The Great Whole

“Expansion is Life. Contraction is Death” – Felicity Green

I am a circle. I breathe in. I breathe out. I expand with the breath coming in. I contract with the breath going out.

As I expand, I take oxygen into my lungs. This oxygen goes into my blood stream, bringing life to my brain, organs, and cells. Ideas come to me. Lucid dreams and emotions swirl about my consciousness. I sing a song, make a plan, have a revelation, cook a meal, and change my direction.

As I exhale, I gather waste from my blood stream. Carbon dioxide and toxins are exuded from my system and leave me to mingle with the green landscape where they then become purified and transformed once again. I am in an exchange with nature. My death is its life.

The universe is ever expanding. Life moves in a direction. We progress, change, improve ourselves. Part of the issue with society is that we are expanding on a principle of gain that exists only on a linear plane, like a string cutting and pushing through the circle of life. This linear path causes our collective circle to fold in on itself and contract and collapse. If we continue to move in this fashion, we continue to move towards death.

Perhaps there is purpose to this contracting, like the contraction I experience while exhaling my breath. We have been contracting, folding and caving in with our killing of our forests and our endless pumping of gasoline. But Nature is resilient. What if this contraction was necessary to the survival of the human race and the expansion of our consciousness; an exhale of the greater and collective being of our entire planet?

I believe our planet is about to make a great turn in its growth. We, her children, are desperately aware that an inhale should be coming. Perhaps we are learning to or wishing to process our rage and de-numb ourselves through our destructive actions. We humans do love mother earth, and many seek to nourish her and our relationship to the greater whole. We are longing for our planet and home to expand with life and the nourishing oxygen of hope and resilience. We, her children, are preparing for this intake of breath, we pray for its coming. Those who have Faith may know of its coming. I anticipate a turn. If expansion, growth, evolution and learning are life, we can come out ahead as our mother, our entire body and consciousness, continues to grow. But sometimes there is loss before learning. Hope is the catalyst to encourage breath.

It is a symbiotic relationship. We must encourage her to breathe as she does for us. We are her, she is us. With this very inhale, I take in the breath of hope. I imagine the growth, the nurturing of cells, the life of my very nature and home.