Everything you want is in the space between.
When you embrace the emptiness of space, you fall into the fullness of space, and all it holds for you.
It is often without our choosing that we are forced into the space between. Maybe we have lost a job, or a relationship, or the dream we have held so long. But in what appears to be nothing but an empty space, when embraced, lies a universe of possibilities greater than the plans we’ve conjured up.
What if emptiness was productive? Opportunistic?
It doesn’t sound so, and certainly it goes against all our upbringing and the values of our society to believe so. But what if by allowing things to sit, to simmer, we discover what we had hoped for, and perhaps more?
When we lose our train of thought, and fight to get it back, we often fail. We try so hard to achieve a certain result, and hit a dead end over and over again. But in letting go of our strain and struggle, in giving up the fight for only a moment, it comes to us magically. Easily, naturally, it comes to us.
We have all experienced this to some degree. We have realized that in letting go, we let in.
We are not the only ones at work here. There are other forces at play that are much more imaginative than we are, and we can co-create with them if we allow ourselves to. If we just open to them and say Yes! But we cannot open if we are still holding tight to what we had in mind. We have to loosen our grip enough to allow the unexpected in. We have to release our control, our need to know, to open to something beyond our agenda.
Before the butterfly is born the caterpillar completely gives up its identity. It releases who it thought itself to be and falls into the dark soup of its cocoon, into the nothingness.
Before the first drops of heavy rainfall, the air falls into a stillness that heralds the deluge.
Before the break of dawn, the light falls furthest away, and the sky welcomes its depths of darkness.
Before our next inhale we fall into the bottom of our lungs, the pause that lies at the end of our exhale.
If we just allow ourselves to fall, fall into the space between, we discover there is something there to catch us. Something there waiting for us. This is the birth of awakening, a birth of a new way of perceiving and living life. We begin to live with life, instead of against it.
Nature does not resist the emptiness of space. It uses it. It creates from it. It understands it is not an empty pause, but rather a pregnant one. It understands that it is not an ending, but rather a beginning. It sees the wisdom of nothingness and from it births something new.
Idle hands are certainly not the work of the Devil in the natural world, but rather the Joy of our Spirit. In putting down our tools for a moment, resting our busy minds and hands, and going out to play, we relax, refresh and open. We dance with the unknown. We move from pushing to allowing. We move from fear to trust. We move from judging to accepting. We understand there is a greater unfolding at play, and if we allow it to be so, we move with it, in all its wisdom, and let it take us in new unforeseen directions.
We ride the wave of life, but also patiently rest in the lull between waves. We surrender into the space between relationships instead of impulsively grabbing a new lover. We take a break from our creative endeavors instead of forcing ideas that are not flowing. We fully listen to others instead of busying our heads with thoughts of what to say next. We courageously walk through the forty days and forty nights of our dark night of the soul without clarity of where to go next. We surrender our struggle of many years, and finally, in the emptiness, open to receive help. We allow. We trust. We accept. And soon the water swells and we receive a new unexpected wave of opportunity.
The space between is a time to assimilate, reflect, and learn so we can receive something that we had yet to be prepared for. We release our current vine not necessarily to grab onto the next, but to question if that is really the direction we want to go, and to inquire, “Is this who I am anymore?” “Who am I now?” We hear our heart speak perhaps for the very first time. We listen carefully. The mind is empty enough to allow the spaciousness of our inner voice to be heard and acted upon. And we hear, truly hear, the words of others, perhaps also for the first time, words that might have passed us by many times, because we didn’t create the room in our heart to receive them.
When we are ready, when we have learned what we are meant to learn by being in the space, we can let in the next level of living. By dreaming the empty dream we let in dreams that never were until now, new dreams that call forth new aspects of our Self, including our gifts and talents. By crossing the empty sea we discover new lands that lead us along adventures that serve a higher purpose.
Moving higher up the infinite staircase, a staircase that has no top or bottom, we come closer to where we are all heading, all trying to get to in our own unique way – Home. Our real Home. Back to our Essential Eternal Self. Back to Love.
At the end of the day, Love is what we are all seeking.
This is where the journey, in all its ups and downs, is taking us. And every time we fall, as we do over and over again, we remember a little bit more of who we are and where we are really going. That is the gift of falling into loss, into forlorn. In the darkness we discover the light. In the most difficult of times, when all is falling apart, and we reach rock bottom, we discover the stability of the only solid foundation there is – our Heart, Our Soul, the Rock of Existence that is Love.
What we lose was never ours in the first place. It was never meant to be beyond that point of existence. Only that which we gain from within can we ever keep. That which we gain from within is all there is, and ever will be.
We are here to come Home, back to Love, and until we do so fully, we will always have another empty space to fall into.
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Check out Vince’s book: Wild Empty Spaces ~ Poems for the Opening Heart
