“Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.”
Laozi
Image: Søren Solkær , The Guardian
Gabor Maté references studies which record emanations from the heart and brain of both therapist and client to support the hypothesis that effective therapy is less about the technique or formal qualifications of the therapist, and more about the relationship between them.
The capacity of the therapist to listen and be present creates a safe, calm, regulated container, or rather the ‘space’ for their client to be in. Within this space of listening and presence, there can be a capacious ability to relate and deeply connect.
When we are listening more than we are talking, our waves move in sync.
Another way to say this might be, in the space in-between, we come into relationship.
Tyson Yunkaporta writes about the value of ‘in-between spaces’ as a place of sharing and of transmission.
In Australia’s First Nations culture, knowledge is not derived of humans at the zenith, but rather the cosmology of our existence: place, space, plants, nature, animals, sentient beings, ancestors, spirits and followed the laws of nature and its ecosystems.
In the in between spaces Yunkaporta suggests, the object of knowledge resides, not in the mind, but in reflection.
What I notice in the grief space, is sometimes we ‘do the work’ of reflection, whilst alongside this, there’s a mystery within this entangled realm, where “the work” is also done to us. Francis Weller might frame this liminal hang-out as a place between loss and revelation. Oooof, how much space is in that!
Victor E. Frankl suggests that what differentiates humans from animals is curiously enough, the space in between. In "Man’s Search for Meaning," he wrote,
“between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
It's the space between the bars that holds the tiger - Zen Buddhism.
And it's the silence between the notes that makes the music - Debussy.
Out of the silence, the space between our thoughts, could be said to be the place flow enlivens. How much vitality and love for life do we have when we embody a state of flow.
Space then, might be a love language. Space offers us an opportunity too long for, to miss and also, to love beyond. Could the space in-between gift us an opportunity to find new ways to love, to engage, to become entangled?
Love is to travel together. Perhaps something of mumuration, a bit messy, a lot magical; the shapes, forms, the mystery, and matrices, of in-betweenness.
Image: Søren Solkær , The Guardian
To sit at the base of a tree and admire it is not the same as to sit in the company of the tree and breathe together. To be present, to listen - we become entangled; interdependent.
Perhaps then, dynamic relationships don’t happen between people; but rather, relationships occur in between people in this is exchange, this place of reciprocity - of presence, breath, light and aliveness.
Our relationships are often contractual instead of reciprocal. We walk around with a list of to do’s. There can be a negotiation if you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. What we know (and feel) from living in relationship is big-heartedness inspires safety, trust, spaciousness - belonging, more good will.
Generosity in sharing who you ‘be’, is to invite breath between you and another.
Relationships are not about task lists, to do’s, schmancy to-be-seen events, the must’s, the better had’s. What might happen if we move beyond our ‘busy’ and take root? What if we slow down, and pay attention to the spaces in-between.
Could we keep breathing with our lover, sister, brother, grandmother, father, friend … after they die?
In slowing down, in paying attention, might it be possible to tease out threads of relating and learn to dance in new ways?
The magical dynamic space in-between is full of bonds; a kind of dance between you and another - perhaps not only of bodies, perhaps too the spiritual and the soulful.
Could there be there something to learn, something to re/member here? Something calling us to pay attention to the in-between space of transmission, sharing, relating, kinning?
Might we find places here to commune with who has passed from us?