Spaces and Gaps

Pema Chodron, in her book When Things Fall Apart talks about not causing harm, or refraining. She says mindfulness is the ground, refraining is the path. “Because of mindfulness, we see our desires and our aggression, our jealousy, our ignorance. We don’t act on them, we just see them.” Refraining she says, is “not grabbing for entertainment the minute we feel a slight edge of boredom coming on. It’s the practice of not immediately filling up space just because there’s a gap.”

Spaces and gaps. There seems to be an awful lot of those in my life lately. Mindfulness has helped me to look at them. Refraining has caused me to feel like screaming sometimes. My samskaras or old  habits are saying fill  the gap, fill the space. Do something like:  Get a job (easier said than done these days). Start contributing to your 401K again.  Settle down in one place.  Quit moving.  Not that any of those things are inherently bad, it’s just that something inside my gut says stay where you are. Keep going on this path. This path that keeps taking more twists and turns.  Damn, I would love to see where it’s all leading.  But I just don’t have a clue. At times I’m titillated by the uncertainty, and at times I’m in a total panic. And so I sit in this space, this gap, and wait.  Active waiting I like to call it. I’ve been throwing things out there, wherever “there” is, putting some energy into them, and waiting to see what comes back.

So far the following has come back:

I will be in Southern Washington September 23-Oct 4 for a Vipassana Meditation Retreat. I’ve wanted to do it for years and now seems to be the perfect time.  10 days, 10 hours a day of silence and mindfulness meditation.  Then starting October 15, I will be working at Kalani Retreat Center in Hawaii(www.kalani.com). Also something I’ve wanted to do for a number of years.  The timing, the inner gut thing, all seem to be in line.  At least for now. There’s a back door, of course. But for now this is the plan. Rent my place out again and continue on with this journey of dreams.

In the mean time, I’m continuing to load up on yoga workshops and classes, teaching as much as I know, working on developing a website for meditation and yoga, and trying not to fidget when I’m tempted to second guess the gut thing.