Thirty spokes of a wheel all join at a common hub, yet only the hole at the center allows the wheel to spin. – Tao Te Ching
The most important part of any vessel, or container, is the holding space at its center – the hole at the hub of a wheel, the empty space in a teacup, the inside of a room, or the body of a guitar. You can’t fill a teacup that’s already full or enter a room piled high with boxes and furniture. A solid guitar doesn’t make music. Without the space at the middle, the vessel can’t perform its function.
Each of us is a vessel, a container with a space inside. And sometimes we get fed up. Saying, I’m fed up with this! means I can’t take any more; I’ve run out of patience. It also means I’m full, I have no more space inside. And without that space inside, the wheel stops turning – life can’t move forward. We get stuck in a rut – or worse, the wheel locks and we loose control of its direction. We hydroplane or slide out of control down the road ahead, crashing into whatever happens to be there.
How do you keep the wheel turning? How do you prevent the space from filling up? Well, you can’t stop it from filling – resistance creates blockages that help the space fill up faster. To keep the wheel turning, go to the center of the wheel and do the opposite of resist – relax, surrender, let go, make space. Some call this finding peace, “There’s a peace inside us all. Let it be your friend.”
I know from having experienced a lot of sliding and crashing that this is MUCH easier said than done. But the first step is just to let yourself imagine that it can be done. Isn’t that the first step with anything? Then use the following visualization exercise. To prepare, you may first choose to use the body presence exercise or your favorite grounding technique. Then go on with this visualization, and post what you think!
Expanding Your Center Visualization
- Begin by lying comfortably on your back on the floor or a firm surface. Close your eyes and let your arms drop beside your body; stretch out your legs, relaxing them on the floor.
- Take several deep breaths, mentally scanning your body for tension. Inhale your breath into those spots holding tension, then release the tension as you exhale. It might help to silently or aloud repeat the word Receiving as you inhale, and Releasing as you exhale.
- Next focus your attention on the surface of your body. Bring to your awareness to the size of your body and the space you occupy.
- Now imagine that you’re inside an egg-shaped sphere. Expand your sense of yourself to fill this shape around you, bringing your attention to the outer edge of the sphere as though it’s your skin. Feel what it’s like to fill this space.
- Next bring your attention to the room you’re in, imagine yourself expanding to fill the entire room, until the outer walls of the room begin to feel like your outer skin. Sense what it’s like to fill the room.
- Continue to repeat this pattern of attention and expansion and attention again as far out as you’re comfortable: the edges of your neighborhood, your city, your country, the continent, the earth, the solar system, the galaxy, and even the universe. Feel how big the space inside you really is.
- Now, while maintaining the feeling of that expanded space inside you, reverse the visualization, bringing your awareness to smaller and smaller spaces until you are occupying just the space of your body again. Only now you contain much more space within.
