Take a moment and look around. What do you see, hear, feel, smell? What thoughts are passing through your mind and are feelings coming forward? You are likely looking around in some room of your house. You see some furniture, walls, floor, windows, pictures, your pet, your legs, feet and so on. You might hear another person or pet in your house moving about, a car passing by outside or a bird in a nearby tree. You feel yourself sitting in a chair, the weight of your body, the tingling of your feet in your shoes. Thoughts pass through your mind like, “Why am I doing this and what does this have to do with my pet?
It doesn’t take much focused attention to see that there is a lot going on in your present moment. What you have not noticed is the enormous space that is also there. Now, look around and focus on the space in between the objects that you see. There is also space between sounds that you hear, even space between the thoughts that pass through your mind.
Actually, there is a lot more space that there are objects, but we have been conditioned due to our senses to ignore the space. The space is critical because without the space, we could not experience the other stuff. If you turn the light off in the room and there is only darkness, you can begin to realize how important the space is for you to participate in life.
Scientists have done pretty much the same thing, that is, until recently. They, like all of us, assumed that the space between objects was empty. Now they know that is not the case. Technology has identified many different types of energy that occupy our space. Ultraviolet radiation, electromagnetic energy, infrared, gamma rays and more move around and through you without you knowing. That is only because your body/mind cannot sense that they are there. If a bat flew into the room and you could perceive what the bat perceived, you would immediately know about infrared energy. The bat detects infrared and uses it as a navigation tool.
There is another energy that is in your environment that is even more subtle and non-detectable than the energies that I mentioned. This is the most subtle energy of all. We can call it consciousness, energetic matrix, source energy, the Tao or even God. It doesn’t make any difference what we call it but it can certainly be something that we should be aware of.
Quantum physicists are now referring to this energy as an energetic matrix and in recent years there has been a movement to learn more about it. This energetic emptiness that we cannot detect is the source of all other energetic manifestations. It does this by self-manipulation. By simply manipulating its own energy, it can form other energetic dimensions as well as physical objects. The physical objects that you see in your space is just a very dense manipulation of the energetic matrix. The physical object, including your body and your pet’s body, is not only a deviation in the energetic appearance but it is also made up of the matrix itself. Like water changing to vapor or ice, it is still made of the same energy. It just enjoys changing itself.
All energy is in the form of waves. A wave forms and then repeats itself. But, just for a moment, the wave changes direction and while changing direction, there is an empty space between the wave formation. There is where we can be aware of consciousness, or source energy or God, or whatever you want to call it.
This is why people meditate. When we are awake and mentally active, our brain is functioning at a high vibration. Brain energy specialists call high alpha. When an experienced meditator meditates, she quietens her thoughts and her brain waves get slower and slower reaching down into what they call theta state. This is the brain state during deep sleep. When the mind/brain is in theta state, the waves are so long and peaceful that the space between waves becomes apparent. In that moment, the meditator has slipped into the space or gap and is experiencing pure consciousness. Some mystics call this a blissful state of mind.
Practically speaking, it is in this space of source energy where all creation comes forth. We can call this creation. We can also call this healing. Healing by the body/mind is nothing more than creating well health instead of not-well health. This is the main reason for sleep, so that our body can enter into this pure state of consciousness and re-create itself (heal).
Just because the space seems empty, it is certainly not. We know now that the matrix has not only energy but intelligence. The energy manifests by its own desire in order to experience itself. So, all of life comes forward from this space of stillness. You can imagine that a lot of the religious and spiritual scriptures describe this in many ways, but it is all the same. Life comes forward from the stillness and returns to the stillness.
Think back about a movie or television program where people at the hospital are scrambling to save someone’s life. The patient is in bed hooked up to a heart monitor. Before the event, there is a straight line on the monitor and every time the heart beats you see a pattern show up on the screen. We call this a QRS pattern, but that is not important. On this line there is a flat line, a pattern, a flat line, a pattern and so on. When the patient dies, the line is nothing but a flat line. That is why some docs call this “flat lining” or the patient has died.
But, that is not exactly what has happened. Think of the flat line as pure consciousness where all things evolve in the moment. Pure consciousness (flat line), heart movement (pattern), pure consciousness, heart movement, and so on. The consciousness, represented by the flat line is always there, manipulating itself into another patter that causes the heart to beat and then it stops and returns to pure consciousness. The wave in the ocean does the same thing. It comes from the deep ocean, forms itself, and then returns to the deep ocean.
This is why a bell is often used during spiritual exercises. It is a great example of space, then the ringing of the bell and returning to the space. Everything in your world does this. Your breath, your eyes blinking, your heart beating, light arising out of dark, objects arising out of emptiness, everything.
How does knowing this help us? Because we can turn our attention to the empty space and find our source; love, peace and joy. All we have to do is to turn our attention inward towards the silent, empty space within. If we have an intention, like healing our pet, then we must plant the seed of the intention in this space, for healing can only occur when it springs from loving source and not from the active, fearful mind. It takes practice due to the long conditioning of only being aware of what is outside. But, it can be done.
When we do this, we start to allow things to happen and not resist so much. In time, we start to notice that our life has a spontaneity that we never realized. In that comfort we find ourselves surrendering our desire to control things and in that moment we are in the flow of life, the Tao. Loving becomes our seat of consciousness no matter what arises on the surface. Life starts to become sweet again and things change from burdens to blessing.
It is all in the empty space. Turn your attention inward and take a look.
