Peace and Spaciousness

THE NATURE OF US

What the world needs now is peace.

Peace within our hearts, peace in the world.

I struggled with writing this week. With a heavy heart watching the latest global violence, my despair and foreboding for our world was overwhelming. With the internet and world news, every conflict is blown large and affects each one of us, even if we are far from war zones. I am writing about peace today as it seems the only way through all this, finding ways of coping with the enormity of events, and taking refuge in the words of someone who has lived through destruction and horror.

Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk who is now deceased, had to flee his country during the Vietnam war, and emigrated as one of the boat people who arrived on our shores from Vietnam. Years later, he wrote the following words, which I included in the essay linked below.

Peace is present right here and now, in ourselves and everything we do and see. The question is whether or not we are in touch with it. We don’t have to travel far away to enjoy the blue sky. We don’t have to leave our city or neighborhood to enjoy the eyes of a beautiful child. Even the air we breathe can be a source of joy.

A few months ago,I explored his writings on peace in this essay:

Peace of my Heart

How can we see and hold all this violence in the world - and still remain in peace within ourselves? It is akin to a high art, to be able to live with peace in our hearts. I return again and again to the peace of nature, but also heed Thich’s words above, that peace is right here and now, even as I write this.

I hope you will take your time reading today’s essay, as it may take times to absorb.

In another poem, Breathing, he offers a very beautiful meditation on the breath, full of a sense of peace:

Breathing in, I see myself as a flower.

I am the freshness of a dewdrop.

Breathing out, my eyes have become flowers.

Please look at me.

I am looking with the eyes of love.

Breathing in, I am a mountain,

imperturbable,

still,

alive,

vigorous.

Breathing out, I feel solid.

The waves of emotion can never carry me away.

Breathing in, I am still water.

I reflect the sky faithfully.

Look, I have a full moon within my heart,

the refreshing moon of the bodhisattva.

Breathing out, I offer the perfect reflection of my mirror mind.

Breathing in, I have become space without boundaries.

I have no plans left.

I have no luggage.

Breathing out, I am the moon

that is sailing through the sky of utmost emptiness.

I am freedom.

What a beautiful sense of spaciousness he offers us: Breathing out, I am the moon that is sailing through the sky of utmost emptiness. I am freedom.

Spaciousness

I want to explore this concept of spaciousness, specifically the experience of tangible space and the luminosity - as Thich said, the moon that is sailing though the sky of utmost emptiness. I immediately feel more peace when I notice, feel, and embody the space that runs through my body and all around it.

In a recent post I wrote about tangible grace and the new body. Building on that essay, what if we feel through the kinesthetic sense of the body as well as the space that holds and runs through the body? This doesn’t mean a spaced-out perspective, we actually can appreciate the body from outside, and live in it as well. We are held by this space that runs though it all as we embody. We can also respect and know the body as a wonderful space through which all of us pours through, our intellect, our emotions, the spiritual.

To begin, feel the three feet around the body in all directions, the full 360 degrees, even the three feet under your feet. Think of this as your body space. If I move my arms in the space around me, and extend above my head, I will feel myself more lifted. If I am in the space behind my head, I will naturally improve my forward head posture.

When I am present in the three feet behind my spine, this frees my spine to move more naturally with flexibility. Walking backwards, feeling the body move through the space in a backwards direction, is another way to play. All of these examples illustrate embodying the space around us. I am the space. And I can filter what is in the space, feel it, and let it move through me.

If I stand in stillness within a three foot space all around me, and extend my awareness through to the edge of this space, and then look back towards the body, there are times it is very evident that the body comes and goes, and I am the space.

Once we feel that, we can then experiment with feeling the infinite space that extends in all directions. We are that space that holds everything, body, earth, planets and galaxies. Yet the joy is also in focusing right here in the present, feeling the body that has more space. To experiment with this perceptual leap, is to give yourself some space. Space to be fully yourself from a more neutral perspective. Freedom. Freedom with a new and spacious perspective.

I wrote about this from a different perspective in the essay below:

“This new body is both flow and structure. Fluid identity, but with a firmly grounded felt sense of the physical. When I feel my insides, become deeply interior, I become part of a horizontal realm, but also vertical, where I find myself at the center of the directions as well as above and below, interconnected and inter-dimensional. Nourished by all that surrounds me, bathed in textures and gentle stirrings, met on all sides by dark loving eyes.”

Tangible grace: a new body emerging

Being the space is not empty and dreary, it is living with the whole of possibilities, and bringing forth what is ours to give. We start to see what else is in our space, and make choices. Perhaps our space is full of emotional clutter or endless news on wars. We can choose differently, the frequency of love, for instance, and hold all of our emotions and issues within that space of love. We can choose peace.

What I have noticed is that I become lighter and more open. Even if I am feeling a heavy emotion, it is more spacious, open to possibility. I am not the feeling itself; the feeling is moving through me. I am more aware of the flow of events, thoughts, and emotions moving through the space. I am more aware that I am not the doer of all this, rather it is all arising through the space of me. I have more awareness of the subtle currents of energy being broadcast through my space, as well as cluttering up my space.

I find I am allowing my thoughts and feelings, and able to be more transparent to what arises, to allow it to emerge into full awareness and sit with it. When we expand as the space around us, we relate more. The various parts of us move and play and know each other, even the more than human - the plants and animals and birds. We feel more tangible, connected, blooming with eros, a luminous field embracing the world.

I chose this photo above to illustrate the space that is holding both the entangled density, and the flower of us blooming in the midst of it all.

What if a luminous field of light runs through both the space and through our bodies? Is this the full moon moving through the empty sky, illuminating everything?

What if when we feel something that does not resonate with who we are, we can dream a different reality? We then imagine how that would feel, the world our hearts know is possible. What if - I find it useful to pose questions and feel what arises within me. Hope, possibility, brilliance, light, sometimes what gives me a way forward spontaneously arises in answer to my questions.

More space means more possibilities to be free. The possibility of more peace and love. Of course this means time to just stop and breathe, to relax as the space. And then, if there is action to be taken, we can move into the world with peace and spaciousness. May it be so! My hope is that we will all find a way to be more spaciousness and live in peace during these times.

Thank you for joining me here today!

Sabrina Page, MA in Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness I work with individuals and groups, with a focus on somatic inquiry and embodiment, to support you in living life fully, freely, and fluidly, intertwined with nature. As well, I have studied movement, dance and astrology with some of the leading individuals in their fields. My private sessions are offered on zoom, phone, or in person in Bolinas, Ca.

More information is available on my website, sabrinapage.com

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