The Space Through Which Stuff Passes

Thinking about this in the context of my recent writings on doing versus being and what we’re ‘meant’ to be and do, I began to realize the absurdity of the entire concept of individual (which literally means ‘indivisible’), and hence of cultures based on individuality. As a complicity we, each of us, are not ‘one’, We are not singular. And that is true not only within us but without us — we are part of the larger organisms of community and Gaia, the community of all-life-on-Earth. Our bodies and the rest of what we call our “selves” are plural parts of larger pluralities.

It is not surprising then that we have this problem with deciding who we ‘are’ and what we’re ‘meant’ to be, and do. It is a question that can only be answered in the context of knowing what we are made up of and what we make up as part of larger organisms.

As a generalist, I have always struggled with aspects of my ‘self’ that seem to be constantly struggling with each other:

• extrovert versus introvert
• lover versus fighter
• being versus doing
• staying still versus changing
• being present versus becoming
• being happy versus being of use
• pacifist versus activist
• intuiting versus sensing/perceiving
• thinking/conceiving versus feeling
• love of simplicity versus love of complexity
• love of silence/stillness versus love of transformation/movement

These are not, as I thought in my youth, dualities to be resolved as I got to know who I really was. These are parts of me, reflections of the parts of me. This is not about multiple identities or personae or personalities, they are aspects that are always present. But not aspects of one, rather aspects of the whole me, plural. This is why I have no use for psychology, which presumes (except perhaps for gestalt, which is not a ‘therapy’ but a methodology for self-discovery, or maybe I should say selves-discovery) to diagnose what is ‘wrong’ with us to make us ‘better’. And why I have no use for most religions that presume to tell us what our purpose is and how we should live, or for the modern scientific cults that teach us how to control and ‘program’ ourselves to live ‘integrally’.

The way to understand what we ‘are’, it seems to me, is a way not of greater self-control but a way, a Tao, of giving up control, of letting go and letting come. Of abandoning this foolish concept that ‘we’ are something that needs to be managed, directed, restricted, kept from being ‘evil’, either by outside disciplinarians and ‘leaders’ or by our ‘selves’. Of realizing that we are merely, and totally, the space through which stuff passes. Stuff material and non-materials. Coming and going. Combining and separating.

My anal list of things I want to spend more time being and doing is not inconsistent with this ‘worldview’. My purpose in practicing these things is not to become a ‘better’ person, more moral, or wiser, but rather to develop capacities, to become healthier and more resilient and more sustainable and hence ultimately happier and more useful to others and to the world. Happiness and usefulness confer enormous evolutionary advantage, so we shouldn’t be surprised that these are the things, ultimately, that we aspire to. (I should mention, by the way, that I have already started making time for some of these practices, even though my days are over-scheduled and ceasing doing the things that I have to stop doing will take some time and effort. That is the power of intention.)

So what does this mean, to be the space through which stuff passes? In a way, perhaps, it is being nobody-but-yourself, in the ee cummings sense. Or perhaps it is giving up the whole notion of ‘being’, and seeing the universe as composed of movement (or movement and stillness) and not matter at all (whatever ‘matter’ means, as one scientific theory after another about the makeup of the universe is undone by new discoveries). To be not the dancer, but the dance, or at least part of a dance so complex as to be unfathomable to us.

That’s as far as I’ve come in my thinking, and perhaps it’s absurd to think that I or anyone can go further in this remarkable direction. For further inspiration I’m re-reading phenomenologist David Abram’s Spell of the Sensuous, in which he writes:

I still have so much to unlearn.

(Thanks to Cheryl, Siona and Patti for sparking this realization.)

Painting above by painter and environmentalist Sophie Sheppard, auctioned in1999 at the Authors Unite in Defense of Mother Earth festival.