A friend of mine and I had lunch the other day. We have been friends and activists together for many years. We were talking about many various things, especially around our acceptance of getting older. She and I are also folks who pay attention to our inner worlds, and notice how we are affected by the ongoing events of the outer world.
It has been, from what we could see, a rough year for many people. It seems that we have been shaken to the core of our beliefs, and have had to question all we are, have been, and wish to be. She was speaking of a young friend who’d recently said that it feels like we are in a place where we have let out all the air in our lungs after what have been strong and fierce battles on many fronts, and that it feels as if we are waiting to inhale.
When I was in my time of learning at Naropa, we were taught meditation practice as a part of our studies in Transpersonal Psychology. During the meditation, our teachers would point out, as part of our breathing in, and breathing out, that there is a moment they call–”the gap”. It is when we have consciously let all of the air out of our lungs, and there are these very few seconds when we were asked to “rest in the gap” before taking the next breath.
It was always amazing to me how often in my life I’d never even thought to stop and think about and feel that part of the experience of breathing. I noticed right away, how there is often a sort of desire to get on with the next breath, and a sort of impatience with the noticing. It felt as if the next breath was a sort of relief when we were finally able to take it. I just tried this exercise while writing this, and noticed that while in that time of the gap, I could actually feel and hear my heart beating.
Those of us who have been really busy over the recent years, feel an actual need to get on with the next thing. To sit and just rest in this gap feels a little foreign. Yet, there is a sort of comfort in it, a time of gathering strength, a time of checking in with self and allowing self to get back into a rhythm that feels natural and strong. As elders, we are not the ones who are expected to remain forever on the front lines, but to step back and rest, say the prayers, call forth the ancestors and pray, and pray. It seems that in the gap, there is plenty of space for prayer, and opening a space for the ancestors to answer…