Michael Meade: Everything Breathes Together

 This essay by one of my longtime teachers, Michael Meade, is a gift to us all. — Molly

It’s no wonder psychologists increasingly worry about our mental health, as the collective psyche has experienced one devastating blow after another this year. By now, everyone's assumptions and expectations of the future have been shattered. The often talked about October surprise came very early in the month in the form of the president contracting the coronavirus. Yet, this year it's more likely that October will be full of more shocks and surprises.

We are in the middle of a public health crisis that appears to be worsening. We are in the midst of an unprecedented political storm and a brewing crisis of democracy. If there is a contested election, it will be added to the burdens of the economic collapse and the tension of social injustice and racial issues. At the same time, our overburdened psyches can't help but be further traumatized by the epic wildfires and massive storms being generated by the global climate crisis that affects all the aforementioned troubles.

Typically, people expect an election day to bring some kind of cathartic conclusion, as votes are counted, and political questions become answered. This time, it appears unlikely that the drama that has been building for so long will reach a clear climax. There are many scenarios that could drag out the drama and add more confusion and stress to an already overwhelming year.

It happens that Election Day this year falls just two days after daylight saving time comes to an end. As the days promise to get shorter and the shadows grow deeper, we move into the dark time of what has already been a dark year. Increasingly the question becomes: how do we find refuge from the gathering storms that threaten to engulf us all.

Feeling the stress of all the current issues and anticipating the darkening of the year, I remembered how the ancient Celts divided the year into a dark half and a light half with each part playing an essential role in the continuance of life on earth. The Celts viewed the two halves of the year as unequal and, surprisingly imagined that the upper hand belonged to the darker half. This was so because the endless, dark waters were present before creation began, before the light came and separated the heavens and the earth.

There is another surprise, one that can be valuable for us as we face the dark half of this already dark year. Between the slightly unequal halves of dark and light, there is an open moment, a subtle little gap in time through which the eternal enters this time-bound world and breathes new life into it. In other words, life was not simply breathed into the world at the beginning and now it simply continues mechanically until it ends in darkness again.

Rather, there is a still point in time through which life renews itself at the level of the cosmos, at the level of the turning of seasons, in the daily rhythm of dark and light, and in the pulsing of our own bodies each time we inhale and exhale. For, the same dynamic rhythm of opposing and alternating pairs repeat itself in the living breath of each person, moment to moment, day after day, night after night.

In the year when the coronavirus has threatened the life breath of everyone and taken the lives of far too many, in the season of protests that began with the anguish of “I can’t breathe,” and in a time when everything seems so divided and opposed, it is important to remember the underlying unity and inner wisdom of life.

In times like this, everyone needs a healing image, a saving grace, a place of refuge. And it turns out that the little gap in time through which life renews itself appears within us each time we breathe. In that sense, each breath is sacred and can be a little touch of the eternal. For, we breathe along with the world which continuously renews itself in the darkness where everything is secretly interconnected and everything breathes together."

— Michael Meade