26. Conclusion
... enter the breathing that is more than your own.
— Rainer Maria Rilke
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Show me the path to enlightenment.
It just moved.
Breath is always moving.
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Most of each day we're taking breaths. Rarely do we slow ourselves enough to enter and receive a breath. This next breath can be entered as one might enter a sanctuary.
Entering. AND. Receiving.
Yet, there remains one additional step: As I enter and receive, I also open to being received. I open to being welcomed. The
Silence deeper than silence is Presence. One always waiting and always welcoming me home. It is here, in this quiet affection (one so many of us have no clue is possible) that I finally know peace.
I am lovable and loved, after all.
We all are.
Tenderness offered, tenderness finally received.
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I've never been one who was particularly good at "living in the now." Even so, I've gradually built a capacity, during random moments each day, to be-with one tender breath (or two, or seven).
Entering this breath I receive this offered tenderness: deeper than thought, deeper than negative certainty; a sanctuary hidden-in-this-moment.
I'm less focused on my awareness of each breath and increasingly focused on reverence and gratitude for each breath. The shift is away from "being aware" or "self-soothing" (often just another version of "it's up to me") and simply toward entering and receiving and being received.
I now awaken each morning, pour a cup of tea, light a candle, and sit on my couch in Silence.
Gone are the days of a more formal sitting posture (I continue to sit respectfully, yet comfortably). I say a brief prayer that admits my ongoing need, slow my breathing, allowing it to deepen just a bit, and enter the Tenderness I cannot own. Sometimes I silently breathe the word “Tender” or “Abba” or "Amma" or "Home." Sometimes I simply breathe.
Presence beyond all names,
I need more deeply than I can know. I ask to be given what I most need.
Please be with any thought or memory that tries to convince me I’m all alone.
Please heal what I have no power to heal.
Please fill me with your Tenderness.
Amen.
Words, briefly. Then silence.
Mother Teresa, when asked by an interviewer what she says to God when she prays answered: "I don't say anything. I just listen." When the interviewer asked what she hears God say, Mother Teresa replied: "God doesn't say anything. God just listens. And if you can't understand that I can't explain it to you."
Moments of meeting. Moments of shared tenderness. Nothing special. Absolutely essential.
... entering the Love that is more than our own.
I’m coming to trust this Presence we're each hardwired to know. My lens of learned absence ("forever empty") no longer runs my day. I have another option. This universe is different and kinder and more generous than my procedurally imbedded worldview would have ever believed.
Too good to be true? Or too true, simple, and hidden-in-plain-sight to fit my previously limited understanding of good?
In every moment, I am either agreeing with my procedural history or breathing within communion. So it is for many of us.
Standing outside a door, we believe we must find the key or, even worse, we are certain that no key exists.
The door was never locked.
Opening happens ... with this tender breath.
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This need.
This breath.
This presence.
Only This.
Not only is the hidden heart of our universe deeply tender, it is surprisingly personal.
Absence.
Presence.
Presence in absence.
It’s what we all want, in the end, to be held, merely to be held, to be kissed (not necessarily with the lips, for every touching is a kind of kiss). Yes, it’s what we all want, in the end, not to be worshipped, not to be admired, not to be famous, not to be feared... but simply to be held. -Alden Nowlan
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