The breath that holds our history is the breath that also invites us to break free of it.
“Be like a tree and let the dead leaves drop.”- Rumi
In a meditation dream I’m trying to determine what my relation is to what is available. I associate the outbreath with the masculine and I see that the outbreath brings down an energy in the form of light. I remember that light and time are associated and that everything comes down through the outbreath from a still point that’s origin is essence.
In this coming down in the dream I see images on the breath. These images form the shape of what is to become. I liken this to what I remember that Buddhists call ‘shaping towards the Dharma,’ a concept that has to do with how fate is set. What comes down through the outbreath touches vibrations that come from prior lifetimes and it brings conditions that have been harbored and have become pent-up and held by our synapses.
In the dream this is represented by sound that has become concretized. On the inbreath things are brought in after which they can be disseminated on the outbreath, which becomes our actions.
Interpretation
This has me believing that our karma is the result of pent-up traumas carried by our synapses into form. Following this thought, I see that as our fate comes down through the outbreath and releases our karma, it becomes unseen again in the inbreath. I suppose upon considering this that we have a degree of Karma that is an associated amnesia, a part that plays out in the unseen.
This relates to time and to light. If time comes down on the outbreath and variables of light come in on the inbreath and Karma is pent up, then fate is in relation to the aliveness of the environment itself.
To give an example of how this plays out in our lives: if we don’t recognize our aliveness then we may say things like, “The oceans can absorb all the nuclear waste so we can dump it in the ocean.” This shows that we’re not recognizing aliveness. And this therefore determines our fate. But if we allow in new orientations, then we can shift our karma going forward.
When we look at the interval, the still point in which the inbreath becomes the outbreath with a quality of wonder, then a sense of blissful completion comes into view. Likewise, to focus on the interval can bring forward a feeling of frustration, and we may feel this in the longing at the end of the outbreath. In between is yet another state, it’s not quite at the still point and yet in the still point there is something that flashes forward that may reorient us towards spatiality.
In these meditation dreams I’m trying to understand the significance of the intervals and I recognize that they’re both extremely important in terms of fate and karma. I see this specially as an above and a below, an inner and an outer – all of which exist in the absolute and in a state of stillness. The cycles of our breath animate fate, karma, and dharma and bring things into being. This round-and-round is what we call our lived experience. To simplify it, the outbreath is time and the inbreath is the release of concrete sound in space, which returns us to essence.
When we lack this consciousness we are out of tune with time and space and this sets in motion what our mind senses perceive. These impressions are important. They may seal our fate.
Suggested Contemplations
Return to breathing with your focus on the intervals (the pause at the top of the inhale before the exhale, and the pause at the bottom of the exhale and before the inhale). As you do hold in mind the idea of fate and karma.
What does the breath tell you about the cycles of bringing action into being from the stillness?
What does the breath tell you about moving from stillness into action?
Consider how we can not perceive the point at which the breath turns from inhale to exhale and from exhale to inhale. It happens, but it’s imperceivable. Can you use this metaphor to blur the boundaries between action and stillness?
How do you feel that action and stillness relate in the lives we live on the earth?
How do action and stillness relate to your life?
“As in our waking state, real people and things enter our field of vision, so the dream images enter like another kind of reality into the field of consciousness of the dream ego. We do not feel we are producing the dreams; instead it is as if the dreams came to us. They are not subject to our control but obey their laws. They are obviously autonomous psychic complexes which form themselves out of their own material. We do not know the source of their motives, and we therefore say that dreams come from the unconscious. In saying this, we assume that there are independent psychic complexes which elude our conscious control and come and go under their own laws.” -Carl Jung
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