The Spacious Sky

"Develop a mind that is vast like space,

where experiences both pleasant and unpleasant

can appear and disappear without conflict, struggle or harm.

Rest in a mind that is as vast as the sky."

Buddha

It has been said by many spiritual teachers (including this one), that our true nature is like a vast open sky; spacious, infinite and free. Take a moment right now and verify this for yourself: close your eyes and get a sense of yourself as sitting in an open sky, feeling the space around you. As you relax; breathe this space into your body as you listen intently to the silence around, and within you. Feel deeply into the bliss and freedom of your own spacious being.

Pretty good, right?

And yet it's never long before we find ourselves fixating once again on the thoughts passing through our mind (and the suffering and pain that go with them); losing ourselves in the self-created drama's that fill our life. These thoughts, and the emotions that accompany them (whether judged as good or bad by the mind), fill the space of our sky-like Awareness and 'hook' us again and again into believing that they are 'us', and definitely important; in fact way more important than resting as the openness and freedom of our true nature.

Through meditation (like the one above), we can learn to dwell more and more in the ease and freedom of our own sky-like Awareness, without getting caught in the concepts and illusions of the thoughts (clouds), that are constantly passing by. Just as the sky does not reject or try to keep any cloud from passing through its vastness, we can learn to allow all of the thoughts and emotions that arise in the mind and body, to flow through without chasing after any of them. And if we do become 'lost' in one of the thoughts (clouds) passing through our awareness, we can simply close our eyes, take a spacious breath, and feel again into the open sky of our Awareness; free, joyful and ever-present; here and now.