God Breathed: How to Root a Meditative Practice in God's Breath and Name

By Jeff Campbell

God reached down and breathed into the dirt and the first human was created. God gave a name that we sometimes translate as 'Yahweh.' but which might better be translated as the act of breathing itself. Jesus breathed over his disciples. These are not abstract theological principles. They are experiences you can live.
In this introductory guide, you'll be invited on a journey to deepen your experience of God's presence by breathing with God and naming God with each breath. You'll be invited to breathe in harmony with people, other animals, and plants and build your connections with each group.
Using visualization, breath prayer, sacred reading practice, meditation and reflections, 'God Breathed' is a great first step on a contemplative path and a powerful way to bring together belief in God with a meditative practice. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jeff Campbell
• Release date: Jul 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201995317

Book preview

Part 1: I AM

This book is my love letter to the breath.

The breath: it transcends so many boundaries that a person would be hard pressed to find another word so clearly defined by so many contradictions.  The breath is spiritual and physical.  The spiritual side we will focus on in this book and hopefully the physical side is rather self evident.

It is profound and irrelevant.  It is profound in that if a person is having trouble breathing there is little that she won’t do to fix this problem.  And yet, 99% of the time we go about our lives without giving it a second thought.

it is consciously controlled and unconsciously managed.  The breath is unique in the body.  It is not a process completely out of our control, like digesting lunch.  And yet, it is not something which only operates when we think about it like moving an arm. 

It is something we do naturally which gets better with great training.  It shapes mood and physiology.  We can go years giving it little thought or we can make it the very center of our existence.

All this can be said without taking more than a step inside the world’s great spiritual traditions.  When we begin to explore the breath within the context of a religion, suddenly whole new vistas are opened up.  The word for breath becomes a synonym for spirit.  It becomes a special name for God.  It becomes the act which made the first human and consecrated the first disciples. 

Practices which help me to experience this reality have become a central aspect of the things I do every day.  I have a mental list of practices which don’t feature the breath in such an obvious way.  These are a bit like the list of side items we might choose from at a restaurant.  The breath centered practices?  These are my entree.

I hope you’ll accept my invitation to dinner.

Let’s begin.

Chapter 1

This Breath.

The idea of being in the present is at the core of the enormous mindfulness movement.  The suggestion that we should tune into our sensory information to anchor us to the now is so often repeated that it’s almost become a cliche.

Like many cliches, its fame is not entirely undeserved.  After all, mindfulness practices can be applied to almost everything we do.  A person would be hard pressed to find an activity that isn’t improved by being in the moment.  Really, this moment now?  It’s all that we’ve got.

The past, of course, has already happened.  If we spend our time in those memories we are stuck reliving the experiences we have already lived through.  It’s like watching a movie or reading a book over and over again.  Perhaps, sometimes, we will have some new level of understanding about what’s going on.  But that story is already written.  There’s nothing truly new there.

And the future?  What we think is going to happen is a much better measure of our temperament and disposition than it is a predictor of what’s actually going to happen.  If the past is the place where our regret lives then the future is the place our anxiety lurks. 

Many people try to encourage others to ‘Be present’ to whatever is going on.  At the most basic level, this is a way to say that putting our attention on the past or the future is no way to live.  One of the little secrets about that advice—‘be present’ is the fact that many people have absolutely no idea how to do it.  Because we contemplatives have a reputation which is sometimes deserved for being rather insufferable about how we answer those questions, my sense is that many people hear those words—be present. and give a placating nod, never admitting it’s all mumbo-jumbo to them, because suffering through our descriptions of how it works is less pleasant than not knowing how to do it at all.

A very simple place to begin is with the senses.  This is more natural for some senses than for others.  By default, many of us are tuned into the things we see.  Perhaps we are aware of the most noticeable sounds in an area, too.  A very simple and powerful way to be present is to fully tune into the reports from our senses: What other things are we able to see?  What sort of sounds are beneath the obvious ones hogging all our attention?  What sorts of tactile stimulation are we receiving; is it hot or cold?  Soft where our sweater is rubbing our wrist?  Are we sitting in a firm seat?  What sort of scents are in the air?  What kind of taste is in our mouth?

