Focus on your breath
“ You need to learn how to focus on your breath “, that’s what they tell you when you start to meditate. “Every time your mind wanders, reconnect to the breath. Each time a sensation gets a hold on your consciousness, return to breathing.”
Since I had a massive pulmonary embolism, I focus on my breath far more often than I wished. Now that doesn’t make meditation easier, but it sure makes it more interesting. Lacking air, even if you don’t really suffocate, is a tremendous reminder of the impermanence of life, believe me. In a fraction of a moment everything around you loses its importance. Only air, only oxygen is real in that short period of time.
The more often you experience this switch of priorities, the more it creates naturally over time a hierarchy of values. The reason for this is simple. Breathing, the intake of oxygenated air followed by the rejection of carbon dioxide rich gas, is the uppermost condition for staying alive. If you lack oxygen for more than three minutes there is a serious risk of brain damage, unless you trained yourself for snorkeling. So that’s pretty annoying when you tell yourself that you might one day be in the situation where this lack of oxygen might turn out the lights for you.
Right below that number one survival condition comes the intake of food and water. In western civilisations these fundamental needs are not only sufficiently present but over abundant. We eat too much and the wrong food and we don’t drink enough water since we tend to replace it with sugar rich beverages such as sodas and alcohol.
Now, if you have these three elementary needs covered: food, water and clean air, then, basically your survival as a person is secured. Yes but there are a few side conditions to consider :
- Climate : the seasonal changes are causing several problems, because they control the amount of food and water available and they modify our body temperature and our biological defenses
- Survival of the species : in order to assure the survival of our human species, we to socialise, since that’s the only way to find a sexual partner
And hey, that’s about it. All the rest derives from these four elementary concepts :
Breathing
Food and water
Shelter
Socialising
That’s what we need to live. Not a long list, is it? So how come that in our modern society where all of these four conditions are so over abundantly present, there are so many people struggling?
Is it because of the air pollution, due to our industrial overproduction of unnecessary items? Is it our dependence on motorised transportation? Or is it because of the ever growing energy production that mainly supplies our thirst for comfort and internet communication?
Is the quantity and the quality of the food and water responsible for our deficit of well being?
Obesity, metabolic disorders, alcoholism, drugs, cigarettes, … each one of these bad habits fill our bodies with thousands of toxines. Are they what causes our unhappiness?
Is the fact that most of us live in crowded overpopulated cities playing a major role? Do we compensate that by buying more and more clothes, most of which we never wear or at least not more than once? Is this over consumption of clothing and the concomitant overproduction, the pollution due to transports all over the globe, the chemicals needed to grow the cotton and to dye the fabrics a guilt factor?
What about our way of socializing? Our urge to meet as many people as possible as long as it stays virtual, our incapacity to keep going 2 parent families for more than ten years and our tendency to live as independent individuals on a planet that is rapidly growing overpopulated doing us harm? Do we really want to go to mars to conquer new spaces?
Have a look at the worldometers : worldometer counters
The counters tick faster and faster : more people, more pollution, more problems. And still, we buy more clothes, faster cars, bigger houses. We spend more money on smartphones and flat rates than many third world villages on food. We swallow more than 170 billion $ worth of internet publicity every year! Can you imagine?
Many papers I read speak of eating better, doing more sport, sleeping more and better. Sounds good, but behind most of these writings stands the aim of wanting to be more successful, to earn greater amounts of money, to sell more in the sole purpose to be able to buy more, … ARE WE SERIOUS ?
