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Just Let Yourself Be Breathed

Dennis Lewis — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 21:31:52 +0000

Your breathing can calm your mind, gladden your heart, and relax your body. Let yourself be breathed now by something much larger than your little self. No effort! Just intimate sensation as you follow the exhalations and inhalations of the life-force occurring by themselves in the expanding spaciousness of presence. Let yourself come to rest in that presence.

The Spaciousness of the Air You Breathe

Dennis Lewis — Mon, 02 May 2011 23:46:38 +0000

Sense your body becoming the spaciousness of the air you breathe. Let each out-breath return you to your own inherent emptiness.

There is Nowhere to Go to Awaken

Dennis Lewis — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 05:05:54 +0000

There is nowhere to go to awaken–just here and now. Sense your breathing, the life force. Let it open you to your fundamental openness and spaciousness.

The Beauty & Spaciousness of the Sky

Dennis Lewis — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 18:10:36 +0000

The Beauty & Spaciousness of the Sky

A cast of hawks in flight attacked an eagle who had just soared upward with a small rodent. One of them stole it from him. As they flew away fighting over the food, the eagle, riding the currents of the wind, looked around and thought, “you may have the food, but I have the beauty and spaciousness and mystery of the sky. I am free.”

The Inner Pause

Dennis Lewis — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 19:56:28 +0000

Dennis Lewis

Do this, don’t do that, let go, believe in yourself, repeat this mantra, learn this teaching, study with that teacher, pray this way or that, try this spiritual exercise, don’t express your anger, ponder yet another Zen story, realize you are the Buddha within, breathe better, flow with the Tao, don’t get lost in your beliefs, remember yourself, remember God–all the things that your mind tells you (and the list in endless) that you should or should not do for your spiritual well-being, all your favorite concepts, techniques, and stories.

Can you just pause inwardly for a moment in the midst of all this and experience the miraculous nowness, the silence and spaciousness, that is always here, wherever you are, just waiting for your attention? If not, that’s okay too. The inner pause, the inner stop, is not just one more technique, one more thing to do; it is a portal into the mystery of who you are.

The Silence at the Heart of Being

Dennis Lewis — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 13:58:29 +0000

Dennis Lewis

All the great mystical traditions speak of a miraculous silence, or emptiness, that lies at the heart of being, at the heart of the kaleidoscope of life. These traditions refer to this silence not as an absence but rather as a fullness that is beyond description, beyond the reach of human thought, a fullness that, miraculously, is the very substance of our universe.

Modern science, too, seems to evoke this idea when it speaks of an almost infinite number of spinning galaxies in silent, expanding space or the dazzling dance of particles and waves that emerge out of the space/time continuum-where matter dissolves into energy, and energy into shifting configurations of something unknown.

Though it is impossible to describe this resounding silence, this over-flowing emptiness, the great traditions tell us that it is possible to experience it, here and now, as our own fundamental being, as our “Self,” as “I Am.” They also tell us that this experience, which is more aptly defined as a “non-experience,” is somehow both the beginning and the end of our possible spiritual evolution. They tell us that by returning to this primordial “source,” this psycho-spiritual “absolute,” we can be transformed and realize our highest potentials in the very midst of our everyday lives and of the life force that propels it.

To be sure, this return, though it requires an on-going, earnest search, takes place instantaneously. Every moment that we are awake and aware gives us a new opportunity to “listen” for this inner silence that somehow defines what we are in our very essence. To begin to live consciously thus means to turn toward our own inwardness, where the world of silence, of being, can come alive and can give substance and meaning to our words, actions, and perceptions.

The attempt to turn toward this silence is both a psychological and a metaphysical act. Psychological because it demands that we begin to free ourselves from our constant identification with the thoughts, feelings, sensations, goals, perceptions, and so on that somehow define our sense of ourselves; and metaphysical because it takes us into unchartered, perhaps even transcendent, territory, where we can experience an entirely new perspective, an expanded, more global sense of ourselves.

The effort to hear and attune ourselves to this inner silence can work magic in our lives: for this silence can not only heal us and give our lives meaning, but, perhaps even more importantly, it can bring us to the direct perception of who we really are. The tension, the polarity, created by our search for this silence and our need for outward manifestation can open up a new vision of ourselves, and with it an entirely new arena for self-study: our own apparent duality.

