The Space Between

Angelo roman © 2015

"Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.”  —Kahlil Gibran

At the spur of the moment, I decided to join a yoga class taught by a wonderful man with a huge heart. The subject was love, and I felt drawn to immersing myself in this experience for a few hours.

While I am usually quite shy in group settings, I tried to stretch myself by turning sideways to almost face the group rather than facing forward on my mat. However, I quickly found myself stretched further when we were asked to stand in two lines facing each other and look into each other’s eyes. We moved along in our lines until we had repeated this exercise with each participant in the class.

Over the past several years, I have made it a point to look into the eyes of others, but this was different. Most of us do not look into each other’s eyes for for almost a minute without speaking.

What a beautiful gift to look into the eyes of another, only the eyes, without focus on their form or demeanor, without noticing their clothes or their size, or even whether they are male or female.

Truly, this alone could heal the world.

We were asked to bring our focus for the day (mine was love) to the exercise. My first response was to communicate this to the other person in some way as we looked at each other.

What happened next was surprising.

As we were asked to notice the space between each other, I recognized that the space between
offered a perhaps overlooked place for us to meet and share our intentions.

Bringing my focus directly to the other person, even if silently and with sincerity, limited the possibilities and the freedom of the other person to fully be.

The alternative, sharing the space between, inter connecting, "between connecting", expanded the possibilities. Circles and centers of circles became evident, forms blurred and a shared dance emerged.

A few times when participating in this exercise, my ego chimed in and told me that it mattered how I reacted, what I saw, and how I was perceived, but as I quickly dropped these expectations, the centers and the peace returned.

Each moment, in often unexpected ways, we are welcomed into our shared inter-connectedness.

I offer the words that came to me after my experience.

Centers — the space between
Always new opportunity for ego to reveal its demands,
or choose to accept experience without identity.

Moving into the space between to meet others,
Not to care for them,

To Meet them,
To See them,

while offering them space to fully be who they are.

The union of our beings does not have borders.
Meeting in the middle,
the center,
so many centers.

More than seeing each other,
we see the circles that we share,
their centers,
our dance,
our flow together.

Releasing ourselves from ourselves,
Releasing ourselves from our expectations,
Staying open and free in each moment,

Open to possibilities,
Open to the New.