The Breath of Life

 Imagine being in an emergency room where you see a patient on a gurney.  It is clear the patient is dead.  All you see is a lifeless body.  Whatever would make the body have alive-ness is missing.  Consider all the emotion and sensation that comes with moments like this.  Grief, a sense of loss, an aching sense of powerlessness, all these are common reactions to the presence of death. 

            Into this thickness of death something else begins to invade.  Slowly at first, a wind blows into the room.  This wind seems to have substance to it.  It is a little heavier than the air in the room, and has a faint glow to it.  Like the distortion of heated air in the summer, the solid objects on the other side of the wind seem to bend, or waver.  Now the wind settles along the face and down the neck and sternum of the dead body.  The wind seems concentrated along the center of the body, but it is hard to tell where the wind blends into the rest of the air in the room. 

            Where this wind has settled onto the body, it begins to seep into the flesh.  Like water soaking into a sponge, it soaks in, seeming to ripple through the corpse.  In fact, as it does, the corpse-like appearance seems to surrender to the light and weight of this wind.  Color comes in to the flesh and suddenly the body takes a breath, a gasp, and then settles into a rhythmic breathing pattern.  Movement begins and the face begins to have color and expression, then the eyes open. 

            The body stands up and it is hard now to think of this as a body, because it is now a person; a person and a personality, he has become a unique individual.  Looking into his eyes, and reading the expression on his face, something seems familiar.  Your mind struggles to place what could be familiar about this stranger.  In fact, it is not until later you realize why this person seemed so familiar. 

            Something about his expressions and the look in his eyes reminds you of the wind itself.  But how could a face look like a breeze?  No wonder your mind couldn’t make the connection: it’s not logical. It’s not the kind of knowing that the mind is made for.  As you continue to gaze you realize another familiar aspect of this person.  He has some indefinable quality you vaguely remember about you. 

            This man standing in front of you is now a self.  He also has a source, and that source has not ceased to exist just because it has deposited life in this self.  Could the man and the source still be connected?  No visible connection is evident, but this man seems so much like the wind that blew into him.  Some connection exists.  He has both a source and a self. 

            The self is self-contained.  He carries it with him.  He functions from it.  It has a unique presentation and unique expressions.  He can think, he can feel, he can analyze through his senses and he can make decisions; he is a self.  He can even get up and walk out of the emergency room.  He is no longer lifeless.  He is connected to life.  You could almost say he has just been born, even though he did not arrive through his mother’s womb.

            Stay in this picture a moment longer and you may notice something else. Remember the feelings connected to seeing the dead man on the gurney?   The feelings of loss, the feelings of powerlessness, begin to fade.  Not only do they fade, but in their place something else is stirring.  When death and all its power fades, life and its power takes over.

            As the man stands up, you begin to feel hope.  You begin to feel empowered.  Instead of the sadness that accompanies death, a sense of joy begins to arise.  As death fades, so do the effects of death.  More importantly as life stirs, so do the effects of life.