On the one side is the “call” of our inner being, fed by the depths of silence that somehow represent our innermost possibilities; on the other side is our constant urge toward manifestation, in which our thoughts, feelings, and sensations work to propel us outward toward the world around us. It is this seeming separation between the inner and the outer that gives us a new understanding of what it means to be whole, autonomous beings. For the inward call toward being and the outward urge toward manifestation complement and complete each other. The movement inward unchecked by the demand for outward manifestation turns into imagination and dreaming. And outward manifestation without an inner search is empty and simply creates confusion in both ourselves and the world. It is the silence encompassing both of these directions that can bring these two movements into harmony and put us into touch with a new, global awareness that embraces everything in our lives. From the perspective of this awareness, there is no duality; there is only the direct, non-dual perception of wholeness.

What can help bring us to this silence? It all begins with self-inquiry, self-interrogation. It is only when we are deeply in question that we become momentarily free from our conditioning and self-image and are open to the presence of silence–and truth–in ourselves. Self-inquiry may begin with a mental question such as “Who am I?”, but to have any real action on us the question mark must also reach into our heart and body. When it does, when we really need to understand, our questioning evokes a profound sense of spaciousness, an opening into silence itself.

There are many opportunities in the course of our daily lives to return to this silence, for the silence is always there at the heart of things. Through direct observation it is possible to see that everything that takes place in our lives is simply a superimposition over this silence. It is important, however, that we realize this silence is not itself an object, a thing, but is rather the very foundation of our being, the ultimate perceiver of all things. When listening occurs, it is silence that listens.

There are certain times and conditions when it is more possible to be attuned to this silence. Early in the morning just after waking up or at night just before falling asleep are both times when the silence can be experienced. Our conditioning has either not yet been put into motion or is in the process of relinquishing control of our organism, and our attention, if we allow it, can actually unfold into the silence.

Another situation in which it is possible to experience this silence is between two thoughts or activities, when the mind or the body is less active. To become open to the silence, however, requires that we consciously allow this gap to remain, not trying to fill it with some meaning or action as we habitually do. We can also return to this silence between two breaths, especially between the out-breath and the in-breath. When we practice this often we suddenly discover that the silence has always been there, just waiting for our return.

Finally, it is important to remember that this silence is not simply a psychological or physiological phenomenon, but is rather the essence, the background, of our being. The great spiritual traditions have spoken of this silence in their own way as God, Brahma, the Ultimate Perceiver, Nirvana, Wu Chi, the Absolute, and so on. What is important is not how it is spoken of, of course, but rather the recognition that the world of silence, which lies at the heart of our life force, gives birth to everything that we know and are. To lose touch with this world is to divorce ourselves from our own essential being–and to divorce the world itself from its own source. For it is silence that creates, and it is silence that perceives its creation.

The Boundless Breath: A Gateway Into Our Unconditioned Nature

Dennis Lewis — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 19:19:42 +0000

Dennis Sitting with Raven Circling Above

Here is a special meditation of self-inquiry, in which you will explore your breath as a gateway into yourself. Through practice of this meditation, you will have an opportunity to receive a glimpse, a taste, a sense of your inner being, your unconditioned nature.

Sit Comfortably in Silence

Begin by sitting toward the front of a firm chair, with your spine straight but supple. You can, of course, sit cross legged on a cushion if that is comfortable for you. However you sit, make sure your hips are higher than your knees.

Close your eyes, and fold your hands together in your lap or put them palm down on your knees. Rock gently forward and backward on your “sit bones” until you find a comfortable yet erect posture (if you are sitting on a chair, check your feet to be sure they are relaxed and flat on the floor). Just sit in silence for a few minutes, simply being present to yourself as you are.

Engage Your Thinking with the Question “Who am I?”

Now, with your thought, ask yourself who you are. Don’t allow yourself to be taken by any particular answer. Simply ask the question “who am I?” and observe and let go of any answers as they appear. Ponder this question with your mind for at least five minutes.

Engage Your Feelings with the Question “Who am I?”

Now ask “who am I?” again, but this time, see if you can ask with your feelings. See if you can feel your whole life all at once: “Who am I?” “What’s it all about?” Allow these questions to open your heart and free you from the fixed attitudes you have about yourself and the world. Work in this way for at least five minutes.

Engage Your Sensation with the Question “Who am I?”

