Expanding Our Narrow Sense of Ourselves

"The process of breathing is a living metaphor for understanding
how to expand our narrow sense of ourselves and be present to the
ealing energies that are both in and around us. Every time we
inhale we take in some 10 to the 22nd atoms [the number 10
followed by 22 zeros], including approximately one million of
he same atoms of air inhaled by Lao Tzu, Buddha, Christ, and
everyone else who has ever lived on this earth. Every time we
exhale, we return these atoms to the atmosphere to be renewed
for both present and future generations. Every time we inhale, we
absorb oxygen expelled into the atmosphere as a waste product by
the earth's plant life. Every time we exhale, we expel carbon
ioxide as a waste product into the atmosphere where it can
eventually be absorbed by this same plant life. In nature,
conservation, transformation, and exchange of substances in
nature's complex metabolism. It connects our so-called inner world
with the vast scale of the outer world-of the earth and its
atmosphere, as well as of all organic life-through the perceptible
alternation of yin and yang, of negative and positive, of emptying
and filling. The process of breathing, if we can begin to understand
it in relation to the whole of life, shows us the way to let go of
the old and open to the new. It shows us the way to experience who
and what we actually are. It shows us the way to wholeness and
well-being."

From "The Tao of Natural Breathing," page 27, Copyright 1997 by
Dennis Lewis