Hot, Wet & Wide Open Spaciousness

Opening to the storms raging inside and out

It’s Full Moon day, so tonight we practice together on the Zooms! If you’ve already registered, see you there. If you still want to register, you can do that HERE. More info below…

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Howdy Friends!

This month, I promised meditations on spaciousness. And so I started the month gleefully hyperfocused on the radiant emptiness of everything: the space between my body’s cells, the insubstantiality of thoughts, the expectant aliveness of an empty page. I reread Time, Space, and Knowledge, Tartang Tulku’s mind-bending vision of reality. I meditated on the stillness and the moving and let it all melt together. It was a breezy couple of weeks. Too breezy, in fact…

My teacher, Lama Lena, likes to say: "There's always something bigger than your practice" - something that can knock you out of equilibrium just when you think you're finally getting practice right. Thrill-seeker that I am, I went in search of that frontier: What would pull me out of this serene, mind-made bubble of spaciousness and trigger a self-protective contraction? In other words, I got cocky.

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In my journal, I wrote:

“To deepen the practice of spaciousness, we need storms. During the storms, it’s the hollow reed that survives, right? The bendiest tree, the supplest grass. When shit really hits the fan, it's only by emptying ourselves - of old constructs, of rigid hopes and fears - that we survive the turbulence. Only space can hold the storm.”

Welp. Nature has a very literal sense of humor. A few days after I wrote that, Toronto got bludgeoned by a storm. We were waist-deep in floodwater, power outs, and heatwaves.

The AC in my recording studio died, leaving me to work in a 40℃ hellscape. Water pooled on the roof and trickled in through our light fixtures. Torrents flooded our basement with 2 inches of swamp goo. Hello, outer limit of practice, nice to meet you!

Here are some things that might happen when you find that which is bigger than your contemplative practice: You might miss all your deadlines and meetings and declare yourself a total failure at life. You might bicker with your partner about literally nothing. You might have a freak panic attack in the middle of the night. Your cats might question your sanity. But when all the contracting and flailing exhausts itself, you might just finally let go. You might quit trying to make things perfect and become a sloppy, bendy reed in a hurricane.

Giggling barefoot through stinking mud, I made water-scooping bucket lines with my friends. I took the toilet plunger to the clogged storm drains (very fun, highly recommend). I worked naked (but for my favorite underpants) in my studio as salty sweat dripped from my eyelashes.

In opening to the whatever-is-happening-now-ness of the storm, that which was bigger than my practice became my practice. Hallelujah.

There's always another storm coming—both figuratively and (in this rapidly changing climate) quite literally. Whatever cannot bend will break. When nature calls, what other choice do we have? We open wide and let things be - not as we hope they are, not as we fear they might be, but as they actually, magically are. ✨

Let’s practice being puffs of spacetime! During the full moon! Tonight!

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Tonight’s Meditation Session

July’s Live Meditation Session

TIME: July 21 @ 8-9 PM EST

DEETS: This month, we'll turn our attention to the total glittering emptiness of being a person: The space that permeates the cells of the body, the space that permeates the thoughts of the mind. We'll hang out together in the universe's most abundant resource: Space!

COST: This session is open to errybody. Please consider paying what you can within your means.

REGISTER HERE ✨

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See you tonight :)

❤️ Tasha