Now let the whole sensation of your body enter your awareness, including a sensation of your breathing. Follow your breath as it moves from the tip of your nose, through your nasal passages, into your throat and trachea, and down into your lungs. Sense how the tissues of your body seem to open like flowers as you inhale and close as you exhale. Don’t try to “do” anything. Just follow, sense, and watch. Observe in an intimate way any thoughts or feelings that take place, but don’t lose yourself in them. Continue to sense your body and follow your breathing like this for at least five more minutes. Then ask “who am I?” again, this time with your entire sensation. Let the question touch every cell of your body. Work in this way for at least five minutes.

A Gateway Into Our Unconditioned Nature

As you continue to follow your breathing, notice the pause that occurs naturally at the end of your out-breath. Include this pause in your overall awareness of yourself. The great mystical traditions have spoken of this pause, this space, between the out-breath and the in-breath as a gateway into our unconditioned nature, into our underlying reality as pure consciousness. It is in this boundless space between exhalation and inhalation, a space that is always there beneath, around, and within our thoughts, feelings and sensations, that we can more readily begin to let go of everything we believe we know about ourselves and open ourselves to the unknown.

Continue to follow your breathing, paying special attention to the space between exhalation and inhalation. Sense this space as kind of “resting place,” a place to give up your self-image, your identity, and simply come to rest in yourself. Don’t try to force anything. Just watch and sense.

As your breathing continues, and as this space begins to expand into a sense of global consciousness, let yourself become one with it. See how your thoughts, sensations, feelings, and breath are all contained within consciousness itself. Feel the miracle of yourself here and now, alive in a vast ocean of space and presence—alive in the vast ocean of the unknown.

When You’re Ready to Finish

When you’re ready to stop, let go of any experiences you may have just had and return to the whole sensation of your body and the movement of your breath from the tip of your nose down into your lungs. Then stop following your breath and just sense yourself sitting there in silence. When you’re ready, gradually open your eyes, get up, and return to your so-called ordinary life.

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Copyright 2009 by Dennis Lewis. You can find expanded versions of this practice in my book Free Your Breath, Free Your Life, and in my audio program Natural Breathing (where I personally guide you through the practice).

Busyness and Leisure: An Experiment in Spacious Presence

Dennis Lewis — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 17:56:37 +0000

Dennis Lewis

Everywhere we look we find ourselves and others in a rush, consumed with busyness, oblivious to the mystery and miracle of the breath of life, of being alive now and here. I am not, of course, talking about the time and effort required for “right livelihood,” the honorable work we must do for the survival and genuine satisfaction of ourselves, our families, and our communities. No, I am talking about the self-manufactured busyness that buffers us from ourselves and enables us to live without either consciousness or conscience.

Perhaps we assume that being constantly busy is not only necessary, but is also a sign to others of our importance. Or perhaps we assume that the devil does indeed find mischief for idle hands. Whatever our assumptions, however, it is often our very busyness, even the busyness of “waking up” or “creating a soul,” that keeps us turning on the wheel of unnecessary thought and action.

Who among us, for instance, can eat breakfast or lunch without trying to solve some problem or without rushing through the meal to get on with the busyness of our life? (Many of us even eat with our laptops or smart phones hard at work next to us.) Who among us is not frequently caught up in an effort to escape from boredom or discomfort or to hurry into the future chasing some dream or other? Who among us can be content with the actual demands and perceptions of now or of the unbidden leisure, a kind of inner and outer “stop,” that appears when, for whatever reason, we are able to let go of something that is unnecessary, especially the anxious thoughts that usually drive us?

To experience such leisure in our lives is to discover, both internally and externally, an empty, unoccupied space where we can unfold, live, and act without hurry. It is in this unoccupied space that we can perhaps reflect for the eternity of now on what is truly significant in our lives.

An Experiment in Breath Awareness and Spacious Presence

Next time you notice that you are about to be seduced by your need to be busy, try an experiment. Simply stop whatever you are doing (if it is possible to do so safely) and pay attention to, follow, your breathing for two or three minutes. Notice, sense, how on the in-breath your lungs are gently filled with air from the space around you, and how on the out-breath that air, no longer necessary, is gently released back into the space around you. Then notice the slight pause at the end of the out-breath. That pause is a portal into your own inner spaciousness. Sense the spaciousness that is revealed between the out-breath and the in-breath. Let yourself become one with this spaciousness as you observe the in-breath and out-breath continue to take place on their own. (To go deeper into the significance of the pause at the end of the exhalation, listen to my Natural Breathing audio program, especially The Unconditioned Breath practice at the end of the third CD. It is advisable, of course, to work with the entire program before trying this final practice. The Boundless Breath practice in Free Your Breath, Free Your Life will also be very helpful.)

