Tom
Breath lives loser to us than anything else. To breathe better is to live better.
Full and healthy breath cycles effortlessly through four phases: inhale / retain / exhale / rest. The profitable use of inner life information follows the same stages.
Reading, audio and video, classes and discussion are among the methods for inhaling information. Contemplation, experimentation and making lists of your connections, these are practical ways to retain the information for awhile.
Then, unlike conventional worldly information that gets mentally stored, inner life information has one purpose — to cleanse and open. Attempts to store the information lead to competitive comparison, top heaviness and rigid religious structures. This third stage, exhalation, is perhaps best described as an intelligent willingness to not know. Happiness is Beingness, the bubbling spring mentioned above. After all, no isolated self exists that can Know, since true Knowing flows freely without reference to apparent selves and boundaries.
The fourth stage of the cycle, rest, includes simply noticing the silence, and at other times it includes recreation. J. Krishnamurti, for example, surprised people when they heard he loved to read detective novels. Vernon Howard enjoyed reading history for recreation. Gurdjieff relished telling and listening to jokes while taking a Turkish bath.
By Tom Russell
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