I spent a week in June this year at the International Sufi Summer School 2023 with heart opening prayers, chants and dances led by Neil Douglas-Klotz.
One of the lecture-meditations of Neil Douglas-Klotz was entirely about the breath. “What does my breath really mean?” he asked and went on to talk about how breathing always takes us to the question of where we begin and end; where breathing is happening within us and where breathing is happening beyond ourselves and how the two connect. These two breaths come together in what Neil Douglas-Klotz calls “the sacred breath”.
Here I share with you some of what I wrote down in the lecture-meditation:
The first breath is my breath, the breath in my body, the sounds my body makes when I breathe and the way my body feels here and now in its environment. It is about how we feel about where we came from and where we are going. This breath is called nephesh in Hebrew or nafs in Arabic. Nephesh/Nafs also means “soul”.
The breath comes into you at birth, and you become a nephesh/nafs and step by step you become an I. As an I, you are free and bound at the same time. The more individual, free and independent we become, the more we lose connection with our nephesh/nafs unless we breathe with the second breath.
The second breath is the connection of the individual breath with the universal breath, ruach in Hebrew or ruh in Arabic. This is not an idea of breath, it is a palpable connection of the visible and invisible worlds, the force of life within any living being. Ruach/ruh means “wind”, it concerns the realm of emotions and also means “soul”.
The two breaths are not separate. Calling them “two breaths” is merely a way of talking about them. Both are within the one sacred breath which is the source of life itself. “Our breath is something much larger than we think, it is something that goes on and on and back to the source of the sacred breath.” All ancient traditions go back to something like this concept, though the words can vary.
In his book Revelations of The Aramaic Jesus, Neil Douglas-Klotz explores the two breaths and the sacred breath in much greater detail, and I heartily recommend it.