Is it really as simple as always going back to the breath?
It’s something I keep reading these days: focus on the breath. Not as the solution, of course, but apparently as the place to start – the only place to start. Feeling anxious, confused, or stressed? Back to the breath. Lonely, sad, despairing? Back to the breath. Lost in thought? Back to the breath.
In some ways, it reminds me of starting out in recovery, when the advice was just “Don’t drink, and go to meetings.” I probably thought, “Yeah, but what about all the crazy?” And, at least for that time, the advice was “Don’t drink. Go to meetings. We’ll talk about the crazy later.”
Sometimes we just have to go all the way back to the basics, to the starting point. We have to stop adding to the crazy before we can even begin to address the crazy. We need a sane baseline.
In recovery, that baseline is sobriety and staying connected to the fellowship. And for me, it still is. I know that if I drink or use, everything will quickly get worse. But after almost 26 years without a drink, it really never occurs to me to take one. As for meetings, there are still plenty of days when I don’t feel like going to a meeting, but I get a sense that I “should,” or at least that I will benefit from it. Maybe even be of service to somebody else. So I go and, like going to the gym, I always feel better afterwards. Back to the basics.
But “sobriety” is a very open term. It really only means the absence of something unhelpful, be it booze, drugs, thoughts or behaviors. So I might be alcohol-free for 25 years, but I can barely stay crazy-free for 25 seconds. And sometimes that crazy leads me back to un-sober behaviors, even without drugs and alcohol.
So what is the advice here? Sobriety and meetings are still a good idea, but eventually the 12-step world offered other suggestions, and following those led me on a long spiritual and self-investigation, which currently has me trying to go back to the breath.
Just that. Breathe, and focus on it. And watch what happens. Thoughts come and go, and I don’t have to attach to them. Feelings swirl around like a storm, but I can stay warm and dry by staying with the breath. Anxiety comes up, and so fear and despair and all the rest, but if I stay with the breath, I have a calm, serene center from which to live.
It isn’t a retreat from the world, from my thoughts. It’s letting go of them, not attaching to them, staying where I always am instead of running around inside my head.
I still ask, though: What about all the crazy? What about work and health and money and learning a new language and the woman I’m obsessed with and the resentments I carry around, and and and and …
And apparently the answer, for now, is back to the breath. We can talk about the crazy later, when we’re not lost in it.
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