Spirit as life-giving breath

Our word "spirit" comes from the Latin word "spiritus" which means "breath". Some related words are aspire, inspire, expire, and respiration.

We modern Westerners often associate breath with air. We assume that air is an inanimate thing, oxygen, one of the elements in the periodic table. We assume air is a passive thing and that we are active, living instigators of its movement. We believe we animate the air when we breathe in, draw it into our lungs, breathe out and sigh, speak, or blow out candles. Is this the only way to view our breath? What happens when we examine this assumption?

Breath, spirit, implies a breather. Could it be that our breath is not ours but another's? Could it be that breath lives independently of us, comes from outside of us, flows into our nostrils, mouth and lungs and gives us life? Perhaps breath, spirit, is the instigator of our breathing, and we are its passive recipients. Perhaps we are breathed, spirited, rather than those who breathe. Perhaps this is so for all who breathe: animals, plants, and others.

When I imagine my breathe, my spirit, as belonging to another and only borrowed by me, I see breath differently. I see it as that which animates me. A breath not mine enlivens me. It is my life-giver, my life-sustainer.

When I imagine my breath, my spirit, as belonging to another and only borrowed by me, I see myself differently. Rather than having breath, a spirit, I am breathed, spirited. I am totally dependent on the spirit that breathes in and out of me.

Being totally dependent on the spirit that breathes in and out of me, my appreciation of breath deepens. It inspires me. I value the breath that breathes me. I owe it my life. I give it a worth I did not give it when I viewed it as a an inanimate thing that I breathed. I worship the spirit that breathes in and animates me and all the living.

Given my new view of breath, spirit, how can I continue to conspire with others against the breath on which our life depends? How can I poison it with air-borne pollutants? When I poison the breath we all breathe I poison myself and all who breathe. When I pollute the breath that breathes in me I pollute the spirit that animates all the living.