White Space

"The Master leads by emptying people's minds and filling their cores, by weakening their ambition and toughening their resolve. She helps people lose everything they know, everything they desire, and creates confusion in those who think that they know. Practice not-doing, and everything will fall into place." -- Tao te Ching, translation by Stephen Mitchell

Have you ever thought about paper and the words you write on it? Technically speaking, the words can't exist without the paper, or the computer screen, the white space that serves as the ground of being for words. It's often referred to as negative space, but is in reality acknowledged by graphic designers, artists, and writers as the most important element, which actually enables words or other design elements to exist at all. Words, pictures, and other objects may come and go across the screen or paper... but the white space is the primal background for all of it.

There is a Ground of Being, a state of Awareness that is the White Space of Spirit. Thoughts, images, emotions come and go, but what remains when the mind is emptied is the Fullness of Being. Like white space, it is the constant. There's a reason that in every spiritual tradition the Master Teacher leads the student to question and drop every thought and belief. What remains beyond belief is the effortless Truth. It reveals itself when we stop our constant busyness. We are like pages so full of words and pictures that the white space is completely covered. Not only is it hard to read, it's exhausting. White space gives words on a page room to breathe, and gives the eye space to soften and focus and find patterns in what it sees. Awareness of Being gives our everyday lives a beauty that is not dependent on busyness, with room to breathe and to be. Everything simply IS.

Like starting a new composition, why not start each new day with White Space? And instead of filling the space instantly and constantly with thoughts and desires and compulsions, why not drop them all for a time each morning? Why not rest in the Awareness of Being that is our True Self? Whether we call this Self the Tao, or God, or Buddha, this expansive Self is the White Space for a life of fulfillment. Not the fulfillment of the busy desires and egoic delusions of the illusory separated self. But the fulfillment of the True Desire of every heart... to know Self. This is what we all long for, to return to the White Space of Being.

"See the world as your Self. Have faith in the way things are. Love the world as your Self. Then you can care for all things." -- Tao te Ching, translation by Stephen Mitchell