With every Sunday morning, I find myself eyeball-deep in Eckart Tolle. For a few months, I’ve made his mind’s work a part of my morning ritual, and I’m more complete for the effort. The Power of Now is a thought-provoker in the most powerful of ways [go on, read it, I tell you]. Given my most recent Sunday’s ‘teaching’ on compassion, I’m gonna wax spiritual on the importance of space for a moment. Stick with me…the connection may not be as random as it sounds.
According to Tolle, “Yes. Compassion is the awareness of a deep bond between yourself and all creatures. But there are two sides to compassion, two sides to this bond. On the one hand, since you are still here as a physical body, you share the vulnerability and mortality of your physical form with every other human and with every living being. On the level of form, you share mortality and the precariousness of existence. On the level of being, you share eternal, radiant life. There are two aspects of compassion. In compassion, the seemingly opposite feelings of sadness and joy merge into one and become transmuted into a deep inner peace.”
Finding, creating, and allowing peace into my life has been a 33-year journey. I speak often about the ways in which my physical space affects my life, and Sunday’s read reminded me of the ‘how’. Our existence and our peace is rooted both in places of permanence and impermanence…and so I believe it is with the places in which we dwell. The permanence of our homes is not what brings us peace or comfort. There is no permanence in the physical. Homes sell, burn down, change, dilapidate, and disappear. Sad, yes, but what makes our space ours is that beyond the walls and the stuff. The permanence of our homes lay on the flip side; in that which we create and will remain with us when we move on. Who are you within the walls of your home? Have you created an environment that will foster the individual you want to be? Do you fill it with the things and people and experiences that you love?
Buy more fresh flowers, plant more herbs, host more dinner parties, and meditate more in the coming year. Create a space in which you’ll flourish. Read more, pray more, be more naked, and make more cocktails. Rearrange the furniture, create an art room, surround yourself with photos of family and friends. Sleep in, wake up early, light candles, hang a chandelier, buy some antiques. Invite mom over more for game nights. Love your space. It’ll love you back.
