conscious moments

I like to think of life's momentous experiences like beads on a string. Those moments that are important, valuable or rare are like beautiful colored beads that we lovingly thread onto this string of beads. Each bead symbolically represents a moment, an experience, a special person. As life goes on a gorgeous necklace of our lives is created, full of these moments that have meant something to us.

This little metaphor is a way to imagine making our lives more conscious. By recognizing these moments more often we become more fully alive to our experience. It is easy to see how a marriage or a birth of a child would be a bead on our string, but what about today? What about right now?

I like to think of every moment as being valuable. What I bring to it is what I get out of it. My own consciousness can make this moment something or nothing. A conversation can be life changing or mundane and forgettable. It is not the situation that is creating the meaning; it is the consciousness that I bring to it. So now a conversation with a friend or looking out the window on this rainy day can become memorable and a bead, or not.

One of the ways I make my moments conscious is by using my breath. When I awake in the morning or go to sleep at night I take a conscious breath. In between daily rituals like my morning tea or meditation, or taking a walk or going to the grocery store, I take a breath to establish myself in the place where I am. I was there. Now I am here, and everything is different. Between every activity and often even between thoughts, I pause and take a breath. Now, I am doing this. Now I am thinking this. This is a practice of becoming consciously aware.

A conscious breath says, "here I am." I was driving to work. And now I have arrived. The breath is a way for me to register that this is a new moment full of all the opportunity and potential that every moment is imbued with.

This is one of the most valuable tools I have. I use it all day long. Between every client and every class, between every activity in my day, I take a conscious breath. I also do this inside my experiences while they are happening like a song that is lifting my heart or a movie that touches me in a certain way that I want to always remember. I want it to be inscribed in my consciousness and in my heart. These aware moments then are indelibly written in my consciousness. They become part of me. They are beads on my string.

I call this whole phenomenon "being awake". There is a wide-awakeness about this way of being in the world. I am feeling, noticing, being, with all of my senses. I am practicing staying open to my experience.

Integrated deeply within this philosophy is nonjudgment. Judgment limits our experience of the moment. When we make a determination that says something is always like this, then it is. We then can go on automatic pilot, moving through our moments in one big swell. Time feels like it's going by too quickly. We can lose track of our lives. Days, months, years can go by without us really being in them.

By breathing in a moment we are choosing to stay awake to our life, whatever it brings, however it goes. This life-breathing awareness brings about a real connection to life. We breathe it in and receive the experience rather than reject it. Cynicism, sarcasm and judgment are all ways of separating from our experiences. We can remain untouched and unmoved. It is a kind of closure.

By breathing in the moment we are agreeing to be in it, to remember it; it goes on our string of beads. It belongs to us.

A spiritually conscious life is a life that has capacity. How much awareness we can hold is equivalent to our depth. This can be felt. It looks like magnetism or charisma. It is compassion and understanding.

A conscious breath is a physical/spiritual acknowledgement of the moment. My inhalation and exhalation establish me in the new moment that I am in. This way of breathing starts to create a living wellspring of moments that are now conscious. We start to realize we are holy and that every step we take is part of our sacred journey.

When we use the breath like this, life becomes a living meditation, seamlessly connecting the dots of our experience, one to another, like beads on a string, and soon we have a collection of moments that is an acknowledgment that this life and everything in it, is sacred.

By practicing conscious breathing we can live a more full and dimensional life. Every moment can be a surprise and a gift. As we move through the world with awareness and awakeness, our world is blessed by our open mind and heart.

Breathe your life in deeply. Live your life completely. Recognize that this moment, right now, is special and add it to your life's string of magical moments. Know that today is a new day and anything can be.

www.DianaLang.com