Clear Space

Present-moment awareness creates a gap not only in the stream of mind but also in the past-future continuum. Nothing truly new and creative can come into this world except through that gap, that clear space of infinite possibility.  ~Eckhart Tolle, from The Power of Now

Thinking about that clear space, ironically, as I prepare to return to work after a week-long vacation. But the space Tolle means is space we can have access to anytime. Ceasing our obsessive thinking, coming into the present, we understand that time and space are one, here and now.

This is good news. It means creativity is available to me virtually anytime, anywhere. I don’t have to have a special writing pen or desk, a lot of free time or extra energy, or even inspiration (especially not ideas!). I have only to stop, notice, be in the now. Surrender to life, to the moment. Tolle says, “No truly positive action can arise out of an unsurrendered state of consciousness.”

How do you experience creative moments? Do they come unbidden; do you arrange conditions to induce them? What if you surrendered to the gap, that clear space of infinite possibility?

Year-End

There is no such thing in anyone’s life as an unimportant day.  ~Alexander Woollcott

The last day of the calendar year is no exception. I am blessed this morning with a day of vacation before tomorrow’s holiday. In fact, I have had a lovely long break from my day job at the end of 2007, and I am trying not to spoil these last two days by fretting about going back to work (i.e., being other than in the present moment)!

A few days ago, I wrote about the unimportance of the calendar in marking beginnings (see “A New Year” below), so I suppose the same goes for endings. Still, December 31 does prompt us to review the past year and to look ahead to the next, and I think there is value in that activity (see “Becoming”).

May I remember that each day of the new year is grace. May I live fully and with awareness and gratitude each of those important days.