The world breathes. Imagine that the universe expands, but imagine too that it then contracts, before it expands again.
Everything in it is alive.
It breathes just like you do.
This is why the breath and observing it are the fundamental focus of a meditative practice. To observe the breath is to observe the ebb and flow of life itself.
We assume the physical world to be fixed, static, dense, hard. But it moves more than we are able to normally detect. Things get closer and further away. It is not a fixed oscillation, and everyone plays their part in detecting and controlling it. The world is a shifting swirling sand. We are small, and it is large, and so it is imperceptible to us most of the time. This is why time is relative to our movement through space. Two places are not the same length of time away from two different people – the observer counts.
Viewed from above, the ‘design’ and movement of a large forest looks startlingly similar to design and movement of a set of lungs. The roots and branches of trees are recreations of the human nervous system. Galaxies mirror giant thumb prints. As above so below.
We breathe in and out, trees sway and return to their centre, the oceans – the vastest things on the planet – ebb and flow in waves, and so does the world.
The world is a bundle of chaotic energy that we bring order to. We make sense of the world by sensing it. Mental, physical and the higher dimensions are all brought into order and form and existence by our detection of them. As individuals and as a collective. The amount of order your sphere of consciousness can bring to the world might depend on how much order you have in your own physical and mental world.
If you’re completely grounded the movement of the world mightn’t be so great. Sticking to a routine and a route, steadfastly, diligently every day. Life in order, house in order, stable relationships with stable people. The distances and lengths between objects in your world rarely change.
If you’re floating or flowing through life from one place to the next, for better or worse, you have less attachment to the physical world. The physical world inhales and exhales and you move between its points. Distances change. Time speeds up, it slows down. It’s all relative to your own movement through the world.
The more you move, the more time slows down. A year flies when you don’t have to think too much. A year feels like a century to others when every day is different, or when every second is made conscious through awareness. And when times slows down, space contracts as well. The faster you move, the faster you get there.
The world expands, but it also contracts. Some see the world as getting bigger, some see it as getting smaller, for most it stays the same. Everyone plays their part. The world is an product of our collective perception of it. What may be the case for others won’t always be the case for you.
Try it.
Time isn’t fixed until someone or something measures it. Your movement needs an observer to put limits on it. Put away the clocks, the phones, the stopwatches and the timers, and abandon your sense of time.
Spend the day in nature far away from the world and others. Observe only the world around you as you drive or cycle or walk or run. Pay attention only to what your senses receive from the world around you, and how your body feels as you move.
And of course, remember to breathe.
And see how fast you can really travel.
Or, how slowly.
Sometimes you get there quicker, sometimes slower.
Sometimes it’s good to slow down, sometimes it’s good to speed up.
If you knew you could control time with how you move through space, how fast would you go?
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