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anita.
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September 12, 2025 at 12:20 pm #449701
PeterParticipantthe following will be failure as I’ve been working on contemplation of arise and return for some time so it may be famillure. The thought was to apply Gurdjieff’s Law of three and seven to it
Threefold Breath
I sit. I breathe.
The breath rises and returns.
In its rhythm, I begin to see the world.The sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening, measuring out our day.
Time becomes a river, each breath, each moment, flowing into the next, into the next, into the next…. Movement creates life.Yet within each breath, each moment, the sun is rising and setting.
Between every imagined happening:
A birth, a death. A cry, A laugh.
Here a first kiss… there a first slap…
The web of life, everything connected.The breath becomes the earth spinning through space.
Here, the sun neither rises nor sets – it simply is.
Stillness within motion. Presence within unfolding.Affirming: the breath rises, the sun moves, life begins.
Denying: the breath returns, the sun sets, life ends.
Reconciling: the awareness that holds both, the still point, the Eternal Now.The Law of Seven whispers beneath the surface:
A process unfolding through stages,
Each breath a note in the octave,
Each moment a movement toward wholeness.
Shock points arise mi to fa, si to do
Where intentionality must enter,
Where presence must choose to stay awake.Sound, language, measure, judgments – arising from and returning to silence.
Motion – arising from and returning to stillness.
Life – arising from and returning to Love.This is the Threefold Breath.
A breath that is not just a breath,
But a movement of creation, dissolution, and reconciliation.
Birth, Death, Resurrection… the Ceaseless prayer on every breath
A breath that unfolds in time… yet is held in timelessness.To stand here between time and the Eternal Now is not a escape… but transformation.
September 12, 2025 at 12:52 pm #449703
AlessaParticipantHi Peter
Welcome back! You were missed and I have been thinking about you. 😊
Thank you for sharing yet another beautiful poem! I’m becoming a bit of fan. 😉
I have asthma, laryngospasms and allergies. It really gives you a perspective on breathing when you struggle to breathe. It is a miracle that is easy to take for granted. The value only truly appreciated when it is taken away.
Breath can bring such relief. Anxiety and breathing difficulties are a vicious cycle perpetuating each other. A very urgent issue struggling to breathe.
Ironically, staying calm when struggling to breathe is the most helpful thing for me. It’s quite terrifying trying to stay calm whilst your throat closes. The sensations of the body and the anxiety themselves become a trigger.
Take a sip of water. It will be alright if you stay calm. You have to stop coughing and trying to clear your throat. Remember that being afraid only makes it worse. Try and relax.
I never used to acknowledge the impact of anxiety on my breathing issues. It helps to realise how much worse it makes these things. ❤️
September 13, 2025 at 5:49 am #449720
RobertaParticipantH Peter
Thank you for your beautiful poem. As I read it my breath slowed & the hurriedness of the day dropped away just leaving the rhythm of awareness to show its presence.
RobertaSeptember 13, 2025 at 10:19 am #449722
anitaParticipantHi Peter and Everyone:
Thank you for this poem, Peter.
Mostly what I take from it is this sentence: “Stillness within motion. Presence within unfolding.”- I am thinking of it as stillness and presence within e-motion, as in before reacting to such emotion as hurt or anger, or any other emotion, to be still within it. Not to judge it as “bad” and push it away, not to be blinded by it and react to it without seeing what it is that I’m doing, but instead- to accept it, to stay with it, to experience it with quiet presence even when the emotion feels like a storm.
* James123, in one of his threads, referred to it as Radical Acceptance of emotions.
To not be scared of my own emotions and to not be led by my emotions to a path where I hurt other people, and/ or myself.
Here’s another part I find particularly meaningful this morning:
“Yet within each breath, each moment, the sun is rising and setting.
Between every imagined happening: A birth, a death. A cry, A laugh.
Here a first kiss… there a first slap…
The web of life, everything connected.”-These 4 sentences are taking me beyond the I, connecting me to the We. I want to reread what I quoted here, these 6 sentences every morning like a mantra, something to start the day with.
🤍 Anita
September 16, 2025 at 6:58 am #449810PeterParticipantThanks everyone: after posting I wondered if the word failure was a “Freudian slip” when I meant to say familiar. 🙂
The “connecting me to the We”… I ponder the notion of wholeness or is it holiness… which shares its root with wholeness – whole, uninjured, sound… healing… AUM? 🙂 everything connected…
Reflection On Wholeness
We live in a world that teaches and even rewards fragmentation.
