The Gift Of Life

Hi,

This is Brooks,

And it's good to be here with you.

Thanks for joining me.

Today we're going to talk about the gift of life.

And the first thing probably to do is to consider what does it mean to be alive.

It's something we don't think about very often because we're always alive.

We notice the contrast in life.

You know,

Things are one way,

Then they change to something else,

And we notice because they're different.

But as far back as we can remember,

We've been alive.

Unless you've momentarily died or almost had a close call of death,

It's something that we really never think about.

And I like to think about it.

I think it's really quite intriguing.

Because without being,

You know,

Without this being alive,

We don't experience anything,

All the things in our life.

If we're not alive,

They're gone.

They're not there anymore.

So being alive is profound.

It's truly fundamental,

You know.

And that's why I think it's worth noticing and thinking about and looking at what it means for us.

Because I don't want to say this is what life is and this is a concept.

I think it's really important to take a look,

Like a curious look at ourselves and ask what does it mean to be alive.

And I think one of the wonderful first steps in doing that is noticing our breath.

We can do that now.

Here's this breathing.

It's happening.

You know,

The body naturally draws in the breath and naturally expels the breath.

It's spontaneous.

And the great thing is we don't have to do it.

You know,

If we had to do it,

Then we'd probably like forget,

Like,

Oh yeah,

I forgot to breathe and then we wouldn't be alive anymore.

So it's really nice that this is done for us.

But it's quite profound to look at it that way.

Like,

I'm being breathed.

This breathing is happening spontaneously.

You can put your hand on your stomach or your ribs and you can feel that expansion that happens as your body draws in the breath.

And then diminishes as the body expels the breath.

So there's something very vibrant happening here,

This whole process.

You know,

Noticing the breath get pulled in.

I mean,

The body really draws it in.

And as a result of this,

The body doing this,

We're alive.

You know,

If the body doesn't do this after three minutes,

That's it.

So here's this beautiful process that's given to us.

You know,

What we're noticing right now is this gift that we're receiving of the breath.

That's why I like to call it the gift of life.

First off,

It's a gift because it's been given to us continuously,

Regardless of how we feel about ourselves or whether we think we deserve it or we think,

You know,

Whatever we think about ourselves or whatever we've done,

Life goes,

Here's another breath.

Here's another breath.

Here's another breath.

So that's a constant giving,

Unconditional giving.

And it's a gift of life because as a result of this process that we're noticing,

That we're breathing,

We're here.

We're experiencing being here.

And that's a good definition of life.

Experiencing being here.

You know,

Whatever it is that's happening here,

We're experiencing it.

And right now you hear me talking,

Maybe you notice certain things around the room or maybe your arm itches,

Like,

You know,

We notice stuff.

That's what we do.

We're experiencing creatures.

And we notice the events that happen around us.

And there's a vitality to life itself.

So there's movement in life.

There's diversity.

And we notice that.

Between as far back as we can remember to this moment,

Now we've experienced a tremendous amount of things,

Which we could sum up as life.

We've experienced life.

So as a result of this breathing that we're taking a moment to notice,

And then being aware that we're experiencing things,

This is the gift of life.

And as long as we're alive,

It's always with us.

Things come and go in our lives.

They come and go,

Come and go.

People come and go.

The things that we do come and go.

Places that we live come and go.

The things that we have in our lives have come and gone,

Come and gone.

So we look back at our lives,

Things are,

You know,

Things are moving back and forth,

Coming and going,

Coming and going.

But there's this constant of,

I'm alive.

Even things come and go in our bodies.

I used to have a lot of hair on top of my head,

And it used to be very brown hair,

And now a bottle on top,

And it's grayish,

You know.

So that came and went.

Now it's something new.

The one thing that's always been with me is my being alive and experiencing being here.

And that's something we all have in common.

We all have this gift of life.

Well,

You know,

That's pretty incredible considering like,

Okay,

I don't have to breathe myself.

Life is breathing me.

And there's,

Let's say,

I don't know how many billion people are on the earth now,

Eight,

Nine billion.

They're all being breathed too.

So that's something,

An incredible thing that we all have in common,

That we're all being given this gift of life.

It's something we share.

It's nice to think about because we're constantly encouraged to look at the differences,

You know.

And there's a lot of differences.

It's not demeaning the differences,

But we're encouraged to look at the differences more so than what we have in common.

And as a result,

We can feel separate from others,

Separate from life itself,

You know.

There's me and then there's the world.

We can feel like that sometimes.

But by noticing this gift of life that we're receiving right now at this moment,

Then we can feel not alone.

And we can feel loved.

Because this breath that we're talking about,

That we're experiencing right now,

Is a gift of love.

We're given this regardless,

Like I was saying,

Regardless of how we feel about ourselves or what we've ever done.

And life continuously does it,

Continuously breathes us.

So life must love us to give us something so precious,

All the time.

Even when we're sleeping.

Even when we don't even think about breathing,

It's happening.

And as we're noticing,

We're being breathed.

Life is breathing us.

It's incredible.

And the great thing is,

You can forget about all the stuff that we talked about today and still be breathed,

Still have that gift of life.

But it's nice to notice.

It's really nice to notice.

Because we can feel wealthier.

I'm taken care of.

But the most important thing in the world I have.

And it's given to me.

So I feel taken care of.

So it was wonderful spending time with you.

And it was great sharing our breathing together.

I really enjoyed it.

And I wish you the best.

Take care.

Bye.