The Space Between

There is a trap-door out of suffering and into a sense of spaciousness; call that spaciousness the witness, your true nature, freedom, or even Fred.  Whatever you call it, it's real, and seems to be more lasting and real than any thought or emotion.  Thoughts and emotions arise within it.  When I identify with and engage with thoughts and emotions, it feels as though I contract into the focal point of those thoughts and emotions. 

Now before we get too far, don't imagine that I'm at all suggesting not to have thoughts or emotions.  If you want to try that, see how long it lasts.  Doesn't seem to be up to the "me" that's having them. 

What I am pointing at is the space around the thoughts and emotions.  A thought or and emotion is like a fly in a huge empty football stadium.  There's MASSIVE space around the fly, but we get laser focused in on that fly and dealing with that fly (thought/emotion), and usually with even more thoughts and/or emotions.  Before you know it, there's this whole knot of thoughts and emotions.  Now maybe I'm the only one that's ever happened to.  LOL!

So try noticing that there's actually space AROUND the thoughts.  If there weren't, there'd be nothing to make one thought distinct from another.  There's actually space around all the thoughts.  Just like there's space around all the objects in a room.  There's actually more "space" in the world of form than objects. 

Just putting attention (the only thing you and I really "own") on the space creates a subtle (sometimes not so subtle) shift in experience...a softening, an expansion, a melting of muscular holding, a quieting.

Another way in to this experience of spaciousness is to pay attention to that subtle space or pause between the inhalation and the exhalation, and between the exhalation and the inhalation.  Imagine watching a kid on a swing...there's this moment with the swing goes as high is it's going to go, then there's this slight pause just before gravity pulls the swing back down the other way.  The breath has a very similar arc to it.

Check it out...   Play with it... Have Fun with it...  And see how the practice deepens with more practice and experience.  Let the practice itself teach you how to deepen the practice.