On breathing and space

"Even a stone...could show you the way back to God, to the Source, to yourself. When you look at it or hold it and let it be without imposing a word or mental label on it, a sense of awe, of wonder, arises within you. Its essence silently communicates itself to you and reflects your own essence back to you."
-- Eckhart Tolle, Oneness With All Life

Fueled by my experience with the spirit doll the day before, I spent much of yesterday restoring energy to the little office (which used to be my laundry room) where my computer now lives. I put on some wonderful flute music (Desert Spirit), lit some incense (something I rarely do), and spent my time clearing surfaces, putting things away, and arranging what are essentially sacred objects around the space. And breathing: breathing new life into the space, and allowing it to breathe new life into me.

I found a little metallic bag, given me long ago in some circumstance I no longer remember, with a stack of sayings in it. The one I pulled from the stack said "Make Music," and since, in the cleaning, a number of recorders appeared, given to me over 20 years ago, I took the one whose range was closest to the music and played along with the CD, allowing the notes to breathe through me. I loved the vibration of that; it's been a long time since I felt that.

I'm nearing the end of Tolle's book now, and he's been talking a lot about space -- the space within me, but also the space within all things -- even a stone. "That 'empty space'," says Tolle, "is life in its fullness, the unmanifested Source out of which all manifestation flows. The traditional word for that Source is God." So I'm -- and actually, I suppose this flows out of the intention from last week, about stopping to breathe during the day -- attempting, when I stop to breathe, to feel the space inside me, and inside the things around me. I think of all the cells in me, and in the oak desk below my keyboard, and of the space inside those cells echoing with the presence of Holiness.

And when I do that, it feels like I'm breathing pure oxygen, scented with salt and pine; the oxygen I find when I am on my favorite island, in this space pictured here.

It was lovely; one of those rare times when doing and being coincide. I'm hoping I can carry that coincidence into other parts of my life.

And isn't that cool; that the root word for those coincidences, which we all love, is "coincide," as in doing and being coinciding?

Hmmm.