From early on, we learn to divide self from other, body from spirit, sacred from ordinary.
We are taught to measure, to compare, to strive.
Wholeness becomes obscured, our attention trained elsewhere.We often mistake wholeness for perfection fearing it or deny it possibility.
But wholeness is the presence of everything, held together in love.
It includes the wound, the shadow, the longing.
It is not a clean slate, but a full one.Wholeness is elusive because it asks us to slow down, to listen, to receive.
Wholeness is not something we lack; it is something we forget.
Wholeness cannot be grasped, it can only be entered.
Wholeness is not a destination to be achieved, but a presence to be remembered.Wholeness is the breath before the breath,
The silence beneath the sound,
The stillness within the motion.Wholeness holds the part without dividing,
Holds the wound without denying,
Holds the unfolding without rushing.Wholeness is the circle that contains the spiral of becoming,
The center that is everywhere,
The circumference that is nowhere.To live from wholeness is to move with intention,
To receive without grasping,
To act without forgetting the source.To live from wholeness is to live in holiness.
It is to remember that nothing is outside the circle.
Where time flows, and the Eternal breathes through it all.
That the spiral of becoming is held in love.
And love holds it allI wonder what others experience on wholeness?
What does wholeness mean to you, is it something you wonder about?September 16, 2025 at 10:49 am #449818anitaParticipantHi Peter and Everyone:
“I wonder what others experience on wholeness? What does wholeness mean to you, is it something you wonder about?”-
Yes, it is something I wonder about. Every day, while walking or working, I say these exact words out loud: I redirect self fragmentation to self integration; self alienation, dissociation- to self befriending, to loving myself, to being on my side, no less than I’ve ever loved someone else, no less than I’ve ever been on someone else’s side.
“Reflection On Wholeness- We live in a world that teaches and even rewards fragmentation.”- I lived in a home that promoted and rewarded fragmentation, a mini world within the bigger world, a starting point.
“From early on, we learn to divide self from other”- For me, the division from others was not a learning process, it was an infliction that was imposed upon me, like a big earthquake in that starting-point world.
“But wholeness is the presence of everything, held together in love. It includes the wound, the shadow, the longing.
It is not a clean slate, but a full one… Wholeness holds the part without dividing, Holds the wound without denying”- said perfectly (says I 😊).I am not denying the wound (the early, devastating shame and guilt). I am not trying to escape it. I radically accept it and then, with intention, I am gently peeling that shame and guilt off little girl me, offering her love instead.
Every place there’s an early wound in little girl Anita, I kiss that place and I smile at her with love.
“That the spiral of becoming is held in love. And love holds it all”- Amen. Love for the little girl, or little boy within us, the one who’s still there.. and love for all the other boys and girls out there in the world, those within children’s bodies and those within adult bodies, including the old.
As I go out and about in real-life, I see boys and girls in aging bodies all the time.
🌿 Anita
September 16, 2025 at 11:48 am #449820PeterParticipantThanks Anita – I lit up in recognition when you wrote; “As I go out and about in real-life, I see boys and girls in aging bodies all the time” sometimes it catches me off guard when I “see” a adult in the child and a child in the adult.
September 16, 2025 at 12:05 pm #449821anitaParticipantYou are welcome, Peter.
“Wholeness is the circle that contains the spiral of becoming”- the child becoming the adult, the adult becoming the child..
I’ve been becoming the child for quite sometimes. Connecting this to the title of my now inactive thread “Life Worth Living- what is it like?”- my answer: a life worth living is a child’s life, back to innocence, openness, joy.
🌿 Anita
September 16, 2025 at 10:45 pm #449837AlessaParticipantHi Everyone
I guess, I don’t understand why people keep talking about children as if they are only filled with love. 😂
Children are the epitome of grasping, they just have a shorter attention span. At times filled with a disproportionate amount of anger, simply because they don’t always get what they want.
They spend childhood trying to learn how to control their emotions. For some, this quest lasts a lifetime.
I think wholeness for me is about accepting human nature. Taking the “bad” with the “good”. For anything can be bad and good, if used properly or improperly, depending on perspective. ❤️
For me, I struggle within myself wanting different things simultaneously. Even things that I don’t really want, purely as a result of trauma. It goes back to holding things lightly with kindness and awareness. ❤️
September 17, 2025 at 7:08 am #449858PeterParticipantHi Alessa
I’m glad you pointed that out. Speaking for myself, though I felt Anita’s reflected the same feeling – seeing the child and adult held together in the ‘spiral of becoming’ contains, and mixes, all the complexity you’ve named.
