Learning to Breathe All Over Again

How do we reconnect spiritually with our deepest selves? How do we get out of our heads and move past our relentless thinking? How can we find our hearts again when we’ve neglected them for so long? Your gut will tell you when you’ve over eaten, had too much to drink, or swallowed some virus that turns you inside out. Much the same way, I think many of us know when we’re screwed up spiritually. Sure our thoughts can pummel us relentlessly, but it’s the absence of a deep, inner peace that’s a telltale sign that we’re not finding what we need most.

“I’ve ignored my heart for so long,” someone said to me today, “that I don’t think I know how to find it again.”

The best way to begin is with the breath. Seriously. Breathe. In. Out. In. Out. Not just into your upper lungs so that your shoulders bunch up around your neck. But deep . . . into the lower reaches of your lungs. Your guts, entrails, bowels . . . feeling the life-giving breath fill you, then leave you again. It’s little wonder that the Hebrew word for spirit/Spirit is breath.

Breathing is a spiritual practice. If we’re not breathing well, chances are we’re not well—physically and spiritually.

There’s more to prayer than breathing. But without breathing, I can assure you, there’s no praying. When you breathe, you’re awakening your heart. You’re finding your center. And when you start praying from here, you’re coming alive spiritually again, and who knows what will happen then?

Breathe.

Spiritual Recovery Takes Guts

Dr. Michael Gershon has spent his career studying the gut. He calls the bowel the "second brain." Your core, your physiological center, the heart of your being holds as many nerve endings as that organ that sits on top of your neck--your brain. The two brains, the one at the top of your body and the one at the center, must work together if we're to live well. If they don't, well . . . you know what kind of misery and mess come your way when your gut is out of whack.

What's true physiologically is also true spiritually. If we live in our heads we neglect our hearts, our core, our center . . . the second brain. And the result is, well, you know . . . a miserable mess.

Most Americans experience some kind of gut trouble each day, and half of all Americans say their digestive problems affect their daily lives.

The basic point is this: take care of your gut, honor your second brain . . . or suffer. Too many people choose to suffer. We don't eat well. We don't relax well. We let our thoughts drive us relentlessly as if they command the helm of our lives.

It's little wonder, then, that our spiritual lives are out of whack.

The road to recovery runs through the center of us, and it'll take some real guts.

The first step is simply to acknowledge that you seek peace deep in the bowels of your being.

The Center is Not Where You Think

You know what it’s like to look in the wrong place…like the last time you looked for your car in the airport parking lot after a long trip.  Sometimes we think we know just where to look but we’re off by a mile. Most of us think our thinking is the center of who we are.  At least that’s what our thoughts would have us believe.  But when Jesus said, “the kingdom of God is within you,” he wasn’t talking about your skull.  St. Paul was more explicit.  He said that our hearts are the dwelling place of God (Ephesians 3.17-19).

For most of us the heart is a kind of airy-fairy name for our emotions.  But for a Middle Easterner, and therefore for the writers of the Bible, the heart is not merely emotion, nor is it the life-pumping organ in our chests.  The heart is the core, the guts, the abdomen, the true center of the body.

So, the center of who we are, the place where God dwells within us, in not in the head.  Despite what your thoughts want you to believe.

We modern people are not the only ones to be troubled by distracting thoughts that think they rule the roost.  But we modern people certainly weren’t helped out of that trouble by the 17^th century thinker, Rene Descartes who said, “I think therefore I am.”  Most of us also think that thinking defines who we are.

It doesn’t.  Our hearts do.  And the sooner we learn to draw our thoughts down into our hearts, but more whole we’ll be.

Remember, your center is not where you think.

So long as you think it is, your praying will be off by a lot more than a mile.  And you’ll not likely know much intimacy with God either.

The Mixed Life--Activity and Spirituality

We'll be better off if we don't divide what God's joined together.  In Christ, God joined divinity and humanity, the sacred and the ordinary.  By doing so, all of life is made holy. Ours is to be a mixed life.  Finding the sacred in the midst of every day life and experiencing the common life we share as a sacred gift. Recently, a woman approached me after a talk I gave and said, "I'm called to the mixed life, but I don't know what it looks like."

She is searching for a workable combination of contemplation and action–”The Mixed Life” in the language of 14th century Christian mystic, Walter Hilton.

Here's a video meditation on the path we might walk.  It includes some practical tips for practicing an active spirituality.

Dry Heave Spirituality

I was at a church board meeting the other night. What's worse, I led it (I'll tell you what that means in a moment). Here's a circle of busy, competent people, who, because they are busy and competent get asked to do just about everything. And as churches do (and just about every other volunteer organization), we found ways of asking them to do more. We needed a few volunteers for another task force, and few others for a weekend volunteer activity. Those that didn't dive into their calendars to try to find some legitimate way to say "no" simple stared at the papers in front of them.

They are all good people who want our congregation to do good things and know that requires involvement. When they have to say "no" they feel guilty. When they say "yes" they feel the draining weight of yet one more thing to attend.

This creates what I call "dry heave spirituality."

Not a pretty term, I know. But maybe it's shock value will awaken us to what we do to ourselves...to each other.

And here's what I meant by "what's worse, I led it." There comes a point when someone's got to say "enough." It would be nice if leaders like me could recognize in others the tell-tale signs of "dry heave spirituality". But we get blinded by the needs of an organization that require human resources.

Learning to speak a good "no" or "yes" means learning to stay near the center spiritually so that you and I know in our guts when we simply can't do another thing because to do it would violate something sacred within us. When we choose to act from the center there's a wholly/holy different experience.

This takes poise. Internal clarity. Conviction. Courage. We must breath. Seriously. By breathing, we slow down and come back into our bodies, aware of what's going on inside. And our breathing becomes a prayer that unites us with God who's within each of us.

It takes this kind of attentiveness to our lives from the inside-out so we can learn to sense when we're getting spiritually sick.

This kind of awareness can empower:

1. us to say "no" when we must not say "yes"

2. us to say "yes" when we can do so with wind at our backs

3. us who, like me, lead organizations to look out and see signs of dry heave spirituality in others even if they can't recognize it yet themselves.