With all the noise and rush of life, it is hard to perceive the internal engine that powers my body: what some call the inner body, the living organs and cells hard at work. When I meditate I am getting in touch with the living organism that is my being. A ritual practice of meditation helps to create a space where I can find stillness and listen. One time I was deep breathing, and I became present to my breath in a new light. I knew that my body breathed by itself; meaning, the action of breathing was subconscious; I didn’t have to think about doing it, but, on this occasion I actually discovered what that felt like.
This is for my girlfriend Laura. After reading my initial thoughts on meditation, she asked: “Please, tell me a lil more about the meditation process.” So first, my disclaimer: I am not an expert on meditation, at all. I am not offering advice on how to meditate. I am only an authority on Noelle Khalila, so I am sharing my personal experience of meditation.
Okay, so back to my breath. When I tried to consciously breathe, I felt my body preempt my conscious breath. I could feel my diaphragm contract, pushing my stomach out and enlarging my chest cavity before I consciously inhaled. After I exhaled, my mind told my body to breathe again, but my body told my mind to wait. There was a period of stillness in between each breath that my body cherished. I felt the engine at work. When I tried to take control, it was like my mind breath was interrupting my body breath.
So what is the point of all of this? I have no idea, but it felt cool. Aside from that it makes me recall stories I know about people who are so in tune with their inner bodies they know when something is off balance. If they are getting sick, they know where it is happening and what to do about it.
It also makes me recall an exercise my aunt did with me one day my energy was really low and I was feeling dead. She had my lie down and took my mind to every part of my body: each toe, each muscle, each joint. She asked me to breathe into each part and bring my awareness there. She asked me to perceive each part, as a living, functioning part of my body, without actively moving it externally. The masters of meditation, the masters of life, can do this exercise with great proficiency. It was a tall order to ask of me as a beginner, at a time when I was dead in my own mind. So of course it felt weird, and I could barely perceive anything, but it had an extremely calming effect on me, and heightened my state of being, and my awareness of the living organism that I am.
To know myself and experience myself as a living organism; to know myself and experience myself as an open vessel for the spirit that dwells within, is to transform the way I relate to my egoic-self, my Goddess-self, and the world around me. I treat me differently. People treat me differently. And we treat the world differently. Meditation is the process of life; it is the experience of living life in constant, harmonious love, light, peace and abundance, and perhaps it just begins with learning how to synchronize my mind breath and my body breath, or to breathe into my big toe.