Spaciousness of Compassion

Spaciousness is such a wonderful experience. We know spaciousness inside of ourselves when the struggling voices in our heads take a vacation and we are filled with ease and joy. This spaciousness can arise, too, when we let go of the have-tos, deadlines, and expectations of our daily life. Spaciousness is like a vitamin we need for good health. And while we try to cultivate it through getting back to nature or a weekend with nothing scheduled or even a vacation, a good question to ask is, “How can we discover spaciousness right in the middle of our busy lives?”

The key is to cultivate a shift of perception about life, and one of the most powerful ways I have discovered for doing this is to go sit on the moon in my imagination. I have an armchair up there, and whenever I find myself getting tight about life, I go sit and look at myself and life from a broader perspective.

Let’s go sit on the moon together right now and really enjoy the view. There is Mars off to your left, and Venus to your right. And you can even see Saturn and its rings in the distance. This is our neighborhood, and these are our neighbors! And there, right in front of us, is our home, the beautiful blue-green jewel called Earth. As you look at her from our vantage point on the moon, see the beauty of this living river of creativity that is our planet.

Did you know that our Earth is actually made out of stardust? Billions of years ago, a star in our greater neighborhood supernovaed and became stardust that spread out into the cosmos. Over time, that stardust coalesced into our planet, and out of that stardust she has created mighty mountains and so many forms of water that it is mind boggling – all the way from tiny dew drops, to cascading waterfalls and onto towering icebergs, not to forget rainbows and mighty ocean waves. And what about the mind-boggling variety of flowers and the heart-stopping variation of colors they all come in? And let us not forget the beauty of the eyes of innocence that look out at life from every baby of every creature that lives, all the way from ladybugs and aardvarks to kittens and people (including you!) – all made out of stardust.

Now lift your eyes off the planet and recognize that this tiny spaceship Earth is moving through vast oceans of space – so vast that it would take 4.5 million light-years just to travel to the closest star. And that star is just one in this vast universe that contains more stars than we can count.

Now look back at the Earth and see all the people who right now are walking, driving, working, dancing, swimming, birthing, and dying. And recognize that most are so lost in trying to do life that they are not really here for life. It is like they are walking around with a cloud of struggle surrounding their heads. They have lost the experience of spaciousness and the story of struggle in their head cuts them off from the experience of being fully alive. Thus, they can’t be nourished by life’s beauty and its wisdom.

I am sharing all this in order to open us up to the realization that life is much bigger than what is going on in our heads. You too, like most people, have some version of that cloud that separates you from life – the cloud of the 65,000 thoughts a day that move through your head. If you were able to watch this stream of thought, you would see that its main pastime is trying to make yourself and your life different than what they are. Because we are so lost in thought most of the time, we aren’t aware that we are almost constantly in a doing mode rather than knowing and living from the joy of being.

But this web of thought that resides in your head is such a small part of who you really are. It may seem like your struggling self is as big as the universe, but I assure you, it is as tiny as a speck of dust. Yes, when you are lost in it, it can seem like it is limitless, especially when it moves out of the ordinary everyday low-grade struggle mode to the mega struggles of fiery anger, heart-pounding anxiety or soul-crushing despair. But whether you know it or not, that story of struggle in your head is always moving through a vast spaciousness that is with you right now.

To get a glimpse of this, imagine yourself standing on the Earth, experiencing its immensity. Now imagine yourself sitting on the moon, seeing how tiny the Earth is relative to the rest of the universe, and see that it is floating in space. The same is true for your struggling self. As you step back and begin to explore it – as you get space around it by being curious about what your struggling self is doing rather than being lost in it – you discover that this story of struggle in your head is such a small part of who you really are. And right here, right now it is floating in a greater space within you, the space of who you truly are.

Whenever you find yourself struggling with life, I invite you to sit on the moon, take a deep breath, and remember that life is much bigger than your struggling self. And when you can, bring to that struggling self the spaciousness of compassion so it can let go and you can reconnect again with the joy and ease that comes from remembering the spaciousness that is always with you, right here, right now.