Exploring Space- The Radiance Sutras #36

The meditation I'm going to invite you into tonight is about experiencing space.

Within our school of instinctive meditations,

The Radiant Sutra School of Meditation.

We have a philosophy that says that we have an affinity to the elements.

That we are elemental in nature.

We've come from the stars essentially.

We're made of the same stuff as the stars.

So we have an affinity with the earth,

We have an affinity with water.

Sometimes we even put emotional and character traits to these things of the earth.

Water,

Fire and air.

We feel that there is a flow to our life,

This water element.

We may have an element of feeling grounded with the earth.

There could be an airiness about us as if we're free floating.

That the wind catches us.

We can even look at the element of fire and say that we have a fire in our belly or that we're a fiery type.

Within the tradition of instinctive meditation and the Radiant Sutra School of Meditation.

We also consider that space is an element.

Because when we look at it,

Space,

The container within which everything exists.

If not for this container of space,

There is nowhere for fire,

Water,

Earth and air to play in.

There is nowhere for us to play.

So we consider space as something to be honored and cherished.

But also to be wondered about.

So one of the ways that we can get a sense of space is to start with our physical body.

I'm going to invite you if you wish to stand up.

Or you can stay in your seat or even stay lying down.

But let's just start by acknowledging or saying,

Well I occupy a certain amount of space.

This is the space that I take up.

And if you feel to touch your skin,

You can feel where it is that the boundary of your body within space.

This is my space that is within my skin.

I feel my presence here in this space.

It's very easy to define that here I am in this space when you can touch your skin and recognize here I am.

If you are somebody who believes that there is an energy to us and that this energy field extends beyond the space of your physical body.

Then perhaps you can just bring your hands up and feel around you.

And say well this is the space that I occupy.

This is my space here.

And we can use this idea of space as a way of setting boundaries.

I'm aware that this is the space that I am in.

You need an invitation to enter.

Here are my personal boundaries.

For a stranger,

Your personal space may extend to arms length or beyond.

When you come up to somebody in the street that you don't know,

You may allow them to come within a couple of meters and acknowledge that there is a boundary there within which you feel comfortable.

If they were encroached on that you would recognize it and feel that this is my space I need to step back a little.

With a friend that might be that that space is a little closer,

That distance is a little closer,

Maybe a couple of feet.

A work colleague might be a little further away.

For someone who is more intimate you invite them into your own space within your embrace.

So we can look at space as something that is a container that holds us,

That holds our essence,

But also that allows us to set boundaries.

This is my space.

This is the place in which I feel sovereign,

Where the authority is me.

So let's just play for a moment and feel free to move within your own space.

Remember you're reaching your hands up around you 360 degrees,

To the front,

To the back,

Left and right,

Recognizing that this is the field in which you play.

The space that we occupy reaches down into the earth above our heads,

In front and behind.

This is the space in which our immediate presence lives.

We also have the capacity to take our awareness beyond our own personal experience of space here,

This presence that we occupy.

I want to invite you to engage with the room in which you are sitting or lying or standing.

Likely you're in your own place,

Your own space.

You have an awareness of the shape of this room that you're in.

And you might notice that it holds some of your own energy.

And you may have the feeling,

Well this is my space in this room.

You might recognize in the room that there's emptiness,

The space between the walls may seem to have nothing in it.

But we can also wonder about the fullness of that space.

Air,

Light,

Sound exist in space.

They travel through space.

Perhaps there's a slight odor that occupies the space in which you are.

The quality of the sound coming into your ears is modified by the shape of the space in which you are in.

The echoes there will be unique and characteristic to the shape of the space that you are in.

So we can have this awareness of the space that we are in through our senses.

You can feel this space that you're in.

Through the smells,

The sounds,

The light.

Let your senses explore the space that you are in now.

But we also have this capacity to take our awareness beyond the room within which you are right at this moment.

Maybe you can take your awareness into the street in which you live.

Or if you live in the country,

The countryside around you.

We are less physically aware of that space but we do have a concept of the idea of distance.

And we've got an idea of what's occupying the space around us.

You may be able to hear cars moving up and down the street if you're in the neighborhood where there is traffic.

You know that within that space there might be a number of people.

There are a number of families,

Dogs,

Cats.

You also tune into what you know to be in the area that's around your house.

You may be recalling that there's a stand of trees or there's a busy shopping place nearby.

Whatever space you're in,

Allow your awareness to reach out a little further beyond your room.

You may get a sense of the energy that is around you.

