Is it something we hear, are we searching for new places to travel or fighting to locate answers from distant places a single book clearly speaks of…as quickly as the days fly between our eyes take ten minute break and notice the number of people looking up. Can’t we believe its spring? Could it be a bright red Cardinal and the songs it sings? The sun can’t be too bright; nobody seems to be shielding their eyes.
What do you see when you look up? Maybe a leaf that forgot to get away during the final seconds of fall? A giant bumble bee with a tummy so big Jenny Craig is dieing to sign them up for their next commercial campaign. Even if your choice to look up is late into the night, do the stars and planets hold the energy that’ll carry you through another day?
I experienced Empty Nest Syndrome several chapters ahead of most…my daughter was up, out of school and living in Los Angeles before I could count to forty five. Whatever lives up there, even if it’s just twenty feet above our heads, it seems to pull us toward a level of somethingness a simple poet can only guess.
The song Somewhere Out There from Linda Ronstandt would play in our hearts and minds wondering if Jenny was looking at the same stars this night. And if she was, would she know it in her heart?
Author Eckhart Tolle simplifies such personal journeys as nothing more than material objects and space. In his words, “If you don’t become speechless when looking into space, then you really aren’t looking.” Putting focus instead on the objects, stars, a couple of bats, a buzzing bug and maybe a duck that got lost when he took a left at the tracks rather than a right and is late for dinner in the nearby lake.
Allowing a sense of awe to enter your path while staring into the realms of day dreaming or in many cases just looking up teaches your mind to remove labels from the presentation. Once there, a vast array of inner space grows within the assumed limits of your stress filled life, opening a new canal for better ideas to flood.
Tolle believes we can’t see space, nor can you hear it, touch it, taste or smell. How then do we know it exists? Space is nothingness. Shapes exist…airplanes racing Corporate America to far away destinations, the heavenly scent of Honeysuckle caressing your nostrils before sneezing the world’s largest boogie across six states and two creeks. Space has nothing to do with it.
So why do we spend so much time looking up? Each of us has an affinity with space. This is why you’re aware of it and spend day and night trying to reach it. Wait wait! If we’re pushing to reach something that doesn’t exist, then it must exist.
Tolle explains, “Being aware of space means you aren’t truly aware of anything, except awareness itself. Through you the universe grows.”
I stood next to my mentor in life Dr. Ronald Mack while he was in the midst of passing or as the Dahli Lama would say becoming something new again. The Dr.’s eyes no longer held color, his voice extremely dry and barely audible, not a tear to be drawn from his soul nor a song to sing slip into the tight clutches of my hands that refused to let go. He was where we look upward each new sunrise…within the depths of space. All that he created on earth was taking the shape of what many in the medical field would forever recognize as a solid rock of constant growth, maturity, leadership and fulfillment of not his dreams but those he met daily during times of struggle and through his wisdom the world took one step forward to locate answers.
The difference between the Dr. and our current realty isn’t that his time had arrived but rather how he was reacting to the arrival of an incredible amount of space. It is all too common for those assumed strong to whip up new ideas and things to accomplish. If there’s silence we fill it with text messages and twittering. If the radio isn’t playing your favorite song, rather than create a new hum, some get angry and punch the steering wheel or locate talk radio whose only gift is to take you down and out.
Spiritual leaders from every denomination, be it American, Russia, from India or a hidden valley overgrown with jungle like trees in the Smokey Mountains….it is written and spoken over and over again, a sane, balanced fruitful human life is a dance between two dimensions that make up reality, form and space.
Without space…nothing exists.
Taking ten minutes out of your day to people watch is a lesson that teaches you to learn how to recognize the images tossed out daily by means of your own path. We are the generation that’s become hypnotized by technology. We’ve allowed ourselves to absorb incredible amounts of content, resembling that of the space alien in the movie Short Circuit, “Input…need more input.”
Through daily writing, I’ve learned to recognize mindsets and temperaments weeks before they naturally arrive. Rather than shove pills into an assumed depression, the body mind and soul speak clearly. By putting faith in the nothingness we are given, all that becomes your tree blossoms on days made up of rain. Create mile markers that serve as gut checks. A simple feather that’s fallen to the cold ground…what does it mean? To a bird it’s no longer required, on your daily routine it teaches you second and third chance. Feathers are used in art, children locate them only to laugh and play. A feather has the power to tickle your upper lip on a lonely day.
What are you sharing that has the strength to infect and affect another living object?
The next time you visit a Chinese restaurant and the giant Buddha statue greets you at the door…think not of the rounded tummy and jolly face caught in constant smile. The deeper purpose behind his presentation is: Man and No… Object and space… A mile marker just as powerful as mother natures attempt to water our lawns without having to fork out giant amounts of dollars to a city that’s laid ownership rights on something so pure.
Learn to write, if but only for a moment, by means of poetry, songs to sing or doodle words on a page. What you share with the world is nothing more than a bird’s feather until one day you’re asked to share it in ways you never dreamed…this weekend, I will serve as the spiritual host of two who’ve fallen deeply in love. Their ceremony and or vows were written by my writing instrument seventeen years ago.
That’s a lot of space…
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
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