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 or one of my psychology classes to conversations with friends. For me, this idea of “space” has to do with not being so reactionary and/or attached to feelings that arise. It’s a general feeling of openness. A couple of situations have proved particularly challenging in the last couple of days. One was yesterday when it was pouring and I realized the Q train wasn’t running and everyone was being herded 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.  I had a hard time tapping into that feeling of spaciousness as I was fighting not to be trampled. Feeling mental space in the absence of physical space is always a challenging one for me. Eventually I just extracted myself from the mob 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.

The second situation was when I was home visiting my family today. I won’t go into the details, but family is always a tough one for me. I definitely was not feeling the space. Family dynamics are so ingrained- it’s hard not to get sucked in…to feel space around the familiar role I normally assume. I 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 did regain a bit of mindfulness and was able to break out of that pattern a bit and it was interesting to see how one shift can create a ripple effect-the situation opened up.
As I was thinking (and googling) about spaciousness today, I happened upon this 1997 Shambhala Sun article. It’s a dialogue between bell hooks and Pema Chodron called Cultivating Openness When Things Fall Apart. The discussion touches on hooks’ activist work and the feelings 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  truths quite simply…
bell hooks: 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.
Pema Chödrön: 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.