I'm Still Breathing

About 2 months ago, I decided to start making sure I'm still breathing.  I now spend about half an hour a day doing nothing else. I just sit there going "Yep, that was an inhale. I wonder what's next.  Oh what's this? I appear to be exhaling."

SPOILER ALERT! I'm now going to talk about what happens next.

So after that last exhale, there's a brief pause and then, BAM! I inhale again.

Next, I wait to see what happens. I puzzle over it for roughly 1/10th of a second before, what's this? Exhale! Woah. What are the odds?

And so on.

Today was day 60 of my new habit of practicing Mindfulness Meditation.

I learned how to do this from a course I took.

The thing about paying attention to your breathing is that it is pretty much guaranteed that your mind will wander off of focus from your breathing after about 2 or 3 breaths.  Then when you realize your mind has wandered, you focus back on your breath. That moment of realizing your mind has wandered is mindfulness. I hear.

Anyway, what I intend to do with this blog now is record some of the wanderings that happen because they're kind of funny.

 I also think I will jot down various discoveries that happen from time to time, because those are pretty cool.

Sometimes, I may put down some bike related bullshit. We'll see.

Yesterday I remembered something I've been trying to remember for 51 years with no luck.  That made my day. I was on cloud 9 thinking about that. I'll talk about that one another time.

Today was just the ordinary old garden variety attention to my breathing thing.

So if you'll find a comfortable spot ...

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Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 4“Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and behold, the log is in your own eye? 5“You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. 

This morning, the above passage from the bible (NAS Red Letter edition) came to me and my mind wandered from my breath thus:

How the hell did I even notice the speck in my brother’s eye?

Maybe my brother, who only has a speck in his eye might give me a hand with this log over here.

If I go to all the work to get the log out of my eye, I’m pretty sure my brother can get that speck.

What the hell is going on in Israel that everybody has chunks of wood in their eyes?

Then it came to me: Oh yeah. Carpenters.

That's when I realized that this was not a teaching of Jesus. It was a thinly veiled reference to something that had happened back at the shop. Jesus’ brother had probably walked up to him while he was at the table saw or something and was all “Hey Christ, your hand placement is all wrong.”

Then Jesus was all, “You’re going to tell me about hand placement?”

And so it escalated until Joseph came by and told them to take 5. "Ouch," said Jesus, glancing at his brother, who had lost his pinky finger on the table saw a couple of years earlier.  Jesus' brother let that one go and they walked outside. 

Once everybody was gathered around, Jesus started up with the words above.  Meanwhile, his brother was standing off to one side, arms crossed, shaking his head, glaring at Jesus.

Probably Jesus wanted to say something like “Don’t tell your brother about table saw hand placement unless you actually know what you’re talking about.” But he changed it because most of the workers gathered didn’t know anything about operating table saws. But still, his brother knew what he was getting at.

The cool thing is that years later, they were able to laugh about the whole thing and the fact that it made it into the bible.

~~

And then I went back to my breath where I had the stark realization that at some times I inhale, and at others, I exhale. Hello? Is this thing on?

And sceeeeeene ...