Breathing Earth: a love story

We have always been told that we live on the Earth. But this is not true, exactly. In reality, we live in Earth. This is because Earth has layers, and one of the layers of Earth is its atmosphere. All of us are breathing Earth now. The oxygen we require to live, through our breathing of Earth, comes mostly from plankton in the ocean. So we're all breathing together with plankton and forests.  Right now. All of us. Breathing together. It's a conspiracy, which is a word deriving from Latin "conspirare 'to agree, unite, plot,' literally "to breathe together," from assimilated form of com "with, together" (see con-) + spirare "to breathe" (from https://www.etymonline.com)

Compared to what we call outer space, Earth's atmosphere is thick and heavy. If you're in a car speeding down the highway at 70 miles an hour (a rather strange and slightly absurd thing to do when you think about it), you can roll down the window and put your hand out and you will feel the heavy thickness of the atmosphere. Or if you're out in an extreme wind gust it could knock you off your feet. One day, after a long rain which loosened the ground, a strong wind gust blew over (uprooted) many beautiful old trees in my favorite park. Wind and breezes are the currents in the atmosphere which are not unlike currents in the ocean. But my point here is that we often neglect to notice we're deep inside a layer of Earth, the atmosphere.

Those who climb very high mountains, however, are very much aware of atmosphere, because the air gets thinner up there. Oxygen is weighed down by gravity, and there is less of it in the very high mountains. On some mountain climbing adventures it is necessary to bring bottled oxygen along.

We are told that only some parts of Earth are alive. But this is true only in a most superficial sense. There are criteria which biologists have for living versus non-living things. Air and rocks are not considered alive, by biologists, in this particular sense. But when we breathe in a certain way, with a certain quality of awareness and aliveness, we can deeply enter the currents of Earth's atmosphere, and wildly, radically join with the conspiracy of Life. As we do this, everything comes alive. Everything pulses with vitality, aliveness. And it says, "Welcome!" And it says, "We've always been here with you. We will never leave you. Will you please stay here with us? We love you. We've missed you in your absence. Thanks for coming home to breathe with us." It says all of this and more without uttering a single word. It (she? She?) speaks in vivid silences. 

There is a profound Mystery in the air. In the rocks. In the forest, oceans and mountains.  They are also alive. All of Earth is alive. Not in the biologist's narrow sense, but in another sense which biologists generally don't acknowledge or understand.  I don't understand it, either. Our contact with this Mystery is not through 'understanding'. It isn't conceptual.  That's why I call it Mystery. It's not like a mystery novel, in which the mystery is a sort of puzzle to be 'solved'.  We do not solve the Mystery of Life. We, can, however, feel and live and embody this Mystery. 

Many years ago near Mt. Shasta in California I was sitting beside a beautiful lake talking with a young woman who was also camping with me there. We had come to a Rainbow Gathering there. And she told me about having recently ended a romantic relationship, and how it hurt. And I felt compassion for her. My heart was wide with her. And then, when our conversation was complete, I turned toward the lake. And that's when I fully entered the current and joined the conspiracy. Or did it enter me? I don't know. The mind cannot grasp what happened there. There are no words for it.  Suddenly everything was alive, awake, alert, attentive, sensitive, responsive.... The air was that. The lake was that. The trees and the mountain were that. Everything was radically experienced as a Mysterious Aliveness. A vivid, inconceivable Aliveness in which awareness was no longer trapped up inside myself but was in the very air I was breathing, and in all things, everywhere.  

I cannot tell you how Home this felt. And I stayed in this 'state' of experience for several hours. But there was no time, then!  (No, I hadn't been taking drugs.)  Time as I usually experience it fell away. I was literally inside eternity for a few hours. Eternity feels so utterly, inconceivably Home. It's impossible to describe. It extends in all directions as space, and space is itself alive, aware, awake -- just as I was so utterly Alive with this vast Mystery. 

It was, of course, a mystical experience. But there was no Deity in it, unless the Deity, or Divinity, is this Aliveness which is embodied as Earth and sky, which is everywhere. Which is who and what we are. Which is blowing on the wind.

There is an old Zen story of a monk who went and sat on a rock beside a mountain stream. He sat there for a while in solitude. And then he saw what Annie Dillard called "the tree with the lights in it." It's what I myself 'saw' and felt at Mt. Shasta that day. Countless millions of us humans have had this same experience. Suddenly Life reveals itself as Living Mystery which is Awake, alert, sensitive, responsive, loving. Were it not so delicious an experience it might shock us. It is rather shocking in a very gentle, loving, happy way. But back to the Zen monk. After seeing the tree with the lights in it, he told one or more other monks. And word got around. And the following day about fifteen monks could be found sitting on that same rock by the stream.

If you've seen the tree with the lights in it, you know this is a humorous story. If you've seen that tree, and never heard this Zen joke-story before, you likely just laughed out loud.

Nothing whatsoever can cause us to see the tree. For us miserable humans, we see the tree by accident.  But we can become accident prone. And I recommend cultivating accident proneness. 

One way to become accident prone is to go to a beautiful, wild, natural place where you feel delight in the presence of Aliveness -- life.  Sit and rest. Do nothing much or special; just rest. And be. Just be. And breathe. And while you are breathing know you are breathing together with plankton in the ocean. Know that the air is itself alive. Breathe life. Breathe together with Life. 

May you have a beautiful happy accident.