FILLED WITH EMPTINESS – The Power of Presence

“The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing...not healing, not curing...that is a friend who cares.” 
HENRI NOUWEN                      
                                             •      ~      •      ~      •

It’s taken me a very long time to realize that just sitting, with no task, no agenda, no expectation, is not a waste of time.

“Just being” is something infants and old folks do very well. I suppose you could say that’s because they can’t walk and their hands don’t work very well. But more important than how they might have come to be so acutely in the present moment is the fact that only the most cynical observer would ever conclude from their lack of “productiveness” that they’re squandering their potential.

What a shame that the art of just being is so lost on the rest of us! For it’s in that state, devoid of ambition and guile, liberated from presumption, that we’re best able to experience what I’d argue are the human pursuits of the highest order: curiosity, compassion and wonder.

            There are some worthwhile goals
            that don’t fall within the reach
            of anyone who’s reaching.

NOT THEN OR WHEN, BUT NOW
By the time we’re in grade school, most of us have already been indoctrinated with the familiar mantras: keep your nose to the grindstone; idle hands make for the devil’s work; work hard enough and everything will be fine. You know, the good old American dream. Trouble is, there are some worthwhile goals that don’t fall within the reach of anyone who’s reaching.

We’re all conditioned to place enormous value on the past and the future. We think the past, the sum total of all our life experiences to date, defines who we are. We think the future is where all our hopes and dreams—and fears—will play out.

In fact, we tend to focus so much of our mental and emotional energy on the “then” and the “when” that we fail to fully experience the “now.” And, as much as we’d like to think we can do it, no one can be in two places at the same time.

I learned a lot about just being during my parents’ last days in this life. These lessons come naturally when you’re with someone who can no longer communicate with words. You sit there. Maybe you talk a little, hoping the person understands you at some level. But mostly, you just sit.

I continue to refine this art in my work as a hospice volunteer, in which capacity I’ve witnessed at least 30 people’s ultimate lettings-go.

Sitting with someone—or, for that matter, sitting with Nature—may seem like an old-fashioned idea, like visiting or courting. These are things no one used to think much about; there were fewer options, fewer distractions, so they just did them. 

      It’s in precisely such moments of “emptiness”
   that we are most apt to be fulfilled.

Now that most of us are on call wherever we go, connected 24/7 to each other and to all the information that ever was, it’s gotten harder and harder not to feel we should be productive to some degree nearly all the time.

But it’s in precisely such moments of “emptiness” that we are most apt to be fulfilled. That’s when we let go of any notion that, somehow, we’re in control, that there’s something we should be doing or thinking, or that anything but our presence matters.

It’s only by clearing the decks of this preoccupation with stuff from the past and future that we can be truly open to a communion with the present, whether with our own true spirit, the soul of a loved one, or the astounding beauty of Nature’s gifts that surround and fill us.

            We tend to focus so much of our
            mental and emotional energy on the
            “then” and the “when” that we fail
            to fully experience the “now.”

FINDING SOMETHING NEVER LOST
To be truly in the moment is a difficult concept for some people to grasp. After all, how can you achieve something that’s accessibly only to those who don’t try to achieve it? Is it really possible to notice the absence of everything? Can you really hear silence, feel emptiness?

You can if you’re ready. Just as a sponge can’t absorb a spill until it’s wrung out, you can’t understand these things without first wringing from your consciousness the concerns and constructs that saturate your mind.

Perhaps the one mental construct that clashes most with just being is our notion of time. We imagine our lives as linear paths; we move along a time line. Each day, each experience we have becomes another part of our past, that which defines who we are.

And the line extending in front of us, the future, holds all the experiences we will have from now on, illuminated by our hopes and dreams.

       Outside of the present moment, nothing—
       literally, nothing—exists.

Curiously, we even see the spatial aspect of our existence as linear, imagining, again, that only those places where we’ve been and where we’re to go delineate the sphere of our existence. Imagine walking through a Costa Rican rain forest, touring the Musee D’Orsay or even riding the bus home from work, looking nowhere else but straight ahead or straight behind you. Would anyone consider this a whole experience?

As Eckhart Tolle says in his wonderful book, The Power of Now, these linear paradigms are just illusions we’ve invented to help us deal with the incomprehensible reality of the infinite.

If you're looking to the past, the future or a change of scene for the secret of happiness, you're looking in the wrong place. If fact, it makes no sense to be looking at all, since you already possess it; it’s already inside of you, part of you.

