For the next five weeks, I, in tandem with the ID Project Intermediate Hardcore Dharma class, will examine and explore teachings about the five wisdom energies.  The five wisdom energies, (Buddha, Vajra, Ratna, Padma & Karma), relate to qualities or energies that possess wise as well as confused potential.  The simultaneous occurrence of both insight and neurosis is described as co-emergence. These energies connect not only to our interior, psychological world, but also our environment.  Kind of like the Medieval idea of humors, except more comprehensibly logical, less dark and without all the phlegm and bile imagery.

Last Saturday, Intermediate Hardcore Dharma discussed the quality of Spaciousness, which relates to the Buddha Family wisdom energy. 

 The co-emergence of spaciousness is, in a way, the most intuitive: having a great sense of spaciousness could mean a very accommodating, peaceful benevolent energy; “Sure, whatever you want is good with me,” or a disengaged and, well, spacey energy; “What?  Oh sure…um…whatever…you want…is fine…with….me”

Space is my frequent kinsman.  There are pictures of me with adrift eyes and an agape mouth from as early as four year old.  I once had a cell phone for two years whose screen broke the first day I brought it home.  As a result I never knew who was calling or how to check my voicemail.  In my adult life I’ve gotten better, more organized, more able to catch myself before I depart, but it can majorly flare up at certain periods.

 Like, oh let’s say right now. 

Firstly I forgot my best and dearest friend’s birthday.  I seem unable to hang on to a pen that works.  My computer is broken but I keep forgetting I need to get it fixed, even though the Apple Store is right next to my work.  Speaking of which, I’ve lost two cell phones in the past month.  A constant mental dialogue:  “Ok, Jules, think it through.  What do you need to accomplish tonight?  You need to …static fuzz static fuzz…wait, why are you checking Facebook with a paper clip hanging off your bottom lip? What just happened?”

You could say that’s disorganization, not spacing out.  But I know that the space energy has something to do with it.  It is perhaps because of my long history of spacing out that I understand its particular function, although it wasn’t until a Shambhala training that I realized how frequently I turn on the fog machines in my mental disco. For me, at least, I actually start to space out to avoid anxiety or fear-inducing situations.  When my thoughts are on hyper-speed about everything I need to accomplish, rather than giving myself an ulcer, losing sleep or biting my nails I simply….check out.  When I’m in a rehearsal and I don’t like what my actors are doing, but I’m scared to criticize them I find I go blank.  If I feel threatened at a social gathering I’ll start staring at the wall.  And when I’m approaching the abyss of awake selflessness in meditation that threatens to tear down all those structural elements I believe are so solid, my mind inevitably wanders.  I space because I’m frightened to assert myself, to commit fully to my aspirations, to honestly accept my emotional state.

The good news is you could invite me over for dinner and I’d gratefully eat whatever you served.  If we got in a disagreement I am all about hearing your side.  I feel anger, but I don’t tend to take it out on anyone.  I don’t feel much jealousy and I usually don’t wish to be elsewhere.

Eh, sometimes.  The nice thing about examining these wisdom energies is that as soon as you begin to relate to one, you realize that all of them actually exist within you.  And that’s why they’re energies: because they aren’t you.  At times space energy overtakes my mental landscape and at other times I’m extremely pointed and driven.  I’m easy going about what I eat, but not easy going about other people’s food preferences.

So, knowing that there’s no solidity to my spacidity, I’m wondering how I might tinker with that energy so that its wisdom shines brighter than its confusion.  For all those absent-minded, glassy-eyed, pencil losing practitioners out there, how do you deal with space energy?  

Are you there McFly?  I’m talking to you!