My yoga group is currently practising a meditation exercise which, for me, opens up dimensionless space. The description of the exercise is:
“Imagine that your body is completely empty. It is as though your skin were a thin membrane, like the skin of a balloon, and inside it is nothing but space. Not only is your body full of space, but space also surrounds you on every side. As you inhale, have the feeling that you are breathing space in through the pores of your body. Exhale with the same feeling. Your skin is a delicate, porous membrane, and you are breathing in through it. You are in an ocean of space. With each breath, gently let go into this ocean.”
When I practise this, I feel that, at least to some extent, Â I am ’embodying’ space. Within this, neither space nor I have dimensions, attributes, qualities. Is this ‘unzipping’?
Hi Gaynor,
Thank you for your evocative description of spacious feelings and of breathing and letting go into a space that is both inside and outside. I experienced a sense of greater spaciousness this morning while reading a passage in Jack’s notes for this week:
“The solvent for this restrictive way of seeing and being is a knowing that knows appearance as appearance, while ‘dissolving’ substance. Substance itself continues to appear, and in that sense nothing has changed.”
Then I looked up and saw the plume of my dog’s white tail passing under the window, the laundry starting a rinse cycle, my wife turning a page of the newspaper down the hallway. And it felt just that way. All the convenience of identities and familiar processes remaining intact, but all of it lighter, more playful, an inspired painting on the face of the waters. –Michael