The simplest meditation technique is to sit still and count your breaths. Focus on the in-breath, notice that there is an ever-so-slight pause, and then exhale. Count one. Focus on the in-breath, pause for that slight moment, exhale. Count two. Repeat until you reach a count of ten, then begin again. And, if you're like me (and most folks) you'll get to two or three, the mind will wander off someplace, and at some point in time you'll remember that you were counting your breaths. So just begin again. And again. And again.

This repeated focus on the breath serves two primary purposes: it gives our human, egoic brain an assignment to keep it busy, and it provides an opportunity for us to find that "point of contact" in awareness of the One we might call God.

There is an "in-breath and outbreath" to every living thing. Of course we recognize this process in ourselves and the animals, birds, lizards, and fish. We recognize it in plants, which breathe in the carbon dioxide we breathe out, and breathe out the oxygen which we need to breathe in. (And- how extremely cool is that? Just try to believe this is NOT an orderly universe!) This process is also present in the tidal action of the ocean, the phases of the moon, the orbit of the earth around the sun, even the return of Halley's comet every 75 years or so. We can see this "arising, pausing, passing" cycle in every outer thing, whether or not we even recognize it as "living"; a new pair of shoes comes into our life, we wear them for awhile, then discard them after their usefulness is over. A home is built, people live in it for a time, eventually it is cleared away to make room for a new building or different use.

Medically, one of the ways we determine whether life is present is the continued activity of the breath. And indeed, this process of giving and receiving continues even after that experience we sometimes call death. Through some mysterious process, Life (God) began expressing as each one of us at the point of our physical being. The heart within the fertilized egg began to pulse before there was an organ we have named "the heart". This began the process of breathing through the nourishment of the mother's body. Cells began to duplicate, and after about nine months, you were born into this human experience. You began to breathe air. At some unknowable point in the future of human time, your body will stop breathing air, your heart will stop beating, and the physical matter which has made up your human body will transform into other forms which will nourish and nurture other life forms.     Ashes to ashes... dust to dust...

You, of course, the True and holy I AM, will move on to whatever your next experience of Life will be. We know that energy is never destroyed, it is only transformed. You, the True and holy I AM, were never "born" and can never "die".     Before Abraham was, I AM... 

So breathe. Pause, become still, focus on your in-breath, pause for just the very slightest moment at the end of that in-breath, exhale fully, and count one. Allow yourself to find that point of contact which brings understanding of the Holy One You Are.