Have you ever thought about who you want to be, the kind of person you are moment to moment, not just the long term creation? If you have (and if you are like me), you have noticed how much of a gap there is between the ideal and the daily reality.
Fortunately, life is filled with beginnings and each beginning presents opportunities to change and to grow in our awareness and service. There is natural rhythm of the seasons, evident as we shift from summer to autumn to winter, but there are man-made rhythms, too: the New Year (with its resolutions), a new job (with its new people, new locale, and new responsibilities), a new home (with its new spaces and neighbors), or a new project or goal. Each presents us with new opportunities to be more aware and to act more consciously than we had before. As a high school teacher, for example, I have a fresh start each September: new students to interact with and often new courses to teach. Each August I take time to re-envision what my teaching and classroom environment will be like, how to approach things in a way which will better support the students and help them grow as people and, indirectly, who I will be as a teacher and person. Bringing the vision to reality, however, is an ongoing challenge.
We all face a similar challenge: closing the gap between what we intend to be and who we actually are day by day. To the newness we bring our old selves and our accumulated patterns and reactions. Somewhere in September, for example, I usually find myself overwhelmed with the logistics and sheer number of students (six sets of thirty-some students clamoring for attention or simply being teenagers); the vision suffers, a potential casualty of real life, and I need to resuscitate it. Often each day, when asked the same question for the fifth time within a few minutes or faced with other routine, real life experiences, I find myself falling back upon old, familiar patterns, and again know I need to resuscitate the vision. While each day in prayer and meditation I have the opportunity to re-envision who I am and the quality of my interactions, daily life continues to challenge and clearly shows that there is a gap (and sometimes a canyon) between what I envision and what really is. The daily, ongoing challenge is, indeed, closing the gap.
Faced with real life (the life beyond the serenity of our meditation and prayer), how can we really be as present as we would like? How can we be more conscious in our interactions and reactions? Our breath is always with us and is a resource to use to become more present.
One of the things to strive for is increased awareness, such as an awareness of our breath at various times. As in mediation when you notice that you are thinking rather than doing the mantra (and are thereby empowered to return to the mantra), an awareness that the breath is being held or has become shallow is an opportunity to step back from the reflexive response of being annoyed or put upon or harried, a chance to step back into the present moment and back into your divinity.
The challenge seems to be to remembering what can be (and what we want to be), and not simply to handle whatever is presented to us. The challenge is to be proactive rather than reactive. Breath work is an amazing resource for this challenge.
By having regular rebirths (either with a professional rebirther or by doing exchanges with a friend), we have the opportunity to step back and see the bigger picture of our lives; the daily details and demands are seen in perspective and do not loom so prominently. Seeing the bigger picture again can be reassuring and revitalizing, but we still need daily support. By making conscious breathing part of our daily life, we have the opportunity to recenter ourselves, to step back into the vision of who and what we want to be.
Acknowledging that perfection is not attainable, I know that we can continue to grow towards the ideal. Coming back to our vision and coming back to our breath will support us in both our service and growth.