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God Exhaled
Last updated on: January 26, 2017 at 10:54 pm by Mastura Debra Graugnard
God Exhaled 2017-01-26T22:54:11-05:00 Mastura Debra Graugnard
Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.
Enough politics for a while. Time for a swim in the Cosmic Ocean.

Blue Jellyfish in the Cosmos
“Teacher, tell me, what is God?”
“He is the breath within the breath”
~ Kabir
The nothing and the all that is. The source of life and life itself.
From the nothingness arises a motivation. From the motivation, movement is inspired, and from the exhalation of movement comes the somethingness we know as life.
As a fountain overflows, God’s love flows through His breath into an ocean of divine essence. From this breath of love our spirits are spawned. It is this breath of love that breathes the spirits into physical manifestation, and all of existence, both seen and unseen, into a fabric that can be known to us – a framework for God’s expression of Itself.
The life within this framework is the breath. The cycle of breath – the exhale and the inhale – moves our spirits through the collective journey that becomes the human experience. The cosmic breath orchestrates a symphony of music that plays its notes through the instruments of human souls. We experience the music as harmonious or disharmonious in bodies, minds and hearts.
Yet the music is always harmonious. The orchestration is perfect. The human experience determines our perception – whether we hear a soothing lullaby, an invigorating sonata or fingernails on a chalkboard. The experience is unique to each individual. It informs us of our relationships to the flow of the breath. Just as a constricted passageway of a flute would affect the sound it produced, constriction in the human body affects the sound of the masterpiece as it expresses itself through the human instrument.
The breath is energy. We are energetic beings, and we are of one energy with the all-that-is. All move as one within the exhalation and the inhalation of the breath of God.
The flow of breath – the contraction of the exhale and the expansion of the inhale – is mirrored throughout all of life. All movement stems from contraction followed by expansion, and the fabric of life is in constant motion like the currents and waves of the ocean. The tides of life ebb and flow like the tides of the ocean.
In all human life, contraction and expansion are necessary for the cycles of life. Contraction and expansion are necessary for the processes of conception, fetal development and birth. You are born from the sacred portal of the womb into a separate body through labor. Labor begins with contractions, which bring about dilation – the expansion that allows the passage of a new life into the world.
You take your first breath and sound your first cry through means of expansion and contraction drawing air into your lungs and forcing it out across your vocal cords. The cycles of your heartbeat and the circulation of blood throughout your body, the cycles of digestion and elimination, all physical movement – voluntary and involuntary, conscious and unconscious – and even death and decay are dependent on the movements of contraction and expansion.
The spiritual being on the journey of exploration and learning moves through the physical world by the same process – contraction and expansion. Our spirits move through this cosmic ocean of divine energy – the breath of God – like the jelly fish propel themselves in the sea.
In the physical body, the cycle of spiritual movement is felt through the emotions and the mental and physical tensions. Those times of elation when everything feels open and life appears to be right on track – these are times of expansion. The times when it feels like nothing is going right and the whole world is against you – these are times of contraction.
Both are necessary, and neither is permanent. We must keep breathing, relax into the breath of God and allow it to breathe us. This is just a sign that our spirits are evolving on our collective journey, that God is expressing an aspect of Itself through us, and that is why we are here.
Photo credits: Adobe Stock Photo © lowphoto #123248541
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