But who was ‘I’ but a transient, changeable being, susceptible to the ebb and flow of the life happening around me and in the heart beating within me?
Today I realised that the nature of life and Self isn’t about the breath at all. Who we truly are is revealed in each tiny moment of limbo and nothingness between each breath- hanging suspended between these two worlds of exhalation and inhalation like a sliver of dark matter floating between two opposing stars. It is only in these moments of emptiness and space that our true nature is revealed in split-second glimpses, revealing all that we are when nothingness is everything and all else falls away.
Who am I when I am stripped bare, alone in the dark and silent space?
Can I exist in that space and keep my sanity or does the dark matter swirl around me, pressing
inwards, collapsing me from within?
Can I sit with myself in silent suspension and love who I am between the rise and fall of my
breathless soul?
And it is here, I realised, in the space between worlds, where my true Self lies. The part of me that is so old that it has no name, and no physical form. It is everything and nothing, where time no longer holds meaning and many universes have risen and fallen in its wake- like the rise and fall of my gently breathing chest.
And here, in the black hole of existence that lives between each breath, I see a universe of infinite possibility and wonder. I see universes which are yet to be born and everything in its rightful place. I see questions, faces, feelings and the light from a thousand stars- which begun burning long before I took my first breath and which will burn long after I take my last….
And in the everything I see me.
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Original writing by Kate Mantello: www.evolvehealing.net
Original artwork by unknown artist. Sourced from Pinterest with no photo credit (despite searching for one!). Please contact us if you are, or know of the artist and we will happily credit the image appropriately.
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