What you’re reminding us of that the common romanticization of the child is often used as an escape from wholeness. For me the integration of the child archetype, as Jung described, is not just innocence and joy but also carries vulnerability, dependency, and wounds. So when I speak of ‘seeing the child in the adult,’ I mean reclaiming the child’s wonder and spiritual connection, but also integrating its shadow: the fears, the wounds, the longing. It’s not about idealizing the child but becoming the child again, with eyes wide open. As you say “accepting human nature. Taking the “bad” with the “good””. Different paths landing in a similar place. 🙂
I might also add that ‘seeing the adult in the child’ isn’t idealized either. Sometimes I see confidence and maturity… but sometimes I see the adult’s crushed spirit already present in the child. Wholeness holds both.
September 17, 2025 at 7:31 am #449861PeterParticipantI forgot my quote 🙂
“If we can stay with the tension of opposites long enough, sustain it, be true to it, we can sometimes become vessels within which the divine opposites come together and give birth to a new reality.” — Marie-Louise von Fran
Marie-Louise von Franz reminds us, the way out of the provisional life is through commitment that engages with reality, making choices, and trusting that clarity will arise through action, not fantasy. Maturity also means accepting life’s limits and discovering that true freedom comes not from escaping boundaries, but from working creatively within them…
A working within the box accepting the boundaries and limitations of life: responsibility, commitment, structure… and works creatively within them. Working outside the box: It resists fantasy and escapism, but still allows for imaginative, intuitive, and transformative possibilities to emerge as we hold tension and allow something new to be born.
Seeing the adult in the child and child in the adult is like tending a garden within a walled courtyard. The walls give structure, boundaries, and protection, but the gardener must still be creative, responsive, and open to the unexpected. Seeds don’t grow by blueprint alone; they grow through care, risk, and trust in the process. Maturity is knowing when to honor the walls and when to let the vines climb beyond them.
September 17, 2025 at 12:23 pm #449888anitaParticipantHello Everyone!
“Seeing the adult in the child and child in the adult is like tending a garden…”- what if the participants in this thread, current and those who may join it, all adults, enter, or reenter this garden (this thread) as children, leaving the adults behind.. Making this a sort of Garden of Eden, before God (the adult) expelled Adam and Eve (the children) from the garden..?
Just a thought.
🌿 Anita
September 17, 2025 at 2:47 pm #449901PeterParticipantHi Anita
My first thought was what would the ‘look’ like and the second wondered if this was associated to the conversation happening in the safe and brave threads.
As an invitation what I’m hear you suggesting as entering garden as children (integrated child archetype) as a call to engage with openness, curiosity, and presence while not abandoning maturity… remembering the part of us that knows how to wonder and trust.
Where adults tend to build boundaries and walls the child in us knows how to climb them for joy, for connection.
Tending this, or other, gardens in this way means honoring both the walls that protect, and the vines that reach beyond. To Alessa point, It’s not about returning to innocence as a romanticizing of childhood, but about re-membering wholeness where innocence and experience, child and adult, safety and bravery, all have a place.
Growth coming from care, risk, and trust in the unfolding… even if and when we scrape our knees in the process…
Reading your invitation through the lens of Threefold Breath, I’m reminded how each breath holds movement and stillness, rising and returning, much like the child and adult within us. The garden a place where breath becomes presence, and presence becomes transformation.
In child like wonder perhaps tending this garden is itself a kind of breath a rhythm of creation, dissolution, and reconciliation that ask us: How does the breath move in your garden? What grows when you listen to it?
September 17, 2025 at 8:11 pm #449915anitaParticipantDear Peter:
My answer: what grows when I listen to it is what’s been neglected for too long, brotherly love, sisterly love, loving each other. Seeing the best in each other, and building on that best.
🌿 Anita
September 19, 2025 at 8:39 pm #450004AlessaParticipantHi Peter
That is honestly fair. ❤️
My interpretation of a lot of concepts of returning to our childhood natures present in a lot of different texts is simply to feel whatever arises and let things go fairly quickly.
I met this Daoist teacher who does precisely that. He was very kind. But also a force of nature. 😊
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