Our senses can’t remember the past or anticipate the future.  They are good like that.  When we tune into what they are telling us it has to be a report of what is happening here and now.

We can be mindful about basically everything.  The most relevant example for the purposes we are exploring in this book is being mindful of our breath.  This is important groundwork before we enter into the more specific aspects of breath we’ll be exploring soon.  It’s pretty normal to not be aware of the breath.  Most of us would think that the breath we are experiencing now is exactly like the hundreds of thousands of breaths we breathed before, and will breathe after. 

In fact, every breath—every single breath—we ever breathe will be as unique as the proverbial snowflake or fingerprint.  Every single time there are differences between the length, the relative duration of inhale to exhale, the feel in our nose, throat, chest, and abdomen.  There will be subtle differences in the way we receive the gift of oxygen, in the feeling of dispelling the carbon dioxide.  What’s more, over time, we change, drifting further away from the person we once were.  And so even if this  breath was identical to the ones we had before, we experience it differently.

By beginning to be really present to these breaths, we begin to prepare for the amazing experience of experiencing the breath as our connection to God.  That’s the focus of today’s practice.

When God makes himself known to Moses, the name that God gives is notoriously difficult to translate.  Various translations render this in English as I am or I will be what I will be. or I am what I am.

One of the demons Jesus would face identified itself as ‘Legion.’  One aspect of this word choice is militaristic.  It evoked images of the occupying empire which occupied and terrorized Jesus and his fellow Israelis.

But another aspect of this is to simply imply a large number.  When God said I am.  God implied that there was something irreducible about Godself.  Meanwhile, the demon would say that he was many.  The demon was two-faced; multifaceted; fractured; stuck in the past, agonized over the future, barely present in the present.

There is so much to unpack here.  It seems to me that these names mean lots of different things.  One of the meanings most relevant to our point here is that all of these names point to the idea that God is fully present to this moment being experienced right now.  God, unlike us, does not get distracted by the past.  He does not get overly focused on the future.  God is right here, God is right now.

It boggles my mind to imagine that all of God’s infinite wisdom, all of God’s limitless knowledge might be turned to this very moment. 

I suspect there is a message here for us. 

Practice #1) This Breath.

Find a relaxing position.  Release your cares and worries.

The first several steps of this practice will be to explore how the breath feels in the body.  Do your best to leave your breath rate unchanged.  Simply notice, for now.  Begin by noticing how it feels at the very outer tip of the nostrils.

Pay attention to the feeling of the air as it moves through your nostrils with the next inhale.

Note how it feels being exhaled out your mouth, putting your attention at the back of the throat and top of the tongue.

With the next exhale put your attention near the lips.  Feel the gentle breeze over your teeth.

How high up can you feel your breath in your shoulders/chest/ diaphragm? With the next breaths look for the feeling of sensation as high up as you can notice it.

Turn your attention to the middle and lower ribs.  Feel your rib cage changing shape with the breath.

Notice the lower side ribs, around where your elbows might be if you dropped your hands down straight for a breath or two.

Place your hand on the belly and feel it coming in and out.

Now, note the change in temperature when the breath comes in and out the mouth and nose. 

Take three more breaths.  Allow your attention to roam to the places in your body you feel it the most.

Now, find yourself with this breath.  The one that you are breathing right now.  How long can you be fully present, fully aware of this breath right now?

As you move on to the next breath, do your best to be present to that one, too.  Hold it with some curiosity.  Imagine you will be later asked to define and identify this one particular breath.  How would you describe it?

With your next breath, see if you can be fully present to it, releasing all your expectations based on the breaths that came before, tuning into how it feels in your body for the full length of the exhale and