Breathwork: Ram Dass says it best, it's exactly like dying

Because I'm still having to work very very hard to find the words and to be succinct when spontaneously describing spirituality and ego and all of this, it's really difficult for me. So I'm just going to read this to you, and play for you some of the Ram Dass talk that inspired this.

I've been trying to find the words to describe the experience of my breathwork - of what that is for myself. Because I want others to have it. Because it's my work and my livelihood.

And because this can change and improve the lives of everyone around the person who does it. It's personal development on the highest octaine. Of the tools I now use to let go of or to mature my ego, my breathwork method is the central one.

And in listening to Ram Dass the other day, he was talking about dying because that was work that he did a lot of, and led others to learn to do...and the way that he describes the moment before death, of letting go and the liberation that happens as a result, and also some of the clinging, it feels exactly the same to me as breathwork, and I want to share that with you.

If you click the link, it'll take you right to this point in the talk: https://youtu.be/NAz_xkBzn1o?si=mf6DK5y2Um6JyUFD&t=1271

"Because every moment of life is the moment of death. And when you are deep enough into like vipasana meditation and you see thought being created, preserved and destroyed, you see the Universe being born and dying over and over again with all your thoughts. And you see that life is a series of many deaths and rebirths. The whole process you see as death and birth, not only seasons but thought forms and the universe as you create it.

It's just a week ago last Monday that one of the students that we that we've been working together in New York died and I was by his bedside as he died and I came away from that so enriched. The moment was so beautiful. The release was so easy. He just kept letting go and letting go and letting go."

And that really made me think of the process of breathwork, or at least the process I undergo and try to take others through. Except there *is fear for us in that process, and in the story Ram Dass is describing there was no fear in his student who was dying. But you get to the point where you let go of the fear, and then there sless fear or no fear, and that is the point!

But in his story about how Ray "just kept letting go and letting go and letting go," that's exactly how I experience healing from fear or pain during breathwork. And whether that allows me to let go of a little more of my ego, or a little more grief, or fear, or to let go of a feeling of clinging to this reality, it's spot on as he describes - letting go, and then letting go a little more, and then letting go a little more.

Sometimes it feels like I'm floating outwards, away from my body, and I can unconcsicously keep letting go and go further out and i start to meet God. And at this stage it's only a glimpse for me. But when you're glimpsing God, which is really me, which is really you, there's feeling of total presence and total love. It's incredibly humbling, and heartbreaking/heart opening, and energizing, all at the same time, and in that moment I can feel a tug of war- with my ego and fear and the world tugging one way and Spirit tugging the other way. And so to come closer to spirit, to go further out, I have to keep letting go, and letting go, and letting go. And it starts to really feel like being swept along by a tide or a river.

And you truly shed more percentage of your fear, your ego. And you transform in that moment.

Sometimes I've needed a therapist to tell me the truth, and sometimes I've needed to feel the truth.

And as long as I can focus on letting spirit take me along, I go and have the experience, and shed the weights, and feel what is truth, what is love. But if I think "I'm letting go" thats a form of grasping, of looking back, and then I quickly fall back to earth. And then reconnecting with God, at least for me, takes time after that - it's not an instant reconnection. It appears not to be something I can will at this point. I have to open myself to reconnect, and that's a process that takes quite an effort right now, and then Spirit comes and sweeps me up.

I really want this for you too, and I hope you'll let me guide you through this. It's a kind of work. We work together to open and let go a little bit more, a little more, and to the extent that we let go, you're touched by God.

Let's continue listening to Ram Dass:

https://youtu.be/NAz_xkBzn1o?si=9QdEw5R_1D8n6ZyF&t=1341

"There was no grabbing, no holding, no panic, no fear. We were just holding hands, rubbing his brow, just whispering to him, "Go to the light. Let go. We're here. It's okay. You can let go. This body isn't going to be much use to you now. Go ahead, Ray. It's okay. And the trust was complete and he just flowed outward and you could feel the being leaving the body. Then there was this body here and for a little while there are some pulses in the neck and so on and then it just quieted and it was over and Raymond was free and we were free. There was no grabbing, no clinging, no panic, no pain, nothing. that was just floating outward. And the nurses stood around and they were very touched by that moment. One of the nurses said, 'I hope when I die I'm surrounded by that kind of love.' "

The process you are involved in here is the process of dying. Not necessarily at this moment your physical death though some of you may be dying physically ready getting ready to drop your bodies but you are in the process of having the way in which you know yourself die. Lest you die and be reborn you cannot know the kingdom of heaven. This is a death seminar in a strange way. And a lot of the anxiety and panic and symptoms and tension a lot of you are feeling is because it's very hard to die because there is much clinging to who you know yourself to be. Many of you come up to me and say I'm confused. I don't know who I am. And I say wonderful. All right. because you are in the process of dying."

When he says "the way in which you know yourself" is what's dying, and the anxiety and panic are the the afraid parts of you holding on to that "who you think you are." This is who I am - and now I see myself dying, or slipping away from myself, or dissolving, holy shit that's scary! And then you can either come back or you can keep letting go, keep letting go - but to let you have to have the trust that you're going to be ok, and this is a natural process of just returning to yourself after learning to be in the world and of the world so much.

He goes on https://youtu.be/NAz_xkBzn1o?si=bBldLLED9NAPsdbF&t=1565

"From the moment you find out that you're going to die and there is denial and then there is anger and then there is bargaining...

and then either a person lets go and accepts or they go into a state of sort of resignation and it's that acceptance that opens them in a certain way that makes it possible for them to do the kind of work you're doing now. Death is the trauma for most and you're sitting in here without having to have a trauma to do it. That's because of the nature of your incarnation."

And that strikes me as really beuatiful because there's something energizing, galvanizing, about the reminder that I'm hearing and doing this work beacuse I chose this work when I was coming in. And that's the case for you too - if you're hearing these words, its because this is the work you choice to incarnate in this lifetime for.

I hope you'll allow me to be your guide, to point the way for you - no one can really show you how to do this work, you have to jump in and learn or remember how to do it. And then you own it, you know the method of how to liberate yourself. But it's faster if someone points the way, and is present to be a channel for God and create that environment in which you're encouraged to let the tide take you.

Love,

Steve