Breathing

This morning while I was meditating, as is my practice every morning, I had an insight. I was paying attention to my breath, a favorite way to quiet my mind and thoughts, and realized that I wasn't the one doing the breathing.

Of course I could control my breath, up to a point, but my breathing was going on of itself. Or was it? If I wasn't doing the breathing then who was? The obvious thing would be to say my body was. But was it? My body does all kinds of things without my awareness. Digestion, fight off infections, eliminate waste, maintain a correct temperature. How do all these things happen without my help?

Okay, so I'm not the one doing the breathing. Who is? My body? But, my body is just a collection of atoms, into molecules, into cells, into tissues, into organs. What does an  atom or molecule know? Or a cell or tissue or organ know for that matter?  They don't have brains. Maybe my body isn't running the show. So who is?

At that point the idea that it was nature came to mind. Nature? What is nature. Plants, animals, mountains, oceans, deserts. No, that is just stuff, material, physical, chemical, biological stuff. Those things can't do anything. I suspect, and this is just my feeling, nature and God are the same. That's what the Seventeenth Century Dutch philosopher Spinoza thought. The intelligence that controls all my body without my awareness is the same intelligence that controls (maintains and created) the universe. 

If not God, then who is running my body when I'm not? I'm open to other suggestions.

So, who cares, what's the point, what difference does it make in real life? For one, to me it's very interesting that there is another intelligence involved in keeping me alive. Me, I'm the awareness of all this. But not the master conductor.  God, or nature, is the energy and intelligence that supports "my" life. There is a partnership, team thing going on. I'm not in this alone. We are not in this alone. When I meditate, when I watch "my" breathing I am watching God. I am watching God keep me alive. I am intimately connected to nature, to all living and non-living parts of this universe. And that is a comforting thought.