Hawaii is known as paradise and it IS. A visit to the these islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean can change lives, yet, for so many people, the thought of a trip to these islands is a distant dream, so out of reach to potential, that they cannot fathom getting here.
Hawaii has always given me breathing space. The essence of who I am in my world is 'simple aloha here and now'. 'Alo' means space or place, while 'ha' means breath. My interpretation of 'Aloha' has always been 'my breath goes with you'. Yesterday, on a cultural trip, I learned about the space for breath...or, as I have simply embraced it... 'breathing space'.
Fire requires air to live. That means that, in order, to fuel my life and my expression of my life through my body, I DO require air. Fire does require air for combustion. That is a known fact. Interestingly enough, I have also become aware of just how often I have held my own breath, especially (for me) on the out breath, so that it has served to ground or bury my fire. It is also, interesting to me that the exhalation is what triggers the next inhalation; no doubt about it, the build up of CO2 in the human body, as the circulatory system acts as the conduit for blood to oxygenate the body and pick up carbon dioxide as its waste product, is what causes the creation of the next breath. I just never made the connection. So, I am wondering, where have I been in all of this that I could inhale and exhale, yet stop the next subsequent inhalation, without my own consciousness kicking in? I would resume that breath, I guess, when my body knew that it was required to function. Yet, I remained unconscious to the entire breathing mechanism, as a pump, in myself. To what degree is this a metaphor for what I have ignored so that it has become autonomic (just like my nervous system) in my life?
Breathing space. Space for breath. Space to breath. Breath does require space. Just how mindless have I become about that? No air, no fire, no life force. Mindless, automatic... and, unless I wake up, autonomic.
Fire means that I must be willing to be seen... to make significant smoke signals. So far, I have allowed very limited fanning of my own flames to signal the world that I am, indeed, here and now. The smoke signals may have been lost to whatever clouds have floated by overhead, yet, more likely to the ground below the flames... much easier to hide them there. So far, I have hidden my fire; I have defied my own inhalation. What I have engaged as automatic, has, in essence, become autonomic.
I AM waking up. I have made my choice to breathe into my eternal and internal flame. I am consciously paying attention, now, to my inhalation and exhalation, to its cycles and rhythms, to its openings and closings and openings again. A conscious rewiring of a new autonomic.
Simple Breathing Space, right here, right now.
Breathing Space.
Think about it.
Aloha,
Sheila.
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