Creating Space

Om Blessings

It's a special kind of cold outside today here in the northeast. The term for it is a bomb cyclone and though the snow didn't really hit too hard here, the winds have been bitter and blustery. I braved the elements to come to the studio and open the gallery. It's warm inside but my feet remember the frosty walk in and won't seem to warm up but they will eventually.

I usually have a lot on my mind, things I'm' always chewing on and trying to understand but the last several days have been an exception. I find myself thinking about a concept I come back to every now and again when I'm feeling 'full' or overwhelmed - I thought it was emptying to fill (from Tao) but looking it up, it's called 'Using What Is Not'. I'm referencing a book by Ray Grigg called the Tao of Being, one of my favorite books. This passage talks about something's usefulness coming from it's space or emptiness. By example: a wheel is useful because of it's emptiness in the middle. Can't rotate without that space. A cup is useful because of the hole inside. 'What is valuable comes from what is; what is useful comes from what is not.'  Easy to understand about objects but maybe not as easy to understand when it comes to emotional or internal dynamics.

I tend to experience this as creating space within. I use many experiential tools to help me with this - meditation, art, physical activity etc. I guess for other people it could include fun activities that provide escapism or a sense of getting out of ones own way. I do that too. But the practice is most effective for me as an active purposeful form of creating and sustaining a consciousness of space rather than the more passive and ephemeral experience of escapism. In simpler terms, I go to a movie and experience the suspension of self, for a few hours. Then it's back to real life where there are no Storm Troopers or lightsabers - yet. That's a passive form. Read a book and live in that world for a bit of a breather and then come back to your reality. It's great for relieving stress and temporarily letting go, but it's not a true or lasting form of it. The key to either is letting go of what you're holding on to with one extra step, don't latch on to something else. Stay comfortable in the emptiness. It's also the most challenging part because once you create space, something else will rush in to fill it. If it does, let that go too.

I guess that's why nature is a good place to accomplish something like this. Nature is a constant reminder letting go. Reminds me of one of my favorite poems from Robert Frost.
 

Nature’s first green is gold, 
Her hardest hue to hold. 
Her early leaf’s a flower; 
But only so an hour. 
Then leaf subsides to leaf. 
So Eden sank to grief, 
So dawn goes down to day. 
Nothing gold can stay. 

 I'm kind of meandering because letting go is connected to holding on which connects to feeling full internally which leads back to letting go if you don't want to feel that way and on and on. You know what I discovered in my meditations this morning? I suck at 'letting go'. I can let things go till the cows come home and they always come back - like emotional boomerangs that don't seem to live anywhere but in me and it's annoying. I used to think that well, maybe I missed something in whatever it was? Maybe I'm still hanging on to something? Sometimes I was. Sometimes I was just feeding these energies out of habit and worked on not doing that. Still they'd come back and sometimes they'd bring new friends to bedevil me. What are these internal things? Fear, uncertainty, doubt - stuff like that. Normal stuff that over time or depending on the situation become overwhelming and paralyzing. 

First thing I'll say, if you've decided to take on these demons is, don't have expectations that if you 'let go' of fear lets say, that you'll suddenly or even eventually feel confident. That's a trap that'll throw you right back into the cycle. The reasonable dualistic mind says hey, as proof of not having fear of whatever, I should experience a feeling of calm or confidence right? If I don't feel that, I must've done it wrong - try again. In the truest sense of letting go, you will experience a sense of freedom and clarity, not the opposite of what you were letting go of. That sense of freedom and clarity is where you need to stay because that's where the space is. That's WHAT the space is. 

How do you do that? Realize this is a process. Realize that as soon as you enter that space, something will rush to fill it. Again, something I thought I sucked at till I realized that one by one, these things stepped up not to fill the space but not for the reasons I thought. This letting go thing wasn't a tool that served me well at this stage. These doubts etc needed me to do something else. They needed permission to evolve out of fears prison. So as each came into the space of clarity and freedom I'd created, I allowed them to grow past the limitations I kept them in. I allowed them to evolve and the space within got bigger and the sense of freedom and clarity became more profound. I found as I allowed the process to continue that I was also creating a state of reception.

I realize a lot of this may only make sense to me. I'm unsure I'm explaining it well as understanding how I process this is new. But as a result of the meditation on this earlier today, I've carried this space with me all day and it's been a relief! So, what is this meditation and how to you start? I started by mindfully examining, questioning, and understanding my fears. I gave them a voice in the theater of my mind and interrogated them without mercy, mostly because I was bone tired of the limits they create. I'd like to think I didn't have many left anyway, having worked on them over the years but, the remaining ones I found today are old and survival based so tenacious - things like, should I get a paying job instead of pursuing what I love because I'm not getting any younger? What if something catastrophic happens and I can't take care of myself which reminds me, still need to make a will. A relentless parade of what if's at 1am that keep me awake and worried, trying to plan for hypotheticals that will likely never happen but a good, responsible member of society plans for them anyway.  This isn't because of anything specific in my life now. Sure I've had a lot of adjustments and changes lately - death of my kitty, death of a dear friend etc with more on the way. But in truth, this is my brain and how it always works. It's the product of a detailed mind combined with being an empath. Sometimes it works for me, most of the time it works against me unless I engage and challenge it directly. THIS, I suspect is why I've been feeling overwhelmed - a great big steaming pile of what ifs that snuck up on me. 

So, for today I'm on top of it and staying in the moment. We'll see what comes of this.