The Practice: Spaciousness
“If you pour a handful of salt into a cup of water, the water becomes undrinkable. But if you pour the salt into a river, people can continue to draw the water to cook, wash, and drink. The river is immense, and it has the capacity to receive, embrace, and transform. When our hearts are small, our understanding and compassion are limited, and we suffer. We can’t accept or tolerate others and their shortcomings, and we demand that they change. But when our hearts expand, these same things don’t make us suffer anymore. We have a lot of understanding and compassion and can embrace others. We accept others as they are, and then they have a chance to transform.”
Daily Practice and Reflection:
I doubt anything meaningful can be added to the wisdom above but a humble attempt…
Mindfulness is a practice that encourages us to create space for whatever is happening in our lives, cultivating spaciousness to be with the dualities of life: both the good and the bad, the joy and the sorrow, all while holding it with some level of acceptance. We create space so we’re not lost in the extremes of life. Through spaciousness, balance can reemerge and trust can be cultivated; the trust that things will turn out as they are meant to.
Spaciousness also provides us the opportunity to examine our own perspectives and reactions more closely; and in doing so, we may realize that we don’t have to be so identified by our experience. We don’t always have to make a self out of what’s happening. Through spaciousness, we soften our relationship to anger, frustration, and uncertainty; softening our need to control or fix certain aspects of our lives.
And as we strengthen our capacity to find spaciousness in difficult moments, we may even touch beneath the surface of what we are feeling… dropping beneath our anger or frustration to feel the hurt of deep disappointment or broken heartedness; offering ourselves the space to grieve and mourn all the loses and hard aches that we have accumulated in this life, the difficulties we typically brush aside. To heal, we must feel what we are feeling rather than discounting or avoiding and that’s the gift spaciousness affords us.
Spaciousness isn’t something that we need to create in our minds or perspective. It is naturally there if we can notice it. Spaciousness is our willingness to relax our fixation of the cognitive mind and opening to what is. It is a softening that points us towards allowance and acceptance, to move towards freedom, liberation and ultimately love. Spaciousness creates the conditions for grace to emerge.
“When you say ‘yes’ to the isness of life, when you accept this moment as it is, you can feel a sense of spaciousness within that is deeply peaceful.”
Meditation Practice:
“Happiness is the spaciousness in my mind that holds all the material of my mind.”
“most of our mental suffering comes from how tightly we hold our beliefs.”
“It is the work of allowing that grants me the space to begin to transform my relationship to what is uncomfortable. ”
“Most of us have spent our lives caught in plans, expectations, ambitions for the future; in regrets, guilt, or shame about the past. To come into the present is to stop the war.”
“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”
“If I had to summarize the entirety of an enlightened person’s life in a few words, it would be complete acceptance of what is. As we accept what is, our minds are relaxed and composed while the world changes rapidly around us.
”
“Mindfulness is simply being aware of what is happening right now without wishing it were different. Enjoying the pleasant without holding on when it changes (which it will). Being with the unpleasant without fearing it will always be this way (which it won’t).”