When you have finished the formal experiment (which should also be practiced in a formal meditation setting), and when you find yourself back in the flow of action and busyness, experiment again in a spontaneous way. Pay attention every so often to the pause after the out-breath. Allow that pause–and the sense of spacious presence that it can bring–to act on you each time you are aware of it. And as the sense of spacious presence manifests more often, notice how you can be as busy as necessary, but with no hurry, no rush.

Transmission of the Flame, by Jean Klein

Dennis Lewis — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 23:17:48 +0000

I studied with Advaita master Jean Klein for approximately three years both in the United States and England. I took part not just in weekend intensives in New York and Berkeley and other locations, but also in extensive retreats in Joshua Tree, CA, as well as in England.

People frequently ask me about the esoteric form of yoga Jean Klein taught and the role of the body in his non-dual teachings. The following book review explores some of the reasons that Jean believed it was important to undertake the subtle, energy-oriented bodywork that he brought us.

Transmission of the Flame, by Jean Klein

Jean Klein, the remarkable Advaita Vedanta master, who was also a medical doctor and accomplished violinist, died on February 22, 1998. Those who are searching for truth and meaning and who did not have an opportunity to meet him and work with him would do well to read some or all of his many wonderful books.

In his book Transmission of the Flame, for instance, we have the opportunity to relive in ourselves the illuminating dialogues that took place between Jean Klein and his students during seminars in Holland, America, England, and France in 1988-89.
But these are no ordinary dialogues. As we listen closely, and as we try to understand, we see that it is finally only through living in a deep, silent “not knowing” that we can awaken to our fundamental nature, to the “I am” of pure consciousness.

Until the publication of this book, little was known publicly about Jean Klein’s history and awakening. This book, however, includes a fascinating prologue in which he discusses certain key events of his life, including some meetings with his teacher in India.

Jean Klein

Although Advaita has to do with the realization that we are not the mind, body, and senses, that we are the consciousness the lies behind, at the core of Jean Klein’s teaching one find great emphasis on both the body and the “energy body,” or “vital body.” Jean Klein tells us in the prologue why he emphasized so much this work with what we are not. After returning from India, he says, “It became apparent, through meeting people, that identification with what we are not is confirmed and reinforced by contraction on the psychosomatic level. The I-concept is only a contraction on the level of the body-mind. It has no more reality than a bad habit. It is a defense against being nobody. … In getting to know the body-mind, one can discover more clearly the nature of the identification, and so let it go. The relaxed body is a relaxed mind. In a relaxed body and mind you are open to receiving, available, welcoming, open to the openness. The relaxed, light, energetic, sattvic body-mind are a near expression of your real nature.”

Later, in response to a question about the “vital body,” Jean Klein says “When you close your eyes for a moment and detect the subtle body, you will realize that your body is not limited by the formation of the skin, of the bone-muscle structure. You will feel yourself expanded. I myself have no idea or sensation of my body being limited. Whether my eyes are open or closed, I am everywhere, expanded in space.”

In this beautiful book, Jean Klein takes us beyond lineages, beyond techniques, and beyond our self-image to the underlying reality of global consciousness and being.

To further explore Jean’s approach to ”bodywork, I am including here something that Jean said in the July 1991 issue (Number 4) of his wonderful journal “Listening,” in the section “Body Approach” (you can find a compilation of 10 issues of the journal in The Book of Listening):

“The body is an object of our awareness; it is sensed; it takes place in our awareness. The body is in us, but we are not in the body. If we were we could not be aware of it. …”

“When we do the bodywork the sensation is felt and explored in our awareness. There is space between ‘I’ and the sensation. You are no longer stuck to it, the object. The goal of the bodywork is to make us aware of this space between the ‘I’ and the object, a space that is habitually cramped. This space between the object and ‘I’ is still in duality, but there comes a moment when the space is felt as our real nature, we abide in it, and the object, the sensation, appears in it.”

The Smile of Spaciousness

Dennis Lewis — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 20:32:32 +0000

Dennis Lewis

We have been given the miraculous gift of life. Pause for a moment and allow yourself to smile inwardly in response to this miracle. Breathe for several minutes through your smile into your whole body, especially your heart and belly. Let the warm sensation of your smiling awareness and breath touch, fill, and awaken every cell of your being until you feel a vast sense of spaciousness and silence. Let yourself become one with this spaciousness and silence that you are and have always been.