We all have an innate desire for control, leading to an addiction to anticipation for a false sense of predictability.
Success in spiritual breath exercises hinges on breaking the anticipation addiction, emphasizing living fully in the present.
Living without the illusion of control or anticipation is to surrender trust to the Holy Spirit.
Buried deep within each of us is the urge to control the world around us. The more control the less fear. Control is an addiction. It manifests as anticipation. If we can control things, we can anticipate them.
To succeed at the spiritual breath exercises, the addiction of anticipation must be broken. It is impossible to anticipate a spiritual breath. So while the will may have successfully fasted from taking, a spiritual breath will not occur unless your energy is used to break the addiction of control. Anticipation blocks the spiritual breath. Physiologically, when you anticipate you revisit the taking pattern of the thoracic muscles. The spiritual breath is an exercise in being fully present in the moment. The spiritual breath exercises increase recruitment of the diaphragm. When the diaphragm is strengthened on a received spiritual breath, its movement is changed which creates a very gradually altered pattern of breathing.
Since you have no sensory control over the diaphragm and because its movement is now different, you cannot anticipate the new breathing pattern. It is a patternless pattern. Yet, you will be mightily tempted to anticipate the next breath. In anticipation lies the illusion of control—predictability. Control is the greatest addiction, the one that rules all others.
Control is the greatest addiction, the one that rules all others.
There is nothing humans want more than control of their breath. Most breathing exercises that claim bodily or spiritual benefit, are exercises in taking a breath. While perhaps well intended, they are exercises of control, not of authentic absence of control.
The spiritual breath exercises are a discipline of the now, living absolutely without the illusory crutch of control or anticipation. Control and all other addictions impede your spirit’s journey to the Christ and the Father. They must be jettisoned in order to make successful spiritual progress.
Only then—living plainly, simply and naturally in the now—can a spiritual breath be wholly received. While it is a pattern that is newly revealed, it is Spirit's pattern and given by the Holy Spirit. Our job is to receive. Living in the now, without anticipation, banishes fear, since fear arises from the anticipation of negativity.
The new, replaced, anticipation which manifests is that of joy in each moment, and trust and unity with the Living Breath of the Holy Spirit. This is the natural, holy state of the Son of Man—and manifests in us as the risen Christ.