This is why just being is such a compelling, articulate force. Notwithstanding its utter simplicity—or, perhaps, because of it—it is a most eloquent expression of a reality few of us are ready to grasp, that, outside of the present moment, nothing—literally, nothing—exists.

Even the most defining moments of your past exist only as you interpret and apply their lessons now. Even your fondest wish, your most compelling goal, exists only in the work you begin now to realize it.

ARTICULATE SILENCE – The Power of Presence

“The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing...not healing, not curing...that is a friend who cares.”
HENRI NOUWEN
                                              ~      •     ~      •.     ~     .     

It’s taken me a very long time to realize that just sitting, with no task, no agenda, no expectations, isn’t necessarily a waste of time.

“Just being” is something babies and old folks do very well. I suppose you could say that’s because they can’t walk and their hands don’t work very well. But more important than how they might have come to be so acutely in the present moment is the fact that only the most cynical observer would ever conclude from their lack of “productiveness” that they’re wasting their time.

It’s a shame the art of just being is so lost on the rest of us. For it’s in that state, devoid of ambition and guile, liberated from expectations of any kind, that we’re best able to experience what I’d argue are the human pursuits of the highest order: curiosity, compassion and wonder.

NOT THEN OR WHEN, BUT NOW
By the time we’re in grade school, most of us have already been indoctrinated with the familiar mantras: Keep your nose to the grindstone; Idle hands make for the devil’s work; Work hard enough and everything will be fine. You know, the good old American dream. Trouble is, there are some worthwhile goals that don’t fall within the reach of anyone who’s reaching.

          There are some worthwhile goals that
          don’t fall within the reach of anyone
          who’s reaching.

We’re all conditioned to place enormous value on the past and the future. We think the past, the sum total of all our life experiences to date, defines who we are. We think the future is where all our hopes, dreams and fears will play out. In fact, we tend to focus so much of our mental and emotional energy on the “then” and the “when” that we fail to fully experience the “now.” As much as we’d like to think we can do it, no one can be in two places at the same time.

I learned a lot about just being during my parents’ last days in this life. These lessons come naturally when you’re with someone who can no longer communicate with words. You sit there. Maybe you talk a little, hoping the person understands you at some level. But mostly, you just sit.

Simply sitting with someone may seem like an old-fashioned idea, like visiting or court-
ing. These are things no one used to think much about; there were fewer options, fewer distractions, so they just did them. But now that we’re all wired in, on call, connected 24/7 wherever we go, it’s gotten harder and harder not to feel we should be “productive” at some level nearly all the time.

Yet it’s precisely in such moments of “emptiness” that we are most apt to be fulfilled. That’s when we let go of any notion that, somehow, we’re “in control,” that there’s something we should be doing or thinking, or that anything but our presence matters.

When our consciousness is full of stuff from the past and future, there’s no room for what’s happening now. It’s only by clearing the decks of these preoccupations that we can be open to a communion with the present, whether with our own true spirit, the soul of a loved one, or the astounding beauty of Nature’s gifts that surround and fill us.

            We focus so much of our mental and 
          emotional energy on the “then” and the
          “when” that we fail to fully experience
          the “now.”

FINDING SOMETHING NEVER LOST
To be truly in the moment is a difficult concept for some people to grasp. After all, how can you achieve something that’s accessible only to those who don’t try to achieve it? Is it really possible to notice the absence of everything?

Can you really hear silence, feel emptiness? You can if you’re ready. Just as a sponge can’t absorb a spill until it’s wrung out, you can’t understand these things without first wringing from your consciousness the concerns and constructs that saturate your mind.

Perhaps the one mental construct that clashes most with just being is our notion of time. We imagine our lives as linear paths; we move along a time line. Each day, each experience we have, becomes another part of our past, that which defines who we are.

And the line extending in front of us, the future, holds all the experiences we will have from now on, illuminated by our hopes and dreams. It’s precisely in such moments of “emptiness” that we are most apt to be fulfilled.

        

Curiously, we even tend to see the spatial aspect of our existence as linear, imagining, again, that only those places where we’ve been and where we’re to go delineate the sphere of our existence. Imagine walking through a Costa Rican rain forest, touring the Musee D’Orsay or even riding the bus home from work, looking nowhere else but straight ahead or straight behind you. Would anyone consider this a whole experience?

As Eckhart Tolle says in his wonderful book, The Power of Now, these linear paradigms are just illusions we’ve invented to help us deal with the incomprehensible reality of the infinite. 

If you're looking to the past, the future or a change
of scene for the secret of happiness, you're looking
in the wrong place. If fact, it makes no sense to be looking at all, because you already possess it; it’s already inside of you. It is part of you; you are part
of it.

