{"id":536,"date":"2009-04-12T23:39:38","date_gmt":"2009-04-12T23:39:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/2009\/04\/the-practice-of-finding-space.html"},"modified":"2009-04-12T23:39:38","modified_gmt":"2009-04-12T23:39:38","slug":"the-practice-of-finding-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/04\/the-practice-of-finding-space.html","title":{"rendered":"The Practice of Finding Space"},"content":{"rendered":"

A goal I’ve been working with lately is cultivating a feeling of spaciousness. It’s a theme that seems to be emerging in many aspects of my life- whether in the readings for Hardcore Dharma\u00a0or\u00a0one of my psychology classes to conversations with friends. For me, this idea of “space” has to do with not being so reactionary\u00a0and\/or attached to feelings that arise. It’s a general feeling of openness.\u00a0A couple of situations have proved\u00a0particularly challenging in the last couple of days.\u00a0One was yesterday when it was pouring and I realized the Q train wasn’t running\u00a0and\u00a0everyone was being\u00a0herded on to shuttle buses. Subway disruptions tend to bring out the worst in New Yorkers…especially when it’s raining. There were some serious meltdowns taking place- people screaming at the MTA employees, etc. When the bus did show up, it was chaos. People were shoving and practically wrestling one another to get on.\u00a0 I had a hard time tapping into that feeling of spaciousness as I was\u00a0fighting not to be\u00a0trampled.\u00a0Feeling mental space in the absence of physical\u00a0space is always a challenging one for me. Eventually I just extracted myself from the\u00a0mob and waited for the next bus. But that was only after feeling like I literally wanted to hurt someone, an intense and rare reaction for me.
\n
\nThe second situation was when I was home visiting my\u00a0family today. I won’t go into the details, but family is always a tough one for\u00a0me. I definitely was not feeling the\u00a0space. Family dynamics are\u00a0so ingrained- it’s hard not to get sucked in…to\u00a0feel space around the\u00a0familiar role I normally assume.\u00a0I suppose this is how family dynamics work- eventually no one even allows for the possibility that someone might react differently than they normally do. It might not work, but it’s comfortable. At one point in the day, I\u00a0did regain a bit\u00a0of mindfulness and was able to break out of that pattern a bit and it was interesting to see how one shift can\u00a0create a ripple effect-the situation opened up.
\nAs I was thinking (and googling)\u00a0about spaciousness today, I happened upon this<\/a>\u00a01997 Shambhala Sun article. It’s a dialogue between bell hooks and Pema Chodron called Cultivating Openness When Things Fall Apart<\/em>. The discussion touches on hooks’ activist work and the\u00a0feelings of anger and sorrow that arise when confronting social injustice. I know this is a topic that often surfaces at the ID Project and I really liked what Chodron had to say about it. I’ll end with an excerpt from the discussion that pertains to spaciousness. Chodron has a way of summing up the big \u00a0truths quite simply…
\nbell hooks<\/span>: You have commented that we can’t smooth out the rough edges, yet as I was listening to you I was thinking, isn’t she describing a sense that the rough edges get smoothed out.<\/em>
\nPema Ch\u00f6dr\u00f6n<\/span>: No they don’t, actually. What you realize is that there’s enough space to accommodate all of it. There’s enough space in your own being, enough space in the whole of creation, to accommodate all of it. All of it. It’s because we pick and choose, because we have biases and prejudices, because we prefer smooth to rough and then react for and against, that we suffer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A goal I’ve been working with lately is cultivating a feeling of spaciousness. It’s a theme that seems to be emerging in many aspects of my life- whether in the readings for Hardcore Dharma\u00a0or\u00a0one of my psychology classes to conversations with friends. For me, this idea of “space” has to do with not being so…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-and-media"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Practice of Finding Space - One City<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/04\/the-practice-of-finding-space.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Practice of Finding Space - One City\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A goal I’ve been working with lately is cultivating a feeling of spaciousness. 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