When a practitioner breathes long and slow and deep, a set of qualities can be experienced. Some are subtle and some immediate and apparent. If one settles into simply breathing – the in and up of the breath as well as the out and down of the breath – whole vistas of experience await and will come forward.
We discover that at the top of the breath is an experience of awareness-mind that is like the sky: bright, open, expansive, simple, uncluttered. Through breathing out and the depth of the breath, we experience awareness as embodied through the sensations of peace, embrace, infusion, integration, calmness, centeredness, or abiding. These layers of sensation and quality are like the layers of the atmosphere or ocean with indiscreet divisions, with more emphasis on wholeness than on any one quality or experience. As a result, the practitioner feels whole, which is the experience of middle – not up or down, not in or out. It is from this totality that we can increasingly live, and that is the purpose of Step 12: Central Channel.
Downloadable podcast: Like the atmosphere or the ocean