This is why just being is such a powerful, articulate force. Notwithstanding its utter simplicity—or, perhaps, because of it—it is a most eloquent expression of a reality few of us are ready to grasp. That, outside of the present moment, nothing—literally, nothing—exists.

Even the most defining moments of your past exist only as you interpret and apply their lessons now. Even your fondest wish, your most compelling goal, exists only in the work you begin now to realize it.

LIFE AND LIMB – A Tree Hugger Turns the Tables

In our neighborhood there’s a stately old cottonwood tree. At first glance, you wouldn’t say there’s anything exceptional about it. But I noticed one day that, as cottonwoods often do, this tree actually has more than one trunk. In fact, there are five distinct trunks, each about the same size—probably ten or twelve feet in circumference—evenly spaced in a circle.

The massive columns, just a few inches apart at the ground, lean slightly outward, leaving just enough room for me to step into their midst. I like to stand in that living enclosure and touch the coarse bark. Then I lean back against one of the trunks and focus my awareness on just that place, that moment. When I do that, I feel something extraordinary.

      I imagine its five trunks as fingers, gently 
      holding me in their knowing grasp.

Maybe it’s just a sense of peace, of being in the moment, but I believe there’s something more. I think what I feel is the spirit of that tree, its acknowledgment, its welcome. It’s as if, through my touch, by my deep awareness of its venerable “being,” it too can sense my presence, my spirit. I imagine its five trunks as gnarly, wrinkled fingers, gently holding me in their knowing grasp.

Does the idea of communicating by touch with an inanimate object seem illogical? I certainly can’t prove that my overtures to that cottonwood were reciprocated. But don’t let that stop you from trying. The trick is, first of all, to be open to the dialog. You have to believe that a tree just might have something to say to you.

Second—and this is even harder for most people—you have to believe it is saying something to you. Now let’s be reasonable; a tree can’t talk. But it does have life and thus, my pantheist persuasion tells me, a spirit. And spirits have no trouble at all communicating. I know this.

THE SPACES BETWEEN – Learning to See Both Everything and Nothing

In Nature, as in life, we can see more if we notice not just things, but the spaces between things; not just sounds, but the silences they frame.

Far from empty, these inhalations in the song of creation are what make each note so clear, so sweet.
From Under the Wild Ginger – A Simple Guide to the Wisdom of Wonder, by Jeffrey Willius

                                                            —//—         —//—          —//—

Once again, it’s Australian Open time. For me this winter tennis tournament is a welcome escape from the cabin fever that’s so often hanging, cold, damp and gray, around my shoulders this time of year.

Besides watching the greats—Djokovic, Williams, Nadal, The Screamer (Sharapova)—alternately pick and beat each other’s games apart with astounding skill and endurance, there’s another pleasure for me in the Australian Open.

       Most of the impression comes from what
       we read, as it were, between the lines.

For the past several years, one of the event’s main sponsors has been ANZ, a banking conglomerate serving Australia and New Zealand—thus the initials. Its logo appears somewhere in the background of about half the camera angles.

I’m a former marketing communications guy and brand designer, and I think ANZ’s logo is, at least design-wise, among the finest corporate marks I’ve ever seen.

A POSITIVE-NEGATIVE ATTITUDE
The main reason I love this graphic so much is that it engages the eye in a most effective interplay between positive and negative space. The positive forms—essentially just two light blue circles, one cut in half; the other with a light-bulb-shaped bite taken out of it—are laid onto a dark blue background. The negative space is just that background area flowing between and into the circular elements.

And it’s so simple; that’s what makes it so elegant. With just those three basic forms the designer’s created both an interesting arrangement of the shapes, and, with the spaces between, a unmistakable human form.

More than that, in the way that little being’s arms and torso flare out around the blue circles, it becomes a dynamic, playful expression. It spreads, and reaches, and grows. It seems the arms are reaching out toward you, welcoming you, perhaps blessing you in some way. It’s friendly, exuberant, simultaneously humble and confident.

Just what you want in a bank, right? And most of the impression comes from what we read, as it were, between the lines.

     In western society…we’re taught to see 
     what’s there, and completely miss what’s not.

SEEING WHAT ISN’T THERE
I’ve written occasionally about this interplay between positive and negative space. As I’ve tried to capture in that quote from my book, Under the Wild Ginger, it can have a profound effect on how we see the world and life.

