Inquiry

​What if the breath is medicinal?
What if the mind is vast
and the heart is boundless?
 
What if the body is subject 
to illness, aging, death,
and can till find pleasure 
in the questions above?
 
Would you still expend energy
searching for a perfect 
diagnosis that eludes you?
 
*****
 
I’ve searched for a perfect diagnosis and plan for some perimenopausal muscle tension that strikes in the early morning hours. I have yet to find it, and this morning’s inquiry made me realize that maybe I will never find the perfect diagnosis and plan.
 
When there is trust that the breath is medicinal, the mind is vast, and the heart is boundless, it’s easy to bring kind speech and action to my experience. It’s the most intimate, loving, and natural thing.
 
Though my body is subject to illness, aging, death, and can get more stressed by interacting with others, there is something about the practice of meditation in all its forms (including breath, the imaginal, intentions, beliefs, etc.) that creates a larger container, gives space for infinite possibilities. Pairing this with writing reflection adds more dimensionality to the process without reducing it to a single cause or meaning.
 
It is from this womb of meditative silence that I birth a world of creative perception, and ask again and again what it means to speak and act with integrity while interacting with others. There are times when I feel in alignment with my values, and others when I feel completely misaligned. I’m usually misaligned when hungry, tired, stressed, overwhelmed, experiencing physical and/or emotional pain, among other things.
 
What brings me back into alignment are the usual things: rest, being physically, emotionally, and spiritually nourished, ‘doing things from my soul like this meeting, where I feel a river moving in me, a joy’ (Rumi).