Inner Work

For the week of: December 6, 2001

Spaciousness

Learning to be aware of the space around you pays subtle but important dividends. The awareness of space begins through the eyes, but can extend to a direct perception that does not depend on vision or visual cues. Bodily movement, walking for example, puts you in direct contact with the freedom of space, a reflection of the inner freedom we seek.

Space relates to consciousness: still and empty in itself, yet allowing room for everything to enter. As the core framework of our reality, space and consciousness form the timeless background of all situations, events, and experience. Their basic nature is acceptance and perfect peace. They offer a field of relationship in which we find both our sameness and difference with others. They form the receptive field for time and creative acts. Space and consciousness share all this and more.

So as we work to be aware of the space surrounding us, we thereby enhance our contact with consciousness, with spaciousness of mind. A spacious mind allows thoughts, daydreams, emotions, sensory impressions, and actions to come and go, while maintaining its own equanimity. A spacious mind is vast, not obscured when clouds pass by, and contains ample room for others in its great heart.

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