Part 2 - The Opening

Space

We rarely notice space.

Our attention goes almost entirely to form, whether it appears outside us as something solid or inside us as something the mind is busy with. Space seems too plain to deserve much interest. It is always here, and perhaps that is exactly why we miss it.

Yet without space, nothing could appear at all. Every object and every movement depends on it. Every form is held within it.

When we look more closely, what seems solid is not quite as solid as it appears. There is openness in it, distance and room. What we call matter is, to a remarkable degree, space.

This does not change as scale changes. The same openness is present within what we call atoms, between atoms as they form molecules, and within the larger structures that make up the world as we know it. The apparent object becomes bigger. The space does not become something else.

Whether we look at a chair in a room, a mountain in the landscape, or a planet in the sky, the pattern remains the same. Each appears solid to us, yet each exists within space, is surrounded by space, and, in its own way, consists mostly of space.

The same is true everywhere we look.

The space between this chair and that table is not a different kind of space from the space within matter. The space between the Earth and the moon is not another space. It is the same space. Everywhere we look, there is one and the same space.

The mind finds this difficult because it is trained to think in things. It is at home with separate objects, separate people, separate places. It divides and names. It says “this” and “that,” “inside” and “outside,” “mine” and “not mine.”

But space is not divided in the way forms appear to be. Walls may separate rooms, but they do not cut space itself in two. Borders may separate countries, but they do not divide the sky. The divisions belong to form and thought. Space remains open.

And because it remains open, it is easy to overlook.

We are drawn to what changes, what moves, what demands attention. Space does none of this. It does not push itself forward. It simply allows.

Space is not passive emptiness. It is what allows usefulness, shelter, movement, and even the body’s life to be possible. A cup can hold because there is emptiness within it. Rooms can be lived in because of their space. Even the body depends on space in order to function and breathe.

What is called emptiness is what makes everything possible. Space is not merely the absence of things. It is the condition that lets things appear.

As we have just seen, there is only one space. It is everywhere at the same time, and it allows everything to be.

Does this not sound strangely familiar?

Space and awareness

There is another way space can be noticed, not only outwardly as the openness around objects, but inwardly in our own experience.

When a thought appears, or perhaps an emotion, a memory or a sensation, our attention is usually taken immediately by the content. We become interested in what the thought says, what the emotion feels like, what the memory means.

Rarely do we notice what it appears in.

And yet something is here, allowing all of it. Thoughts come and go. Emotions rise and fall. Sensations move, intensify, and fade. But that in which they appear is not itself rushing about with them.

We may call that awareness.

Not as a conclusion, but as a pointer.

Awareness is not an object among other objects. We cannot place it in front of us and inspect it like a cup or a stone. Yet without it, nothing in our experience could be known. Every thought is known in it. Every emotion is felt in it. Every perception appears in it.

In that sense, awareness has the nature of space.

It does not need to cling to what arises, nor does it need to resist what passes through. It allows joy and sorrow, clarity and confusion, noise and silence. Just as physical space allows all forms to appear, awareness allows all experience to appear.

Space and awareness share a strange simplicity. Both are open, ever-present, and easily missed because they are already here. Awareness is present before a particular experience arrives and remains when it has gone.

The mind usually looks for something more striking: a better state, a deeper experience, a final breakthrough. Yet what matters most may be so near that it is missed precisely because it has always been here.

This room was never without space. This moment is never without awareness.

Do you sometimes treat the visible form as the whole reality of what is here?

When this becomes a little clearer, our relationship to life begins to change. Thoughts, emotions and difficulty may still come, but they are no longer quite so absolute when they are seen within a wider openness.

Form is also still there, but now there is space around it. With that, the form no longer occupies the whole field of attention. Something in the experience becomes less closed.

This is true outwardly and inwardly. When attention rests only on separate forms, life appears as a world of separate things. Here is me. There is you. Here is this problem. There is that object. Everything seems bordered, named, divided, and fixed.

But when space is noticed, separateness is no longer so complete. The forms remain distinct, but they are not sealed off from one another in the way thought imagines. They arise in the same openness. They share the same field.

This can be seen in a room, in nature, in the body, and in the inner life. A thought may feel separate from a sensation, and an emotion may feel separate from the one who notices it. Yet all of it appears in the same open field of experience.

The mind divides. Space allows.

The same room that holds a table also holds the silence between words. The same sky that holds clouds also holds birds, weather, distance, and light. The same awareness that knows a thought also knows the breath, the sound outside, and the feeling in the body.

Nothing has to be made spiritual for this to be seen. It is already present in the most ordinary perception: a glass on a table, a hand resting in the lap, the space between two people before either of them speaks.

When space is noticed more often, life can feel less crowded by form. The mind still names and divides, but its divisions lose some of their finality. A problem that seemed fixed is now seen with room around it, and another person no longer feels quite so sealed off from us. Even emptiness changes its character; it is no longer merely nothing, but the openness that lets everything else be here.

What helps you remember that a problem is only one part of what is happening?

This is not an idea to believe. It is a simple noticing that can happen anywhere.

Look at the room without only looking at the objects. Listen to a sound without forgetting the silence in which it appears. Feel a thought without losing the openness that knows it.

Space is not asking for attention. Awareness is not asking to be believed. Both are already here, allowing the whole movement of experience to appear.

And perhaps that is why they are so easily missed.

Hidden in plain sight.