A Prison Without Walls:

I am a slave.  You are a slave.  We are all of us slaves.  We have no idea the extent of our bondage.  When we are born, we are born into a life of servitude.  As we grow and mature into adults we are conditioned to become servants in a societal system that benefits the few at the cost of the many.  It could be said that most of humanity died as slaves without ever knowing they were.

We do not possess the time, patience, energy, interest, will power or dedication to transform this engineered society in which we exist, let alone simply identify it.  We are tethered to its intricate design.  It is a lifestyle of lunacy we are force-fed relentlessly until we accept it as “reality.”  When we do, our slavery is complete.

It is not solely an incarceration imposed by a covetous, authoritarian society.  It is an environ”mental” hypnosis that lulls us into a self-imposed separation and disassociation with not just others and ourselves, yet also with reality and life itself.  Our confinement exists only in the neural pathways of our mind.  In spirit, we are all free.  We are energetic beings that are connected to everything and everyone all the time.  Yet in reality, we are sentenced to a prison we have accepted as everyday human life.

Assimilation:

As children, we are continually bombarded by sensory stimulation.  It is violence in all forms of media that desensitizes us to its impacts on others and ourselves.  It is advertisements (“hypnotize-ments”) promoting GMO-laden, high-sugar, chemical-filled foods, sodas and sweets that eventually lead to the conditions of our demise.  It is the chemical-manufactured, electromagnetic-emitting plastic devices we all possess which inevitably possess us through our infatuation with and dependence upon them.

When we become adults we are processed through the meat-market of social programming with dogmatic religion, left-brained dominant education, candy-coated, sex-infused entertainment, dualistic politics and manufactured news broadcasts that relentlessly attack our senses with perpetual fear.  Yet, we are conditioned most through peer pressure by the opinions and expectations of our friends and relatives.   In the vain of keeping up appearances we repress and imprison our vulnerabilities, the beautiful qualities we exhibit as human beings.  We sacrifice the best of ourselves in the pursuit of our social survival and acceptance.  Our assimilation is complete.

Breaking the Spell:

Everyday we are shackled to an artificial lifestyle that diverts our visions, passions, dreams and personal power away from us, far more often than we can possibly imagine.  We are not educated, mentored or empowered to establish and maintain our personal truth, energy, consciousness, power, health and relatedness with others.  Without exercising these basic fundamentals of conscious living, we wallow in the simulated sea we perceive as “reality.”  In essence, we exist within the paradigm of an elaborate and fantastic dream.  It is a dream from which most of us never awaken.  The cost of “living the dream” is never living the life we were destined to live.

Our freedom is choice in a world of indecision.  Do we decide to exist as a “human doing,” playing out a role that was imposed upon us to echo?  Or do we choose to live an extraordinary life of love, fulfillment, health, awareness and creative expression?  It is easy for us not to choose when we aren’t even aware that we have one, or that it matters.  It may seem even easier for us to surrender our choice due to the responsibility it may entail and the outcome with which we will have to live.  It is the easiest to choose “not” to choose when we witness the dire consequences of the choices others make.  When we do not make choices in our lives, we are choosing not to live.

Transformation…in a single breath:

Most people may believe that transformation is an excruciating process.  That it requires us to drag ourselves through the muck of our undesirable behaviors and qualities in the pursuit of releasing what it is that no longer benefits our lives.  This is true.  However, transformation is the most magnificent experience we may have.  It is a gateway that reunites us with our possibility.  It draws us out of our mind and body and connects us with our heart and soul.  Transformation reminds us who we truly are.

The beginning of transformation is breathing.  When we were born, our initial expression of life is taking our first breath.  When we die, our last expression of life is our final breath.  As we live, we overlook the blessing and disconnect from the life force that breathing provides.  We breathe only as much as we need for our survival.  It is interesting how we breathe with more depth and awareness when we are sleeping than when we are awake.  We seldom fully express this most vital element of our existence.

Conscious Breath:          

When we are confronted daily with drama, injustice and exposure to violence, we have a choice.  We can react with the energy of upset, anger, disappointment and judgment.  Or we can do what we need to do to live, breathe.  When we choose to breathe, we disengage from the chaos.   Our fear that provokes our reaction disappears in the expression of our conscious breath.  This may seem like a very elementary and radical strategy for living, yet it is as essential as the quality of the breath we take.  The quality of our breath is the measure of the quality of our life.  The more consciously we breathe our breath, the more consciously we live our life.

Our conscious breath is created in its awareness and expression.  Maintaining this quality of breath may seem unattainable.  It is not.  It only appears impossible because we have not fully established and developed our conscious breath.  All it requires of us is to dedicate a few moments of our time to breathe.  When we commit to conscious breathing, something extraordinary happens.  A shift occurs within us and our experience of life transforms right before our eyes.  When we express our conscious breath, it is not our environment that transforms, it is us.

Everything in our life is born from our breath.  Only with our conscious breath will we restore our senses, balance, truth and love.  Only with our conscious breath will we realize our purpose and manifest our destiny.  Only with our conscious breath will we create a pathway to our transformation.  The possibility of transformation inspires us to breathe our breath as though it is our first, or our last.  Only with our conscious breath are we truly alive.

http://www.zengardner.com/assimilation-transformationin-single-breath/