(Still referring to The Greatest Day I've Ever Known.)
When I read back over my one-year-later piece about the Greatest Day, I am struck by the series of coincidences that occurred to help me once I opened myself to the possibility of receiving that help. One way of looking at it is that they were just coincidences, and any greater significance I see in them exists only because of my narrative around the events--confirmation bias to the Nth degree. Certainly the scientific (or, more accurately, scientistic) world-view would argue that perspective, and maybe it's true.
You'll be unsurprised to hear that I don't agree.
Without trying to be melodramatic, I'd say it took some strong intervention by the universe to get me through.
Through the path that I ultimately have found myself on, I have come to learn and appreciate just how little control over our lives we really have, and how much of what happens in our lives is just energy flowing (or not flowing) through us. We have choices that allow us to either allow it to flow or block its flow, but the natural state of all things is flow. From that perspective, it should be no surprise to us when we need help and find that the universe steps up to give us the help we need.
But I hear the scientistic reader objecting again: "This is still just confirmation bias. After all, a series of events happened to drive you down into that pit of despair. Where was the universe's help then?" That's actually a really good point. During the time that day when I sat in the chair in my office and watched my thoughts loop back on themselves and hurt like I had never hurt before, I was very, very aware that I had a very sharp knife in a nearby drawer. It wouldn't have taken a whole lot more negative to transpire in my life that day before I would have decided to find out just how sharp that knife really was. So what changed?
The answer is here: "Somehow I got myself into the bathtub, and I lay unmoving in the hot water, and I watched my mind and I watched my breath and there I discovered that no single moment couldn’t be breathed through, so long as I could keep my attention close enough."
The primary conscious activity we can engage in to help energy flow is conscious, centered breathing. I didn't know this at the time. All I knew was that I needed to find a way to get through the next moment. The breath gave me that way. And from there, things began to improve.
Over the course of that night, again and again and again I was given help. I was desperate for help and I received help. Coincidence? Maybe. But maybe not. Ten months later I started working with Jerry, and the first thing he taught me was the centered breath. Within days, my life (still in a lot of turmoil at that time) started to improve. Within weeks, I was dealing with my life more skillfully, and learning to rewrite and re-understand the story I had told myself about myself for so many years. It wasn't long before my depression lifted. Now I'm four years on, and I am a different person. Call it confirmation bias if you want. You'll never convince me. On the Greatest Day, when I opened myself to the breath, good things began to happen. Later, when I became a student of the breath, my life changed irrevocably.
It really is this simple. (Though a bit of warning: don't mistake simple for easy.) I so fully believe this to be true that I have devoted my life to sharing it.