Sacred Space

Last Wednesday I wrote Loneliness as a kind of “sunshine” process whereby I exposed some festering frustrations left unresolved after my transformation (chronicled in Maui Summer of Love 2013). Writing Loneliness proved cathartic: it and subsequent conversations began releasing me from unconscious resentment that was beginning to sour my disposition, and in fact put me in the path of my next big epiphany.

Back in August, one of the things that pushed me past the “tipping point” was the “Law of Attraction” as expounded in the book The Vortex: Where the Law of Attraction Assembles All Cooperative Relationships by Esther and Jerry Hicks. I found the assertion—that by changing what we think about or dwell on (and thereby changing our “vibration”) we also change what we attract—powerful, and as I began to try to apply it, my experience of life began to change in almost every aspect. As I strove to focus on the hoped-for rather than the absent, the hoped-for increasingly appeared in my life, with one glaring exception.

That exception is what I wrote about in Loneliness. Over nine months, I rationalized that my issues with loneliness demonstrated a reasonable limitation to the Law of Attraction, to whit: when what I hope for involves others, they (properly) have a choice, and my hope or expectation cannot and should not be expected to coerce their choice.

I think, though, that a part of me knew that I was missing something. Of course my “vibrations” cannot and should not coerce another, but why didn’t my “vibrations” attract those who were humming the same tune?

Well, they were. In this one area, my hopes were:

1. too specific
2. focused on what was lacking
3. utterly bereft of gratitude

By focusing on a specific outcome, I was excluding too many possibilities. By focusing on lack, I was attracting lack. Because I was grateful for the “wrong” things, I was damping my “vibrations” to the point of silence. Yet I was stuck: I couldn’t really envision what I longed for as already existent since it was “obviously” not present in my life in the present, and I struggled to find something I could be grateful for in the present that related to my longing.

The day after I wrote Loneliness, I had an epiphany (these things just keep coming!). I found a metaphor that works for me—that expresses my longing without being too specific, that makes room in my life for what I seek, that identifies something for which I am grateful—and like so many epiphanies in the last nine months, this one has transformed my (perception of the) world.

After all that buildup, it better be good, hadn’t it? Well, it’s good to me, anyway; your mileage may vary.

It’s simply this: the (currently) unoccupied “spaces” in my life—where the things I long for “fit"—are sacred because they reserve room for what’s to come, because they represent my longings without defining them too specifically, and because they have sufficient reality (like "negative space” in art and architecture) that they are “things” for which I can legitimately be grateful.

One way I think of it is like the nursery expectant parents might prepare in advance of a child’s birth, especially if they haven’t determined the child’s sex in advance. It’s an empty (but sacred) space, no matter that it’s been painted and decorated and furnished, until baby arrives, yet how much love is lavished on that empty room? It is an investment of the heart in an undetermined future, endowed with bright expectancy.

Likewise, I prepare sacred spaces in my heart. I endow them with bright but indeterminate expectancy and lavish them with love. I furnish and decorate them based on what I think might occupy those spaces, but I know I might get it wrong and I am prepared to repaint and refurnish and redecorate when the time comes. In the meantime, it is a present pleasure just to have that space available.

That’s how I’m approaching a show-less summer, too. I’m confident of the personal wisdom of my decision (although I love theatre and my theatre ʻohana and I know I’ll miss the camaraderie and excitement of being a part of the living, growing organism that is a theatrical production), and while that “show space” in my life feels all echoey and strange right now, I intuit that by leaving that sacred space empty for a time, other sacred spaces—spaces I may in the past have neglected by my devotion to Dionysus—will benefit.

I trust that what will fill my sacred spaces is already part of the world. I believe that whatever comes is perfect in itself and for me. I am grateful for the sacred spaces in my life and in my heart, beautiful both as they are and as they may be when occupied.

I think I’ll paint the nursery ochre.