“I need a vacation!” Have you ever said that or something similar? That desire to escape, get away from it all and find respite betrays a longing to find a space uncluttered by concerns and commitments.
When we’re bouncing from thought to thought, reacting quickly, or otherwise distracted, we’re in no place to listen intently, feel deeply or consider thoughtfully. Life’s fast currents may relentlessly flow by, yet we yearn for a slower space for listening, feeling, and considering – a space between.
The space between is a space of knowing the truth where you are, of recognizing the eternal within temporal experience. It’s opening the center of oneself to the rawness of life being lived.
Viktor Frankl famously said,
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom."
How do we cultivate that space between? How do we nurture that freedom and power?
Quiet listening, mindfulness or meditation practice, intentionally kind acts, gratitude journal, being generous with our time and attention – several ways exist, and it’s likely no one way is sufficient in itself.
However we find and nurture this space, we come to know it as the space where we greet our lived experience (i.e., our suffering). It’s the space where analytical polarities collapse under the weight of real complexities – the space between good and bad, right and wrong, just and unjust, forgiven and unforgiven…
the space where we simply revel in the experience of being alive.
Quote
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about. Rumi
Web
Jack Kornfield offers his take on entering this space through the gates of awakening (read now).
The space between is a space of knowing the truth where you are, of recognizing the eternal within temporal experience. It’s opening the center of oneself to the rawness of life being lived.
Viktor Frankl famously said,
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom."
How do we cultivate that space between? How do we nurture that freedom and power?
Quiet listening, mindfulness or meditation practice, intentionally kind acts, gratitude journal, being generous with our time and attention – several ways exist, and it’s likely no one way is sufficient in itself.
However we find and nurture this space, we come to know it as the space where we greet our lived experience (i.e., our suffering). It’s the space where analytical polarities collapse under the weight of real complexities – the space between good and bad, right and wrong, just and unjust, forgiven and unforgiven…
the space where we simply revel in the experience of being alive.
Quote
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about. Rumi
Web
Jack Kornfield offers his take on entering this space through the gates of awakening (read now).
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