Work to Serve and Teach
by Alannah Fitzgerald

Breath Serving as a Master Key

 by Alannah Fitzgerald

Life is quite a school, quite possibly the best there is, teaching us many things. As we journey through life, sometimes stumbling as we go, at other times soaring like an eagle or just simply walking along, we learn that “the low forms the foundation for the high”. I once heard someone say that “it’s what we do when we’re up that brings us down and it’s what we do when we’re down that brings us up”. Life has certainly given me uncountable occasions to study and apply this person’s words, to experience their meaning. 

 

I feel sure that many, if not all of us have come to the realization that the deeply enriching process of serving others in various capacities including teaching, provides a great opportunity to exercise our personal cultivation through practical action. It affords us a chance to observe and further examine our inner life more deeply. 

 

We may wonder how our breath figures into the equation as a “master key”. And what relationship might this have with service? It seems it serves a profound role. Do you perhaps remember times when you stopped and took a few deep breaths to restore calm and centeredness? To just let go and allow yourself to simply be? Moments when you’ve breathed a sigh of relief, an indication of releasing unease, stress and tension? I mention all this with the humble intent of suggesting that as our willingness to take the time to consciously focus our inner attention on our breathing, with intention, we give ourselves this moment now, to choose a state of conscious awareness, to simply observe, as we breathe into our inner stillness, to be dynamically present within this silence, to see clearly from within this sacred spaciousness. Here, our conscious energy can see without judging, can listen without interruption, and can accept without trying to control. Living with this awareness, we are relaxed, centered and grounded. We hold space without filling it. 

 

Presence is the most profound form of love. 

 

Respecting and holding our inner space as sacred and precious, because it is, while remaining conscious of breathing with focused awareness, connects and grounds us in body, mind and spirit —  actively listening within the inner silence, within inner stillness. It is quite simply to hold space without filling it. In any form of service, as we give of ourselves to another or others, is it not wisest rendered with profound Presence?