Release or Re-Lease?

A week or so ago, on these very pages, I committed myself to taking a spacious summer breath; to remembering how to let myself go with the current that the world--my world-- is offering me rather than to struggle against it. Becoming spacious, opening up space in your life can be tough. It's hard letting go of things, people, ways of relating in your world.

I've noticed that people often replace the word "space" with "time" in their way of thinking. I've certainly done it. "I need to free up some space in my schedule," No, you need to free up some time in your schedule. They actually aren't synonymous. Time is linear. Space is circular if anything.

So what is space to me, and why am I devoting my summer to creating more of it? Space, to me, is about having some breathing room, options, possibilities, angles, and, okay, time too. Time in the form of pause.

The Spacious Breath of Summer and its 10 Rs, was conceived by me on Thursday, June 18 during a long personal writing session. Rather than jumping right into the practice of it, I decided to start on a Sunday. Sunday's are good starting days . . . I suppose that notion goes back to my Protestant upbringing. But, no matter, it felt right to weave in a few days to just sit with the idea to see if I would actually step into it. For three days, I just sat back and began recognizing what was what (and I suppose this could have been the preliminary R: recognition), I proceeded, last Sunday to RELEASE. To let go of anything and everything that no longer served me or enhanced my life.

I actually love the word release, because it implies a sensitivity, a caring, even a degree of love, as much as it empowers you to active role in parting with something, someone, or a way of being in the world. To release something is not to look back and judge, but to look forward and acknowledge. To release is to not place things in the category of good or bad, but rather to see what is enhancing or diminishing your life.

The key for me in this release week was to not anticipate what needed or wanted to be released but to allow it to arise as self-evident. I tried not to think about it so much as to feel it and even to wait for these intimiate strangers to announce themselves to me. A few days in, there came a moment when a pattern that I've been habituating for a year or so tapped me on the shoulder, "Excuse me. I somehow seem to have gotten attached to your coat, and although you are great company, this really isn't my direction, nor is mine yours. Can you release me from your hold so that we can both go our own ways?"

And just like that, I knew I was done with that. Five days later, the pattern hasn't surfaced once. And so it went every few days, another shoulder tap, another ,"Excuse me," followed by my acknowledgement, "Yes, you're right. Thanks for what you brought to the table. I am glad to have known you despite the fact that yes, you are right we truly are tangled up, and I, too, am feeling stuck and bound by you. I release you."

My patterns and I were having a breakup conversation. A very mature one. No tears. When the time is right, it's right.

Now, as my release week comes to its close, I have a new ease. I actually feel better than I have in quite awhile. I feel better in me and the perspective from which I'm viewing things. Do I dare say, I feel more spacious? As the saying goes, I have a new lease on life . . .

or is it a re-lease on life?

The Spacious Breath of Summer

The summer solstice approaches in days. The growing light is beginning to shed light onto the landscape of my life. Sometimes the summer sun is harsh. It's at full power. It burns. That which has been veiled by the shadow of wishful thinking, is revealed for the reality of what is.

Last night, the light took the form of the proverbial lightening flash. In the dark, a flash of recognition flashed so bright and with such declaration that my whole world seemed revealed to me in a new way . . . not as I was wanting it to be, but as it was. The illumination of the lightening against the dark night was as terrifying as it was life giving. There it was. The "aha" moment. The world revealed in all its splendour, not as the Disneyland dream vacation, but the realness it tries so hard to evoke. And since when did reality take on such a negative connotation anyway?

It doesn't matter the dream versus the reality. Apply your own. Ideas that don't match with what the world is offering. Expectations that disappoint or veil us from seeing what's before us to the point that we reject or refuse what's being offered rather than receiving it.

Following the lightening revelation of my night, I, as I often do, went to walk with my dog near the water, to get more clear on my vision. As the bay waters lapped rhythmically onto the rocky shore, I committed myself to something. I committed myself to a spacious summer. I mean, isn't that the very idea of summer? Isn't that what we are seeking in the sort of elusive holy grail of our idea of what summer should be? Summer is that brilliant pause. The pause between "years" (because, don't we all in some way still operate on the school year so ingrained in our nature at a young age?) And what is a pause but space?

With our cells calling out for this pause in the year, we plan our vacations; attend our picnics; scoot out of work early; dream of heat and lightening bugs and lazily passing the time on a porch swing with a bell jar of lemonade watching distant storm clouds gather.

What do all those notions point to? A need for space. Space between obligations and responsibilities. Space to dream, think, sit, play, remember our freedom. Space to slow down and see our world and and our life as it is and as we desire it to be. But to really give space to something, we have to know where we are beginning. Really.

I'm committing my summer to spaciousness. To "opening to Grace." To softening up the preconceived of what I want; the preconceived of what anything is "supposed" to look like; the preconceived notion that I can bulldoze anything into submission; the preconceived that I can engage something without feeling it out first.

So, it is to this pause, this spaciousness, that I commit my attention this summer. In other words, I'm committed to taking a symbolic breath. I'm taking a 10-week breath in fact. Interestingly, when we take in our breath, we're adding something in that creates a spaciousness. You would think that a feeling of spaciousness would be associated with the exhale. We are, after all, emptying ourselves, and yet, the physical act of exhaling draws us in and compacts us a bit, even as we are releasing something. And what of the pause between the two. Space. So my summer? One big spacious breath made up of many parts.

Contemplating this, I've created The 10 R's of Spaciousness for myself. Each week, beginning on a Sunday, I'll write about that week's focus for opening myself up to what the world and my life are offering me. Because opening myself to that will truly be the only way that I can begin to step into those currents in ways that are affirming in my life; in ways that enhance and expand me rather than diminish me.

Welcome to my summer.