You know the area you live in.

Is it vibrant alive?

Is it quiet and serene?

Depending on whether it's day or night time.

What activity is going on around you?

And when we recognize that around us there might be tens,

Hundreds or thousands of people.

Perhaps we begin to recognize that as we are at the center of our own universe,

So too are they.

Here I am in the space that I occupy.

My skin,

The reach of my etheric energy body,

In my room,

In my house,

In my neighborhood.

And everybody else is occupying their own space with their unique relationship to the room that they're in,

The neighborhood that they're in.

And perhaps we can extend our awareness even further out to encompass the whole of the state or region or even country that you live in.

And as we do this we start to realize the vastness that is around us.

The place that we occupy,

The places that we go.

Just a tiny,

Tiny area of the country that we live in.

Let's extend that awareness,

Not just in the plane that we live in,

In the horizontal,

But also above us and below us.

Feeling into the vastness of the open sky,

The depths of the earth.

Here we are in the middle of this sphere of awareness.

And maybe that awareness can extend to encompass the entire planet.

There are over seven billion people all at the center of their own universe.

And perhaps you can be aware of the moon.

How far away is the moon?

250,

000 miles,

Maybe 400,

000 kilometers.

And if you drive that might take you 20 years to drive that far.

And in the celestial realm,

The astronomical realm,

The moon is so close,

It's just next door.

Our closest neighbors Mars and Venus,

It takes months and months for spacecraft to get to,

Moving at incredible speeds.

The sun at the center of our solar system with light traveling at 300,

000 kilometers,

It takes eight minutes,

A second,

It takes eight minutes for that light to arrive here.

Its distance starts to become beyond what we can possibly imagine.

And this is just our local solar system.

The space holding the sun and all of the other planets is just on the outer edge of one of the arms of the Milky Way Galaxy.

If we were to look at our sun from a planet on the other side of the Milky Way Galaxy,

It would appear as just one of those tiny little specks in the sky.

Just the Milky Way Galaxy is so large that it takes millions of years for our solar system to rotate around its center.

It takes one year for the Earth to rotate around the sun,

The sun and all of its children,

Planets,

It takes millions of years to rotate around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy.

And here we are,

Within our skin,

In our room,

In our house,

In our neighborhood,

The country we live in,

On the Earth.

And here we are in the center of it all.

Space.

Space is worthy of worship and wonder.

It is the field within which everything exists.

Rest your eyes in emptiness,

Inside a room,

A temple,

Even a little jar,

Any contained space.

Throw the one who is seeing into the center and trust your mind to the embrace of space.

In a flash all boundaries dissolve.

Sutra 36 of the Radiant Sutras by Dr.

Lauren Roche.

Allow yourself to linger in the sense of space.

The space that you occupy,

Your personal space.

And the vastness that surrounds you.

Space.

Space is worthy of worship and wonder.

It is the field within which everything exists.

And the way that we can gently transition ourselves from our meditation back into the space that you occupy here now,

Is to use our senses.

Let's use our senses just again to become aware of the space that we are in.

Perhaps we can simply become aware again of our body.

And the space our body occupies.

You might feel to again touch,

Your body touch your hands together,

Your arms,

Perhaps your face.

Recognizing as you're sitting on the chair or lying on the floor or standing on the ground,

That there's a boundary that is your body.

You recognize the edge of this physical being that you are.

The space that I occupy is bound by my skin.

If you move a little then the part of your nervous system that is called proprioception,

Lets you know what shape your body is making in space.

Let's you understand where your hand is as you extend it out.

If you were to rotate your wrists or fingers,

You realize you know where they are in space.

Remember what you're hearing lets you know where you are in the room.

It's modified by the shape of the room.

Perhaps you might smell the air again.

Even the movement of breath can remind you of the space within which you are living.

This movement of breath can remind us that we are just a small part of this whole planet.

And we can honor the ocean of air around us that occupies the space around us.

Perhaps you can continue to move a little more.

Recognizing still and again where you are in the room.

That the spice that was created at the beginning of the universe was created for us to play in.

Perhaps you can feel into how you might take this awareness of space into your life during the week.

Perhaps into a meditation practice.

Perhaps just walking down the street you might be reminded to look into the space around you.

Remember that the universe was created,

That you were created,

That space was created for you to play in.

For us to live in.

Somehow the laws of creation are written into the space around us.

And perhaps just as you are walking down the street if you look up to the sky you have the opportunity to indulge in a little bit of wonder.

That space exists.

And that we exist within.