Take a moment and have a look at this photo.
What do you notice?
The Misty shrouded mountain top?
The Stone wall?
The Green fields?
As I stood and looked at this scene just before Christmas, the thing I noticed was the gaps.
Gaps.
Intentional spaces between a barrier, or border, space left open.
A navigation tool, and opening to see from distance to walk towards.
To follow.
To trust.
To know that you are on a path (though might not always be the right one ;-) )
And at the start of the new year, the year starts with the gap of opportunity. The gap of unlived promise, desires to be awakened, space to be filled.
Yet…
What, if I’m honest, do I struggle with most?
Often it’s the gap between expectation and reality, the expectations in my thoughts, and the reality of the experiences, what actually is happening, or going to and being unable to have open acceptance. Too little a gap between them, to much mind going on in the swirl of the every experience.
Or the noise in my mind when I think I’m in trouble, or upset someone , or not done enough, or guilt about any of these things and the filling of the space happens….yet….
Or even deciding to make that gap, because it’s sometimes so much more comfortable to fill it, even when that inner discomfort is saying otherwise. Because, I can decide, I have more power than I realise.
What space might we make for the gap, that space between things and no-things.
To sense and make a space between expectations and realities, and not feel disappointment, but to notice that what is as a gift.
The gap is open, it is air.
It may be time to breathe in the gap.
To make space to dwell in presence, and not productivity.
The Slow time of betweenness where silence calls its disturbing, and also peaceful voice.
Space for Space itself
The invitational promise of the gap
That focussed the mind on consciousness itself
To wonder
To be
To imagine
The gap between thought and feeling
Between longing and belonging
Where we find God, being, freedom or Love
Where we sense that mystical indescribable something, close.
Just there.
Always.
Like the empty pages of this years diary, or the gaps between the notes in a music score.
Notice.
The Gap.
And, let the Gap call you forward.
Take your time this year.
Move slowly.
And decide to go there.
To give that energy inwards
And let it find you.
Because it’s there.
And there may you be embraced by peace.
Time, to be, time to sit,
stay there…as long as you can dwell.
This has been inspired by my current reading which is ‘Living Untethered’ by Michael A Singer, his previous book ‘The Untethered Soul’ is one I highly recommend, on seeing, feeling and noticing the mind, and how to live in personal freedom.
James Ballantyne 