It’s knowing the whale’s down there without even seeing it. It’s the void, the potential, in the human experience an entrepreneur or inventor sees and then fills. It’s the powerful meaning in someone’s hesitation when you ask them what they think of something you’re just nuts about.

Seeing and appreciating the spaces between is one of the great little secrets of being truly aware and in the moment. And it doesn’t come naturally to everyone. At least in western society, we’re often raised and educated quite literally. We’re taught to see what’s there, and completely miss what’s not.

            To twist an old axiom a bit, 
            you have to believe it to see it.

NATURE THE TEACHER
Allowing existence to something most people would say isn’t there takes a little practice. What’s perhaps most difficult for many folks is the irony that, the harder you try to do this, the less likely you are to succeed.

My best teacher has been Nature, with a dash of faith, instilled by my parents, thrown in. If you can simply BE in Nature—no agenda, no schedule, no expectation, just pure, simple presence—Nature will eventually show you both what is and what exists right next to that, behind it, even in the space it now occupies, but once didn’t.

Sounds a bit metaphysical, a little new-agey, right? That’s where the faith comes in. To twist an old axiom a bit, you have to believe it to see it. And how does one unaccustomed to it come by that faith? It helps if you want to—something which I’m not sure many milennials do, addicted, I fear, to all the pre-digested information and virtual experiences available to them at arm’s length.

The other key to hearing and believing in Nature’s counsel lies in what I like to call seeing generously. It’s the attitude, the belief, that truly seeing—even what may not seem at first to be there—is more like giving than receiving. Far from the competitive, materialistic fervor our culture seems to believe drives our economy and makes us all happy, it is not an act of acquisition. It’s an act of surrender.

HOW TO BE IN THE MOMENT – Tip #32

Bless a stranger with your thoughts and deeds.

You know how it feels. Someone you don't know from Adam smiles and offers a kind word; perhaps sees your need, and helps.

Be that kind stranger today; wish a passerby well. Know they might walk in darkness today, but for the light of your being, shared.

HOW TO BE IN THE MOMENT – 101 Little Tips

TIP #33 

Value learning more than knowing.

 

Certainty's such an ill-fitting garment. It may have suited you once, 

but you and your truths have changed.

Asking, learning and simply being are all cut of the same miracle cloth; they fit you and the present moment perfectly and always.

THE HARDER YOU TRY – Some Things You Can't Make Happen

Life's design is often so much more elegant than our own.

I’ve lived long enough to have had a few misty, fleeting glimpses of ideas that felt like they had something to do with the true meaning of life. While most have proven pretty elusive, one I’m quite sure of is that, no matter how hard you may try, you can’t always make things happen. Some things happen only when you learn how to let them happen.

This concept was captured well in an Esquire magazine illustration I saw and clipped many years ago. It was in two frames. In the first, a man’s head is tightly wrapped in chains. The coarse links seem to bite into his forehead. Gritting his teeth, sweat pouring down his puffy, red face, he strains to break free of his torment.

In the second image, the man’s expression has unclenched. He’s relaxed, serene. The veins in his neck no longer stick out. He’s completely surrendered himself to his situation. And the chain is disintegrating, flying off in jagged pieces.

           Some things happen only when 
           you learn how to let them happen.

The idea was also articulated well in the best-selling The Inner Game of Tennis and its sequels about other sports by Tim Gallwey in the 1970s and 80s. Gallwey said that athletes are born with the capacity for the perfect natural swing, delivery, or whatever the key movement of his or her sport. All you have to do is watch someone who's really good at it, and your brain will capture and subconsciously program those mechanics into its interface with your body.

According to this model, the aspiring athlete's traditional mantras of "Okay, now, keep your eye on the ball; step into your swing; keep the racket head up; and a dozen others can only corrupt that program, that perfect channeling of perfect motion. Trying: no; making: no; letting: yes.

The murky depths of memory

This is certainly the case with memory. How often have you delved, in vain, the murky depths of your brain for some factoid only to have it pop to the surface just after you've given up looking for it? It happens to me all the time, suggesting that the unconscious mind is better able to navigate memory's nooks and crannies than the conscious one.

            Not only is such control overrated; 
            it is an utter illusion.

With each day of this grand adventure of being, I'm learning that this "inner game" of consciousness  serves me pretty well in most aspects of my life—who I am, what I do and how I interact with myself, other people and Nature. Every time I catch myself expecting to be in control, some muse deep within counsels me that not only is such control overrated; it is an utter illusion.

Can you think of times when the harder you’ve tried to make something happen, the less likely it would?

"When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be."

   LAO TZU