Meditate | Mindfulness and Most Ancient Breathing

Meditate is a monthly column in which insights gained from meditating on the Word are shared. This month Stephen Muires writes about the subtle breathing that ensues during periods of mindfulness and its potential to connect us with heaven. You could write for Meditate, too! Contact us if you'd like to write a submission for this column. -Editor.

If praying is talking to God, thanking God, asking God, then meditation is listening to God answering.

In mindfulness our own thoughts are temporarily invited to leave center stage and leave space in the middle for a fullness of experience involving the full mind. That’s why it is called mind-full-ness.

In the teachings of Swedenborg the mind has three parts, natural, spiritual, and celestial. We are not really conscious of the inner levels here. Meditation, both in ancient religions like Buddhism as well as in the modern version of mindfulness, has been interested in integrating the deeper levels of the mind into a new way of being conscious.

Then there is the breathing. Lots of references to breathing in Swedenborg's Writings. I have found that during mindfulness meditations my breathing changes. Instead of becoming deeper and more regular, as might be expected of certain meditation or yoga techniques, it becomes very shallow, almost to the point of stopping altogether. This is remarkably similar to Swedenborg’s description of his own breathing:

"I [Swedenborg] first became accustomed to breathing in this way in early childhood during the praying of the morning and evening prayers, as well as later, at times, while I was investigating the harmonies of the lungs and heart, especially when my mind was engaged in writing the works that have been published over many years. At such time I noticed now and then that there was a tacit breathing, hardly perceptible. So for many years from early childhood I had been introduced to such breathing, most of all during intense moments of insight, when breathing comes to rest, and if it does not, an intense insight of truth is not given.

Then later, when heaven was opened, so that I would speak with spirits, and thus would not breathe in at all for the space of a short hour. I only drew in as much air as I needed to think. In this way I was introduced by the Lord to inward ways of breathing" (Spiritual Experiences 3464).

This implies that a practice of mindfulness is useful in the coming into harmonious contact with heaven, the angels, and the Lord. See also the breathing descriptions concerning the Most Ancient Church, as in Arcana Coelestia 7361:

"The type of speech which those people who belonged to the Most Ancient Church employed, was not articulated, like the vocal speech of our own times, but was non-audible, produced not by external breathing but by means of internal breathing. I have also been allowed to ascertain the nature of their internal breathing. It came from between the navel and the heart and so through the lips without any sounds when they were speaking.

With those people of the Most Ancient Church words were delivered in a far more perfect way because it was done by means of internal breathing. And because this interior breathing is also far more perfect, it is more applicable and appropriate to the actual ideas comprising thought. Because that type of speech existed with them, and because they had internal breathing, they were therefore able to live in company with angels."

The astounding quantity of descriptions of the Most Ancient Church in the Writings cannot, in my mind, be for the purpose of giving us interesting intellectual knowledge about a time long gone. There has to be a practical purpose for that information, something we can use today. Mindfulness seems to me to be one very practical way of applying the Writings in daily life.

Lastly, let’s mention church growth. Because mindfulness has a modern form that is completely religion-neutral it is acceptable to people from many diverse backgrounds. Mindfulness in the New Church can therefore be a fruitful contact surface with the people around us, a common ground, and beneficial for all involved.

Stephen Muires

Stephen is forty-eight years old and currently located in Stockholm. That's his first job as minister and the experience is shaping. His main areas of interest are aliens, the Native American flute, and the awakening human race. He blogs at Muires.wordpress.com.