Picture yourself high up in the rafters of an old movie theater. You are the projectionist (in the days if 8 millimeter film reels) ensuring that the flow of the film tape continues smoothly for the audience’s optimal viewing.

You have the ability to increase or slow the rate of the films projection thereby making the dialogue sound comically quick or dramatically warp (if you desired extremes). You can stop and start the film and insert commercials as distractions. You can even splice in film to keep continuity at the end of one reel segment and the beginning of the next for more fluid transitions. You take your inspiration for creativity from some “Unknown Source Energy”.

Now, imagine the movie on the screen is your life. Your breath is the quality and rate of projection of the film onto the screen. It’s the manner in which you experience your interactions and how you relate to yourself, others and the world at large.

As the movie scenes and pace speed up (reactions in our life), there is a lot of excitement, happenings, energy moving, emotions flying and drama. We get used to that. Our bodies habituate to the adrenalin and seek out that chemical rush. We begin to define that exhilaration in whatever form (albeit subconsciously) as being ALIVE.  Our breath is higher up in our chest.

It is a way of life that has become biologically programmed. It’s so familiar that living any other way seems strange, foreign, out of sorts and maybe even considered boring. This is how the vast majority of humanity live.

The “Unknown Source Energy”   invites the audience (humanity) and the projectionist (you) to really absorb a scene so there is a section whereby the projectionist is guided to create a slow motion effect. This allows all viewers to truly see with all of their senses each nuance and subtly with what is projected onto the screen      (canvas of life).

Slow motion allows time and space for the illumination of interconnected complexities with more clarity and objectivity. We are able to witness more clearly behaviors, interactions, belief patterns and ways of relating. This light offers a subsequent choice point. Before, the film, and thus the movie, was moving too fast.  The connections between our life’s events and interactions were not apparent or able to be realized.

As we embrace the slow motion effect, light bulbs go off and awareness of patterns shine through as direct revelations that speak graciously to who we really are. We see ourselves through softening eyes. We understand why we react and give ourselves time to self-soothe. This opens us up more and more. We begin to respond in ways that highlight such a magical juxtaposition of our divinity and humanity.

Now, you “know” by slowing down your breath, you can create the space for that divinity to be realized, honored, acknowledged and experienced. As we allow ourselves to embody this, we are deeply seated in the flow of giving and receiving. It’s a profound interconnection available for all of us. It’s the joy of life and death within our soulful human experience.

Slow motion or a conscious breath reminds us that we are more than a series of doings and reactions.

Something is calling us to access the deeper more authentic essence within us that we intuitively know is there waiting for us.  You know it exists because when you are in the company if someone who leads with their presence, a peace, calm and trust washes over you. It gives you permission to rest back, release any personal agendas, be as you are and revel in the glory of nature’s divinity.

You are nature and nature is divine therefore YOU ARE DIVINE.

That embodied experience is the very thing that has been beckoning for your attention.

Breathe

MINDFULNESS PRACTICE

1. Think for a moment about something you do habitually. It could be how you make a cup of coffee in the morning or how you get ready to get out of the house.
2. Imagine it in slow motion…every detail.
3. Sit still and begin to actually do the action by breathing consciously and acting in slow motion.
4. What do you notice? Do you feel the impulse to speed up? What emotions surface? All is ok.
5. Keep playing with it and learn about yourself. There are layers of awareness and the magic will be inserted in between the spaces you create.