Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I
not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,
looking into the shining world?
- Mary Oliver
To be -- how difficult it seems for us in our modern world to allow ourselves to be in this moment, to ‘do nothing’, to be in the in-between space? Between what just was and what is to come. Our modern day technology pulls us into filling every moment with some thing or some one, to be somewhere else, not where we are. In our fast-paced world there is little room for reflection and dreaming. While it is true that our life’s journey is one of Becoming, it is also true that what we become is wholly dependent on the in-between spaces of Being -- a space in time where we are taken out of our ongoing stream of thought and activity into a deeper place of attention, reflection and understanding.
What is the nature of our experience of the in-between? What is our resistance to going there? What are some of the images that symbolize this crossing of the boundaries of our everyday life? Can we get stuck in this space? What are the gifts it offers to us? These are some of the questions we will explore in this lecture.