Making space in your heart

The concept of making space in our heart is a favorite approach I learned as a beginning meditator that I have employed ever since to wonderfully positive effect. 

As I sat on a cushion in beginner’s class trying to get the hang of meditating, the teacher shared a visualization to help us calm our minds. Imagine the surface of a lake, she suggested. It might be rough right now, but as our mind calms, it can become as smooth as a mirror.

I saw the surface of the lake…the trees lining the lake…the sky both above and reflected in the lake…and became aware of space expanding inside my heart and mind along with a growing sense of ease.  

In the photo above, for example, there is a dark cloud in the center. But it only takes up a very small portion of all of the available space and light. 

Creating and holding space is a marvelous skill, that I use and share often, to great effect! 

For three months recently I served as a True Refuge Companion to a woman in our Sangha who had experienced the tragic loss of a family member only two weeks before. 

In our first session (we met weekly), what clearly helped her the most was simply breathing together. Breathing in deeply through our noses and breathing out through our mouths with a whoosh, over and over at our own pace, allowing our bodies to settle, to let tension go, to feel more grounded and embodied, rather than racing around in our exhausted minds.

In our second session, I brought up the concept of making space, suggesting that she simply create space around the shock and grief in her mind and heart. That she first imagine her painful thoughts and emotions struggling in a tight space, bumping into the sides of a box. And then instead, imagine space and light increasing all around the pain until it was a small part of a spacious landscape.

She got it immediately. I could see her face marvel, and relax. We spoke of making space in our hearts for all that is. Beautiful, and sad. Painful and sublime. Awesome and mundane. And we noted that with greater space all around, there’s room to breathe.

Marvelous things are going to happen! Terrible things are going to happen. We cannot change that. But we can change the amount of room we hold in our hearts and minds, so that there’s enough space for it all. 

A few weeks ago, a dear friend who works for a large tech company texted to tell me that her employer had just announced a planned layoff of 10,000 employees—something common across big tech this winter. I responded, Oh, ok. This, too. Shorthand for this is the reality. Let’s just be with what is, with a little kindness and compassion for ourselves and others. My friend responded, Yes…this, too.

No reason to go crazy. We didn’t know if she would be laid off or not (she wasn’t). Better to breathe in gently, appreciating the gifts of the present moment. To appreciate life as it is, not what it might be, could be, might not be. 

And then last Sunday, I coughed up blood. 

I’d had an unusually fierce cold for over a week. Coughing, sneezing, fever, chills, firey sore throat. (Not Covid, I tested three times.) 

Of course, I started catastrophizing, picturing Teddy’s husband Henry on Grey’s Anatomy (she’d married him to afford him health insurance so he wouldn’t be turned out on the street outside the hospital with no help for his life-threatening disease), blood gushing out of his throat into a hastily provided dish. 

I, in contrast, had coughed up a teaspoon full of watery blood. So I thought, wait a minute. My health plan gives me access to a nurse practitioner via Zoom whenever I need help. So before I panic, let me try reaching out and see if that works on Sunday morning. In 20 minutes I was face to face with the nurse, who asked me a bunch of questions and reassured me that it was likely the result of broken capillaries from all that nose blowing making its way post-nasal into my throat. 

Suddenly, there was all this space around the incident, which was softening and looking smaller and smaller every moment. 

I’m not going to die, I thought. So I might as well make lunch! 🙂

Photo credit: Pawel Nolbert