“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.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.”
Rumi
The bringing forth of the field in an individual requires being both in possibility and spaciousness. While spaciousness can be identified and engendered through the experience of physical space both inner and outer, being in possibility implies invoking the spaciousness of time. Ahhh, that familiar duo of time and space! Invoking the inner experience of spaciousness is not so difficult given that everyone has had an experience in sensory reality of looking out over great distances. Perhaps we can remember and embody standing on a high mountain top and surveying the immensity that spreads out at our feet to great distances. Perhaps we can recall the feeling of sitting at the ocean’s edge gazing out to the horizon, or laying on our backs on a warm summer night peering up into a clear moonless sky.These external experiences can be remembered and felt and assist in creating the vastness of the internal landscape. There is a resonance of our past experience that opens doors in the present moment. Time in this instance, by remembering a past experience, can become a helpful partner in the present moment and “greases” the sticky hinges of the door of our awareness.
Spaciousness within time, on the other hand, can be a more elusive experience given that being open to possibility implies openness towards the future. This openness is predicated upon our ability to be fully in the present moment, unfettered by past experiences as well free of cultural biases that fundamentally shape our perception of time. Often it is our commitment and loyalty to our parent’s vision of us that leads us to habitually shape the present moment so that we can come to the same core conclusions about who we believe we are. Paradoxically, we live a life that closes us to possibility in the name of staying true to this vision. We live to prove ourselves “right”; that we are indeed “damaged” goods and interpret the outcome of experiences in support of this imposed self definition. All of our choices then, about what is right, what is wrong, who is good who is bad etc become the bricks in building a foundation of this distorted self outside of awareness. These choices and opinions allow us to have the illusion of gaining power over those people who are wrong or misinformed or butter their bread on the wrong side. This power has a narcotic like effect, numbing us to our emptiness that hides in the basement of our house the super ego built. Like a narcotic we become addicted and habituated to the same conclusions that limit and restrain the potential for openness in the now.
Cultivating the experience of our body of light thru focused awareness has the potential of resetting the past. Like sunlight burning thru a morning fog, the direct experience of the light body burns thru our own limiting conclusions about who we are. This experience brings us a sense of power based on connection, and unity presence; power with rather than power over. From this place there is nothing to prove, nothing to defend.
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